i'm terry mast the national secretary treasurer of the m one but once union the marine division of the isle wu for it began i just want to acknowledge these sailors tribes whose ancestry a lands we stand on tonight and to pay respect to their elders five past and present it's symbolic that we are here in the labor temple where many of you gathered with some of you many of you in this room tonight were here with us then at that memorial and so i'm thankful that you are still here with us tonight and rode that wave of justice to find justice for the murders of jean and so me i want to thank especially mike with the for bringing us together tonight for writing the book that he did house because we all know that workers stories and activists stories are never told often enough and it's important that we document our own history to share our lessons especially given the political climate in our country that we face right now today and its impact on the world hundred one jean and sell me were murdered in our union hall style wu local thirty seven i'm not going to assume that everyone knows the story or were there with us so who were they and what was it that they were doing in their work that brought them to the attention of the u s government and the marcos dictatorship well they were like many of you in this room working class young men politically involved to fight the injustices that they saw before them they were trade unionist reformers within their union i'll give you you local thirty seven they were social justice activists both in the filipino community and in the broader community they were internationalists fighting against the marcos dictatorship in the philippines all of this brought them and our movement in the spotlight and they were murdered for it so may think that this kind of thing doesn't happen and we heard that in the beginning that this doesn't happen here in the u s trade unionists aren't murdered here activists aren't murdered here not in the u s that happens in colombia mexico and the philippines middle east doesn't happen here and not only was our u s government complicit in it but it happened by a foreign government after the murders our justice efforts went immediately into effect bringing the hit men to trial brousseau to trial and the philippine government marcos to trial and to justice tonight you will hear from speakers who were either a part of our justice efforts they were either a played a role in our legal team and our labor team in our community teams that all helped to bring the movement to success they were important in our work and mike's book spells out a lot of that the justice efforts and what it took to get us to this point many of you were impacted if not directly involved in our work were impacted by the work that we did and though mike's book is intriguing and it reads like a spy novel it is our story our collective story our movements have been infiltrated spied on harassed and torn apart by our government by the right wing and this is not something new but it is something that all of us need to continue to expose and to fight and to protect our democratic right our justice efforts were long and intense and many of you here to get us through our committee for justice was incredible it's like nothing i have ever witnessed before or s here tonight to help launch mike's book we're very proud of my for doing that and i know it took a lot of emotion a lot of heart a lot of work to accomplish this book summary execution in the k t p in the line of march and in the labor movement we promised that sammy and gene's name would never be forgotten and the work that they did i would never be forgotten and today shows thirty seven years later that they have not been forgotten are present in this room they are present here today to the many people that believed in our struggle for justice all those years they are here in the many people who participated in that struggle for justice that we took up even before selami took his last breath at harborview hospital so many years ago in one thousand nine hundred one and as terry said it's hard to believe that it's been thirty five thirty seven years since they died and even though i have spoken countless many times throughout the world about the courage of sammy and and our movement we built you can see it's still difficult i started to read mike's book on the bus when day and before i could finish the introduction i had to close it before the tears fell down my face you know mike always had the day to remember every detail of the case every detail of the summer some of the things in that book are not quite true i believe everything in there but he had the ability to remember many many details that many of us skimmed over but that was his job as a lawyer as investigator and to be able to write them on paper and remember what happened exactly on june first it was too real that day as i was writing on the bus and so every conversation the mood what happened in those days on june first and after it were too real for me you know it's always been my wish that i could stand before you and say that we held everybody accountable that was responsible for sound and through our painstaking work through our analysis that peel back the layers of the murder conspiracy year after year over ten years so most are broad popular front that carried us through very difficult times and are committed insightful legal and political organizing team from the line of march we've won a landmark case that serves as a warning to those that threaten to violate our democratic rights around the world we won that victory with all of your support and with many supporters throughout the world but as our work for seated and even though we won that major victory we knew that our work remained unfinished because the u s government and u s intelligence agencies were given protection and escape being held accountable all these years but mike is going to tell you that we have taken up the lead and we will pursue just as