May 14, 2008

Know your PLU rights!

Well, well, well. As if as an answer to my previous post about the legal basis for raids and where I encouraged you to learn your rights, Ang Ladlad, the LGBT party list organization of Danton Remoto; Rainbow Rights Project, a group of queer lawyers and legal activists; and Radar Pridewear, a line of lesbian apparel, is holding a dialogue entitled "Know Your Rights!" with the lawyers of the Rainbow Rights Project. This will be held at the roofdeck of the FBR Building along Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City this Saturday, May 17 from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. (The FBR Building is in front of the Ateneo and is the one which has a Yellow Cab outlet.)

You’re in a bar and the police come in and announce a raid, what will you do?

On your way home late at night, police patrols stop you and charge you with vagrancy, how will you react?

After the movie house you went to has been suddenly raided, you’re brought to the police station and the cops start asking you for money, what should your response be?

Basing on the event's teaser questions above, the answers are exactly what many of us need to learn in order to best defend ourselves from police harrassment. The problem is, many discreet guys would likely shy away from attending such an "out" event. As I said in my very first post, the Internet is a boon for discreet gay people and the organizers of the event should have taken advantage of the technology to reach out to more discreet guys. They should do a live streaming of the event, open up a chat room to get questions from web surfers, and maybe even record the dialogue and publish it as a podcast or vlog (video log) so that others who missed the event can learn and review at their own pace.

Nevertheless, I think this event is very much worth attending if you have the guts to show up. Hehehe.

7 comments:

chase / chubz wrote on May 16, 2008 at 2:15 AM:

i like to visit these sites but its really scary.

I am with you with the suggestions. its very discreet gay guy friendly.

 
Kai Santorino wrote on May 17, 2008 at 8:13 AM:

please please publish whatever's going to be discussed there. i know that a lot of PLUs won't/can't attend this but they still would want to know.

 
Anonymous wrote on May 17, 2008 at 12:14 PM:

Oooo luckily I read this. I still have enough time to make it (1hr to go) before the said event.

 
Vince (Discreet Manila) wrote on May 20, 2008 at 2:15 AM:

Chase and Kai, hopefully somebody can upload or give a lowdown of the talk.

Tony, so did you attend? Was it ok? Spill the details! :-)

 
Anonymous wrote on May 20, 2008 at 3:51 PM:

Yeah I was there. I haven't had time to really write or post anything about it. It was interesting but I realized that those who really need to attend these forums are those who will never be comfortable enough to go to one (although there were a few discreet individuals who attended that shyed away from everyone else).

I'm tempted not to share what was discussed just to force people to attend these forums/ meetings/ gatherings.... I feel sad when I saw there were really only a handful who attended.

I'm not so bad however....I'll post something up. Just a backgrounder, this was actually just a discussion on the 'pink slip'. The 'pink slip' was actually a foldout card that was printed by volunteers of Ang Ladlad which enumerated and explained what one should do when a police confronts you and what are the charges they usually use to extort money from you..... they only printed 1k copies then because of financial constraints.

More on this and their plight when I find the time to post something. :P

 
Anonymous wrote on June 3, 2009 at 10:56 PM:

Can someone tell me what "PLU" means? I'm a Pinoy-American and I'm trying to understand gay filipino culture and language and I'm flumuxed about these acronyms. Maybe give me a website with definitions of these acronyms? Thanks!

 
Vince (Discreet Manila) wrote on June 6, 2009 at 10:49 PM:

Anon, check out this old blog post of mine: Discreetionary: PLU. For other terms, check out the Discreetionary category of this blog.