Thousands of people lined the streets of San Francisco on Nov. 12, in front of Embarcadero Plaza, ready to march against the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference.

To energize the mobilizers before the march, the GABRIELA USA choir sang “Mother’s Day,” a song about women who transition from sitting on the sidelines to taking action.

“Once they started singing, it was so incredibly moving,” said Tabitha Ponciano, the National Chair of the Malaya Movement USA. “Seeing a huge group of Filipino women stand in front of a sea of thousands singing a song in solidarity with the people there. […] I think I teared up in the crowd.”    

APEC, which took place from Nov. 11 to Nov. 17, is an economic and trade forum made up of 21 member economies from the Asia-Pacific region. Leaders such as United States President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. were all in attendance to discuss economic and trade issues. The United States hosted the conference this year, and they chose for its 2023 theme to be “Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All.”

Over 150 organizations signed onto the No to APEC Coalition either as sponsors, endorsers, or signatories to present a united opposition to APEC Conferences, while expressing a broad range of objections. 

Among the organizations present were GABRIELA USA, an alliance of 250 Filipino women’s organizations, and the Malaya Movement USA. They are both grassroots-based organizations fighting for sovereignty in the Philippines and openly opposing President Marcos Jr.. 

“At the core of APEC are these neoliberal policies that prioritize making money over the well-being of a majority of the people around the world,” Ponciano said. “People inland shouldn’t be exploited for the benefit of the few, we should all have our basic human rights met. That is the cost of putting profit over people.” 

The International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) initiated the No To APEC Coalition to oppose the exclusionary policy-making that takes place at APEC conferences. The No To APEC Coalition planned the People’s Counter Summit Against APEC on Nov. 11 and a mass mobilization on Nov. 12.

The People’s Counter-Summit Against APEC

The People’s Counter Summit Against APEC was held at San Francisco State University, with over 800 attendees. 

One of the No To APEC Sponsor organizations is called Justice for Brandon Lee, a campaign under the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines-US (ICHRP-US).

Brandon Lee was the keynote speaker at the counter summit. He moved to the Philippines in 2010, and worked as a paralegal volunteer to support the Indigenous peoples’ struggles of being displaced by foreign mining companies, until members of the Philippines Armed Forces attempted to assassinate him in 2019. The attack paralyzed him from the neck down. Today, he works as an Indigenous rights activist.

“I saw firsthand how neoliberal policies promoted by APEC, such as the Philippines Mining Act of 1995, liberalize the mining industry, allowing foreign mining companies to reap 100 percent profit from the plundering of Indigenous people’s lands,” said Lee during his speech. “They say APEC will promote sustainability, the Indigenous community says no. They are robbed of their life, land, culture, and — worse — their future.”

During the summit, the organizations a part of the No To APEC Coalition were invited to attend and host workshops. GABRIELA USA and the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) hosted a workshop about garment factory workers in Southeast Asia and South Asia. 

Abbey Irodistan is the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) Northern California Regional Coordinator and the Secretary General for GABRIELA USA. At the workshop she spoke about women working in the harsh conditions of these factories getting paid poverty-level wages, which exemplifies exploitation under capitalism.

“Some of the workers actually sent videos of themselves giving their own personal statements,” said Irodistan in an interview with City on a Hill Press. “They all emphasized in these videos: ‘we’re not going to stop trying to organize unions for the garment workers. We’re not going to stop fighting for our rights as workers.’”

The summit concluded with the issuing of a Unity statement summarizing No To APEC Coalition’s 2023 campaign, titled “People and Planet against Profit and Plunder! Towards a World Beyond Profit-Oriented Systems!” 

This statement rejected APEC’s Golden Gate Declaration, in which its leaders reflected on the years’ theme by making commitments to move towards a more “resilient” and “sustainable” future for all. Within their Unity statement, No to APEC declares that the APEC Conferences “DO NOT represent the interest of the people or the planet.” 

The No To APEC Mobilization

On Nov. 12, a day after the Counter Summit, around 10,000 people attended the No To APEC Coalition’s mass mobilization. 

The march extended from the Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco’s Financial District to the Moscone Center in its SoMa District, where the APEC Conference was being held. Member organizations in the march were ordered to create maximum impact.

“The organizations were split into these different sectors to highlight the specific issues that they are fighting for against APEC,” said Edith de la Paz, a member organizer at Starbucks Workers United and the ILPS Bay Area Coordinator. “It also helped create a little bit of organized chaos in the mobilization, because you could have these organizations meet and internally be able to keep their contingent tight.”

The sectors (in order of release): the National Liberation Organizations, the San Francisco local organizations and Labor Organizations, the Migrant Organizations, the Women Organizations; the Climate Organizations, the Anti-Militarization Organizations, and the Youth and Students Organizations.

Members of these sectors highlighted reasons why they oppose APEC, both in general and in regards to their specific organizations.

“The very foundation on which APEC stands is one that relies on the exploitation of people,” said Tabitha Ponciano of the Malaya Movement USA. “If they continue to platform a fascist dictator [President Marcos Jr.] that is implementing the killings of innocent people, and the arrests of activists like myself in the Philippines, then what does that say about APEC as a whole?”

This article was published as part of a backlog of content from December 2023.