we promised at the very beginning that we would hold everyone accountable but most of all terry says he's not in charge he always thought he was in charge but we were in charge but most of all i wish i could stand up here and tell you that democracy was strong and vibrant in the philippines but as you all know that's not true we held much promise for the fledgling democracy that came as a result of the great courage of the filipino people during the one nine hundred eighty six people's power movement that peacefully overthrew the marcos dictatorship it was an event that the whole world watched and one that we in the united states took great pride in because we had organized for twelve years to end u s support for the dictatorship that is what sound me and jean sacrificed their lives for and that is what we were building a movement for today there are those that would diminish that police peaceful movement that did not lead to lasting democracy and a radical change in philippine society but it was a testament to the fourteen years of organizing that the philippine movement had done and the thousands of lives that were lost including soundly and but any democracy coming out of years of victory dictatorship is fragile in a world that stahmann aided by imperialism and corporate greed that has no limits we see that here in the united states as well as in the philippines and other parts of the world so thirty two years later after the institutions of democracy a congress free elections free press a right to speech all of those institutions of democracy were reinstituted in the philippines after the overthrow  dictatorship the election of president rhodri go to terror has thrown the philippines into the worst crisis ever under two territories war on drugs over fifteen thousand people have been killed through extra judicial killings these are the poor people who have been targeted and blamed for the inequalities in philippine society elected and appointed officials mainly outspoken women are thrown in prison without judicial proceedings sen laila de lima with has been in jail for one year on trumped up drug charges without a trial congress women are subjected to slut shaming by the president and face with organized campaigns led by men in congress to remove them from office after they were democratically elected such priem court justices both women facing fierce campaigns to remove them so that the president can move toward a federalist government that will allow do charity to stay in office for another ten years while a federalist government has set up a legal martial law where there will be no elections for ten years while they move to federalism and in mindanao in the southern philippines in morrow we city anti terrorist war has resulted in over seventy thousand people displaced and hundreds killed as the city has been bombed becoming the longest urban battle of philippines recent history today the area still under martial law a martial law that rodrigue owed to territory has said he may spread throughout the philippines and recently the most respected news outlet who has dared to but what is most worrisome is that has an approval rate of eighty six percent of its population amongst filipinos under marcos the support was way less and dwindling over the years but under territory the opposition may grow but it's still very weak and fledgling the left movement led by the communist party who once supported the election of two territory and engaged in peace talks has now become the target of a six hundred hit list of want to terrorists we here in the united states and in and the international human rights will play a most important role in exposing the undemocratic and fascist tendencies of the deter take government and luckily for the philippines there is no love lost between trump and two territory u s filipino u s philippine relations has change it is no longer the us propped up to tear to it is to tear to himself no everything that happens not everything happens revolves around us policy in the philippines anymore but neil fascism is on the rise around the world and we who continue to work for  participatory democracy must continue to press and organize true solidarity with the filipino people gene and sound we gave their lives for that and we will continue to do so in the future was always our wish that they would understand that sally and jean gave their lives to overthrow the marcos dictatorship and to see the philippines free in two thousand and eleven we traveled the families of who are both here tonight we traveled to their names on the wall of martyrs the first filipino americans to be added who gave their lives to overthrow the and last month over two hundred people came to hear about the contributions of sell me and sheen and in the struggle for justice and and in the future we will be naming a room in honor of s d at the filipino community center a place where we originally had not been welcomed but now they are welcoming a room that will be named in honor sounding domingo and  times have changed and now we all recognize the world recognizes the contributions of our movement in selma and jean and we honor them in continuing the struggle for democracy in the philippines and we hope you will continue to support us thank you cindy our next speaker is sharon to make o santos one of our favorite legislators and sharon's husband bob santos was very close to us and was a very key part of the committee for justice in fact langkow were the first co chairs of the committee for justice so sharon is going to share a few words thank you all very much and i will have to say that just when i sat down in my proper chair mike whispered to me five minutes rate so we will keep this  moment that we are experiencing right now by invoking some words of somebody whose writing i care very very deeply about and i'd like to invoke these words in a couple of places but i will beg by remembering the reason that we are here and it's this book and i found inspiration in the