Sulong is a Tagalog word that means “onward” in English, used often in a militant organizational context. Formed in 2018 at the University of British Columbia, in so-called Vancouver, Canada, Sulong UBC is a national democratic Filipinx/Canadian youth and student group with a critical analysis of what it means to be Filipinx on campus, in our communities, and in our personal lives. We believe that the youth are the vanguard of national reawakening!
We educate and organize Filipinx and non-Filipinx youth and students to mobilize around issues in the Philippines by linking the position of diasporic Filipinxs to the problems plaguing our motherland and joining with the struggle for national democracy. We are an affiliate of ANAKBAYAN-Canada.
Purpose and Goals
- Sulong principally organizes students, alumni, and other youth in and around UBC, and aims to connect its work with the powerful movement of the migrant masses in the host country of Canada. We are part of the struggle to end the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in the Philippines and to win the struggle for national democracy towards socialism.
- Sulong recognizes the connection between the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in the Philippines and the exploitation and abuse of Filipino youth.
- Sulong recognizes the exploitation of migrant youth, systemic racism, and family separation as key issues that affect migrant Filipino youth in the host country of Canada.
- Sulong recognizes the role of the youth as a powerful force that advocates and advances social change against a rotten social system.
- Sulong also recognizes the historical importance of international solidarity and continues the international struggle for liberation from imperialism. In particular, Sulong recognizes the central role of Indigenous struggles on Turtle Island as guiding lights for our solidarity on this land.
- The specific local goals of Sulong, in addition to the goals of Anakbayan chapters and affiliates outlined in the Anakbayan Philippines Constitution, are to:
- Study and investigate the needs, conditions, and interests of migrant Filipino youth and other youth at UBC and Vancouver more generally.
- Advance the struggle for the interest and welfare of migrant Filipino youth and other youth at UBC and Vancouver more generally.
Land Solidarity
Sulong UBC operates primarily in the sovereign, ancestral, traditional, and occupied Coast Salish territories (colonially known as Vancouver, Canada). It is part of Anakbayan Canada, whose chapters operate across the occupied territories of Turtle Island which make up what is colonially known as “Canada”.
Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island have had their land, homes, and lives taken by the violent Canadian colonial system. Canada continues this genocide today, through pollution, criminal neglect, cultural extermination, and murder.
As proletarian internationalists, we uphold the right of nations to self-determination. We stand with the Indigenous peoples of this land in their struggles and demands for water, land, and ultimately their total sovereignty.
When we educate and organize on these territories, it is in recognition that ending the system of poverty and forced migration from our homeland is our most concrete contribution to stopping the settling of these lands, and that ending the world system of imperialism is the only way to liberate our people and the Indigenous peoples on whose land we are present.
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