ATIK | Confederation of Workers from Turkey in Europe | AHM-ATIK News Center
EUROPE | 03 – 07 – 2009 | MIGRANTE Europe sends its sincerest condolences to the family and friends left behind by Ka Wilson Baldonaza, who passed away today, 1 July 2009. Likewise, we send the same warm condolences to his and our confreres in the Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement, KMU), the only militant and patriotic trade union federation in the Philippines, whom Ka Wilson served wholeheartedly and with unbounded commitment as secretary general.
We will remember Ka Wilson as someone truly from the ranks of the organized working classes – selfless, committed, militantly patriotic, hardworking, tireless, and never allowed himself to be distracted by worldly concerns in pursuit of the interest and vision of the working class and proletariat.
We have had the opportunity to be with Ka Wilson while he was on tour of Europe in 2007. Despite his hectic appointments with European trade unions and NGOs, Ka Wilson took time out to speak before gatherings of migrant Filipinos – a section of Philippine society beginning to become “proletarianized” by the oppressive and exploitative global diaspora.
In those gatherings, Ka Wilson never failed to tell the stories and struggles of the lowly Filipino worker in some unknown sweatshop in the Philippines. In those stories of struggle, migrant Filipinos have been deeply conscientized, distrubed and angered by the fact that while they earn and live relatively well than their counterparts and compatriots back home, those left behind to toil have to fight it out with their lives and limbs to earn and live on so little – barely enough, so to speak, to allow them to continue literally breathing and working the next day.
But Ka Wilson’s sharings and stories have their ultimate conclusion – a society free, truly democratic, governed by the genuine sons and daughters of the Filipino toiling masses, morally proud and politically upright, a society freed from the oppressive and exploitative structures and forces that have bounded the working class for so long. This is also what Filipinos overseas dream of – a society where they could return home to, find peace and economic fulfillment, without never again being forced to leave for abroad. This is what Ka Wilson and others like him in the militant trade union never fail to admonish Filipinos abroad.
We salute Ka Wilson and the others like him, genuine leaders, sons and daughters of the working class and Filipino proletariat. Their memory and exemplary lives shall continue to shine brightly along the dark and tortuous path to achieve the vision of the Filipino toiling masses and proletariat.
Mabuhay si Ka Wilson!
Continue to advance national freedom and democracy!
Workers, migrants of all countries, unite! Break the chains of oppression and exploitation!
1 July 2009
MIGRANTE Europe
Postbus 15687, 1001 ND Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Emails: office@migrante-europe.net, mig_europe@yahoo.com