words of carlos bull of son who wrote yes i will be a writer and to make all of you live again in my words so mike thank you you make the lives of  as they will always live in the hearts of the family and the members of the community here i'm very honored to stand here before you not only to pay tribute to the work of the committee for justice for domingo in fairness but might also asked me and i'm deeply honored to represent bob here today so i'm going to just start with a few remembrances of bob  because what i think he would really want me to do is talk about the committee and so the first thing you all need to know is up until his last days bob was anxious anxious for this book to be published he would always ask about this book and before and i told this to mike and it might come as a surprise to many of you because if you ever worked with him or received a note from him you would know that he was a horrific speller but you wouldn't know this because he was but that he was a  and i think that this was one of the reasons that he was a great storyteller i think another reason that he was a great storyteller is because he wrote about the people and the things that he loved and you'll who knew him know that this is true he loved young people and he wanted them to know and love their communities and through that to come to love themselves and their history and that's why he was so moved when he went to the philippines the first and only time  that bob ever went to the philippines the most memorable moment was not necessarily when he was given a presidential citation but when he went to the hall to the wall of m and he could not speak for the rest of that day so mike asked me to spend just a minute or two to describe who took up the cause and this is what i think bob would tell us that they were they killed this in common they were pulled together by tragedy clearly but the other thing that was interesting was that more often than not we're talking about young people young people who are fuel by prince a pulled ideals were they afraid yes but as somebody once told the story i think of terry who in the face of having to stand in front of the older generation and to bring them  o admit that they had to make room she was fueled mostly by her anger to stand up and speak defiantly but respectfully to her elders and it's this anger that was propelled both by their unvarnished eyesight of what was going on in the world in the twin serpents of anti labor and anti democratic tyranny that they were seeing unfold right here on the streets of seattle it motivated people like cindy elaine david alonzo emilie rich emma lyn john terry andy and so many more young people fueled by vision powered by heart and prompted by the need for action i hope you're seeing some parallels in what i'm trying to describe here they were joined though by courage are part of this movement to bring back to our senses the need for strong labor and strong democratic action it's good to see you and yes we're a little older a little grayer well naturally gr and battle worn but these are badges of courage because you have kept up the work you have kept up the vision you have kept up the energy you have kept up the momentum and you have so honored not the legacy for justice for domingo and bitterness but the legacy of justice of domingo and you do that every day with your work inspiring the next generation of people and so i will close before i get kicked off with two statements one because i have to use bob's words and so i'm going to read from his book where he talks about the impact of this and then i will close with one more statement he talks not only about the murders and the committee for justice but then he talked about the all important boards cove lawsuit that was started by sell me and gene and others and all of you who kept up that momentum he says regardless the wards coke case and other camry lawsuits gave me personal satisfaction that the discrimination we felt as young filipino cannery workers in the early one nine hundred fifty s was finally going to be addressed the shame of being a lowly fish house slimer gave way to pride as those younger than me fought to end discrimination in the seafood industry many of our dad uncles and friends took for granted the intolerable conditions we lived under until young activists like sell me jean david and the others took a stand in memory of the young activists both who are here with us still today maybe not so young and those who have gone on ahead i will also close with the words of carlos sleep peacefully for your labors are done your paintings are turned into tables and song thank you  and bob would be so proud to be here tonight we're sorry he didn't get to read the book but he knew it was in the works so i'm honored to introduce our next speaker our mayor we're so proud to have her and know that she will carry on the progressive legacy of seattle and you know as much as seattle is a becoming a bigger city we still are small in a lot of ways because we're still have a lot of connections that we don't always realize but we do have a lot of connections and jenny is connected to us because she worked in a law firm one of our attorneys who worked on our  so she's been close to our case and has followed it through the years and also has been very supportive mayor terry thank you so much for that and cindy i'm sorry it's the one labor movement thing that started on time or lotsof or that we are getting older it is such an honor and and and really i want to say a pleasure but meaningful to be here tonight and to be part of this and to be able to be the person that introduces the next speaker jeff robinson but before i do that i just want to say a couple things about the two women to my right and i think it is important for the time we live in because we live in very challenging times but nights like tonight are a good time to remember in mike's book is a good thing to remind us that we have lived through troubling times before we have lived