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What’s in a name? Everything, says NYC Coalition calling for Gloria’s removal

By Dr. Robyn Rodriguez and Berna Ellorin
Spokespeople, NY Coalition for Gloria’s
Ouster, Resignation, or Impeachment ASAP

July 7, 2005

NEW YORK — “Don’t be fooled. The name says it all,” stated a serious Dr. Robyn Rodriguez, an immigration scholar and professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, when referring to a newly-formed broad coalition of Filipino organizations called N.Y.C. 4 G L.O.R.I.A. “In the tradition of Filipino acronyms, this too has a very deliberate meaning— New York Coalition for Gloria’s Ouster, Resignation, or Impeachment ASAP.”

The ironically-named broad coalition of health professionals, educators, domestic workers, youth, lawyers, and human rights advocates in New York and neighboring areas formed with the intention of raising awareness on the anti-people policies of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime, and why, as convenor Rodriguez puts it, “it is in the best interest all Filipinos, and in particular migrant Filipinos such as ourselves with loved ones back home, to see to it that this administration be removed before more damage can be done.”

In a press conference in Manhattan yesterday, individual convenors from local organizations and institutions such as the NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, Gabriela Network, and Philippine Forum were on hand to express their condemnation of the GMA regime, and will call for weekly community actions in New York, including an informational picketing/petition signing in the Filipino commercial district along 69th St. and Roosevelt Ave. in Jackson Heights, Queens on Friday, July 15, at 6pm, that will culminate to a simultaneous people’s demonstration with the scheduled State of the Nation Address (SONA) in the Philippines on Sunday, July 24th, 5-7pm at the same location.

“Even as Filipinos in New York, we have felt the brunt of economic hardship that this administration has failed to alleviate,” stated Professor Emelyn Tapaoan of LaGuardia Community College in New York. “We also know, through the stories of our families back home, that the acute fiscal crisis suffered by the people is a direct consequence of the high corruption and plunder of federal agencies by Gloria herself. That she has been exposed as cheating her way to a false victory in the 2004 election is actually no surprise, but it is definitely the straw that has broken the camel’s back and now, by all moral and legal grounds, Gloria must go. If not by will, then by the mandate of the people.”

N.Y.C. 4 G L.O.R.I.A. is also assisting in the formation of a national network of US Filipino organizations calling for GMA’s removal. #

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