actualbird:

there have been many cases already international clients dropping their commissions from filipino artists or avoiding commissioning filipino creators altogether, either due to a fear of consequences getting associated with us because of current events or the misguided notion that not supporting us somehow hurts the oppressive government we’re under. lemme address both those issues:

for the first reason, nothing will happen to you, a foreigner, for supporting filipinos. theres nothing to be afraid of, youre not in this country and wont suffer any consequences. many of us, however? we’re afraid. especially artists and creators who rely on commissions to support themselves and their families

for the second reason, you are not hurting our oppressors at all. you are hurting filipinos, majority of which did not want this to happen and are actively speaking out against the looming dictatorship. dropping filipino creators does nothing but hurt us. our inflation rates are predicted to rise, and money is fast becoming an even bigger issue for so so many

so if youre looking for art, dont give up on us. commission filipino artists and/or boost commission posts! 1 USD is literally enough to buy a meal here, it really helps. here is a link to a thread of filipino artists posting their commission rates. and here is another thread of filipino commission rates. tips and donations outside of comms to these artists help even more.

edit: fixed links

thewallpapergoesorido:

PSA

(Long post but this is important so please read)

For those living outside of the Philippines and are currently unaware of the ongoing situation in my country, we just had our elections yesterday on May 9 (Monday) and results have been coming in since last night. Bong Bong Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos is in the lead for president while his VP candidate Sara Duterte, daughter of the current president, also in the lead. And this is bad. REALLY BAD.

I can’t give a complete and comprehensive summary of Ferdinand Marcos’ rule in a single post but this is all you need to know. A lot of people were killed, tortured, and raped during his time, and those were only the ones who were found and accounted for. We still have so many missing victims until now that we call them the Los Desaparecidos or The Disappeared. The Marcos family also stole about billions from the country and her people. They literally lavished in their homes while children were dying from starvation.

Already foreign investors are pulling out which can mean really bad things for our economy which not many of us can afford right now.

And as for Sara Duterte if you’ve heard of her father and the War on Drugs then you’d understand why we’re so apprehensive of having another Duterte have a seat of power in the national government.

As of now there are already allegations of the elections being rigged. Some might think it’s a wild conspiracy theory but with the history of these political dynasties and the corrupt system of our government I can’t help but agree that something’s wrong.

Because before elections even officially closed there have already been reports of about 1800 faulty Vote Counting Machines (VCM) , the highest number in election history with VCMs rejecting ballots or malfunctioning effectively delaying the voting process by hours which resulted with registered voters being turned away by COMELEC because they didn’t make the cut-off of 7 p.m.

And speaking of COMELEC (they’re basically the committee in charge of handling the elections) their handling of the whole elections is just downright incompetent and shady. There have been allegations of ballots being manipulated and only a few hours has passed since the tallying of votes has begun and somehow they’ve covered more than 85 % of the precincts just not all over the country but also overseas. Which is questionable considering that about 50% of the country’s VCMs are broken.

There is also a noticeable trend with how Leni Robredo, Marcos’ most serious opposition who beat him for the position of VP in the 2016 elections, always has 47% of the total transmitted votes for Marcos during every election update.

(tl;dr)

I know that Tumblr can be very Western centric but this is serious. The elections were badly handled from the start and it looks like we’re heading towards another Marcos administration thanks to a combination of Filipinos who would rather deny our history and corrupt government officials. Please help us keep a spot light on the Philippines because we’re not going down without a fight if Marcos wins.