through fights we have lived through revolutions we have soldiered on and the brutal murders that were experienced by this community they killed the men but they only empowered the message and these two women here in so many ways every day in this community have made it a better place they have made sure that the message lived on that the people they loved could not really be silenced and that they were as powerful if not more powerful and being able to work i was law partners with both mike with the n g s robinson what more can a woman want you know we talk a lot about opportunity and privilege when i was in law school in about to graduate in one thousand nine hundred eighty five i was a little bit demoralized because i thought that law school was going to be this graduate school justice and it wasn't and then i went to do in internship at the public defender's office in my third year to see if i could really represent people and do things for people and the luckiest day in my life is when someone walked me down the hall of the smith tower and said i want you to meet the person you're going to try one of your first cases with and it was this guy right here jeff robins and that changed the trajectory of my life i met one of my closest friends don't look at me i'm going to cry the man who literally would be the first to hold my partner's and a child because he was at the hospital within an hour of him being born went on to be his godfather in from a person who i learned so much every day and you picked well in your lawyers mike jeff together amazing d and there is no more a fierce advocate for justice than jeffrey robinson his the life is a testament to justice and it doesn't surprise me we were talking about how funny it was that here i am mayor after all the things we did and he's running the a c l u center about justice and we're thinking how did that happen for me it's actually more curious than it is for him here because he was destined he was destined to be there to be that voice he was always been a fierce advocate his life is full of so many firsts it's on believe a ball you know our federal court here was the first to make sure watch a video on implicit bias as part of their selection the person who did it who put it together who started it right here jeff robinson he exemplifies justice and everything he does and that's what we're here to remember the labor movement pushed forward for everybody for everybody to raise people up and people tried to stop them every way they could and we remember that they used the most violent tactics possible but they never will vanquish the idea we have lived through worse times we will live through these times we will carry on we will watch the young people who stand up against gun violence and we will empower them we will and we will listen and learn from the people here and from the people outside this rooms and we will join arms together to say not now not ever we demand justice and with that i give you jeff robinson the crusader for justice at i'm going to share one thing the night jenny was elected her sister came up to me and said jeff the dog finally caught the car so there are first i just want to say that seeing the faces in this room is almost overwhelming and i expected that this room would be packed and it is and so i'm not surprised but i sure am pleased and like everybody else mike i just want to thank you for a labor of love wherever you are because writing this book it was a long time coming but it's something that you had to do you said back in eighty nine that you had to do it and you've done it and so congratulations so there are three things that i'd like to share with you tonight the first one is that in my current job i am a deputy legal director of the national a c l u and the a c l u is involved in social justice litigation in all kinds of areas all over this country and one of the things that is so important at the a c l u today is the recognition that you cannot be involved in a social justice movement that is not led and informed by the people who are impacted by the in the just years like nothing about us without us and as i arrived at the a c l u and people started talking about this and i started talking about it people like well jeff you're a criminal defense lawyer why are you thinking these things what part of your practice would have led you to understand this and i told people oh i understood this back when i was a young lawyer because while mike may have thought he was in charge i knew who was in charge and it took about three or four months after i started working on this case for me to be able to talk to terry and cindy in kind of an appropriate way because i was scared shitless of them and it was clear to me who was running the show being involved in this trial is one of the proudest moments of my life but let's be clear this case was won by the committee for justice the lawyers  so one of the things that i learned from this trial one of the things that i learned and that is incredibly important in my work today is that community involvement in any social justice movement is critical and so that's a lesson that these two women taught me the second thing i want to say is that i had been out of law school for eight years when i tried this case when i came to s mark and bender i remember kind of crawling towards mike's office and saying in a plaintive voice could i like to carry some bodies briefcase in this trial can i like do some research or can i just do something because it seems so compelling and the confidence that mike and the legal team and cindy and terry and the committee showed in me was life changing to this day there is nothing i've done as a lawyer that i am more proud of and the additional lesson that i was taught was how to value the voice and the opinions of people much younger than me and people much less quote unquote experienced than me because i was given the privilege of having a speaking role in this case and there are many people who have come to me and