Learning a Language (Summer Internship Reflection)

It affirmed. It deepened.

The Ateneo Human Rights Center Internship Program was by far my most fruitful summer. In almost two months of extra-ordinary experience from the mountains of Mindoro to the sidewalks of Katipunan, it has set the trajectory of my professional growth towards what I see is a more meaningful and powerful-life commitment.

The program was an affirming experience. The issues and advocacies which I tend to gravitate towards since I began involving myself in development work in college have painted a decipherable pattern of what I want to do with my life. This “pattern” has something to do with political education, marginalized sectors, and policy analysis - such big ideas. Law school made me see how these big concepts are neatly worded and structured in our laws. This program made me see the human faces that are affected, good or bad in the operation of these words and structures. I saw how redefining the elements of the legal term “informal settlers” could criminalize a big part of the urban poor. I saw how the quantum of evidence in proving adultery is stacked against the woman. I saw how the legal scheme of contractualization would violate the right of security of tenure among others. It is seeing the bad effects that affirmed my desire to continue to study and understand the substance, the context, and the operation of the laws and more importantly, how to engage for its reengineering so it can better meet the ends of equity and justice.    

The program was a deepening experience. Aside from the theoretical affirmations, the experience has deepened my personal commitment to a line of work that is labelled as “alternative” – not the “main” stream thing needless to say. I can recall that one of my most precious moments in this program are the random conversations I had with my supervising lawyer. While waiting for our case to be called, he vividly shared to me the dilemmas he faces everyday as an alternative lawyer. This includes incentive issues, the politics, and the hard truth that progress is slow and frustrating. But amidst these challenges, you can just feel the ever deeply-seated joy that naturally radiates in his person. There is joy in serving the poor as I understood it. And I guess it is in knowing other people who share the same commitment to a cause higher than themselves that brings so much energy. Knowing that I am not alone and there are brilliant and experienced people in this frontier has deepened my commitment to be part of that
“alternative” community.

This also led me to see how important – very important - this community is. In my encounters with SALIGAN’s counterparts, I’ve seen the spectrum of progressive laws that they were able to pass such as the CARPER and the RH Law to name a few. Moving the nation forward includes the enactment of progressive laws. These laws could not win over vested interest, if it weren’t for the legal inputs, and the public campaign of the alternative law groups and their partners. And this is one thing law school does not teach you - changing the law. The program opened a whole new set of options in building a better society as a lawyer. The work is not only in the courtrooms, it includes the halls of congress and city councils, and in the streets and plazas – a much more exciting work than writing pleadings in front of a screen and arguing endlessly before a cold judge.

The study of the law is learning a new language. It is a language that is evolving ever since human kind decided to live together. The program has shown me that this “language” is not meant to be contained and understood to an educated few as what history has shown. It is meant to be transformed into a language that everybody understands because it is their right to understand. This language is also powerful for it builds institutions and governs relationships. When it is spoken, it affects the lives of people. But the program also revealed to me in the mountains of Mindoro and the streets of Quezon City that this language also has an inherent ability to deny, to enslave, and to ignore. But also, I have seen that this language can also be changed.

I return to Xavier University Law School with a new set of eyes. The language in which I learn from the voluminous books will never be the same. I now see them as powerful potent tools to empower the people at the margins and to build a more just and free society.