said how did they let you do that you were way too young and i said it was because they had confidence in me and i will never forget that thank you a final thing that i want to say and actually it's going to be part a and b because i can't leave this out after the trial there was an event in oakland california and a bunch of us blew down for that event and back at this time i had a pathological fear of flying on airplanes and as we got on the airplane in oakland to come back to seattle the weather was kind of rough and i'm saying to myself and i guess i was saying it out loud man i'm really nervous about this i don't feel good about this and as we got on the plane and flew back it was really rough we were bumping around in the air and as i'm sitting there literally turning white in my and i guess part b of the last thing i want to say is that i got out of law school in one nine hundred eighty one on june first one nine hundred eighty one i was on my way across the country from memphis tennessee to seattle i never met so many domingo or jing barons i never laid eyes on them i never had the privilege of getting to talk to them to understand what they were about and i can say is this thirty seven years after their death they filled this room i don't think you need to know about who they were and the importance of their work how many of us will be able to fill a room thirty seven years after argo i didn't get to know them personally but they have had an impact on my life as has this committee thank you very much for being so one thing i wanted to mention was about three weeks ago i was able to stand with the u s attorney the head of the f b i here and others to recognize tom wales who had been murdered in this community and we talked about the importance that some deaths have on the community how they ripped the heart of the community and resolution of those is more critical not that every death doesn't matter but some rip at the fabric than others these were those deaths these were those murders and so i know there is a petition to ask the f b i for all the information to be disclosed and i was able to call the head of the i here today to tell him that was the right thing to do that we need to have full transparency  we need to let people know what happened so we don't make the same sake's and so we can have some closure and some and so that's was it all right without further ado as my privilege an honor to introduce mike with  you know my mike was not just our lawyer he was our friend he was our comrade and he was solid from day one from the minute the murders happened mike was there at the hospital asking questions listening watching and plotting and he continued to do that every step of the way and as cindy  memory me and cindy so i have to you know ask each other is what really happened because you know we can't remember all the facts the way mike does but i'm so happy that mike wrote this ladies and gentlemen of the jury it was made to look like a dispute over dispatch hotheaded filipinos shooting it out in the local union hall vicious no one was supposed to survive that hail of bullets no one would live to tell the gun was an execution piece used for only one thing killing it would be cheap it would be easy it would be over with no one would know and no one would tell but someone did look the first thing these perpetrators didn't count on was  many domingo as this whole life passed before his eyes in the seconds after that hail of bullets something to meno one thing and there's one last thing i must do my life must not be in vain the principles and ideals i fought for are worth living for and dyin that the perpetrators of this foul crime must be brought to justice it was his last wish and we must answer imagining credible courage it took something to mingle to get out of his chair what for forty five caliber bullet holes in to see his best friend jean leading out on the floor next to him to get out into the it was that instant that the murder conspiracy begin to unravel not just for the hit man not just for dick tato and boy people but for those who put him up to it for those who stood in the shadows for those who were covering their tracks but of course it did not rebel by itself the other thing the perpetrators of these murders did not count on was the courage and them as jeff could recall those were the words of my closing argument before the jury i want to take you back to june fifth one thousand nine hundred eighty one in the first local thirty seven meeting after the murders and the rank and file committee think we need think we needed to establish the new  it wasn't easy going back into the union hall we debated go back in so we wanted to let folks know we were back and we weren't going to give the union up to the thugs and the gangsters there was tony bru so even as of june fifth we had strong suspicions that peru so was behind these murders and there in the audience was boy people i have the tucson gang and boise combo their pieces in their pockets here's how he described the scene when bru started the meeting talking about how the union was going to get folks up to be dispatched i'll never forget this so there are those who are claiming the gene and so many were anti marcos i can tell you that president marcos had nothing to do with these murders terry and i looked at each other surprise at that point nobody even talking about markos committed the murder but russo however was still talking we've made changes to make this union stronger and better and we're going to continue to reform this union a thunderous bang hit the table the already tense scene as terri slammed her hand down on the table in front of her and shouted no silence filled the room for a minute and it broke into tumbled boise and pete i reached in for their pieces and i waited for them to pull out their firearms but their hands stayed inside their jackets and terry continued delivering and i will not yet let you stand up here and claim credit for gene and some these years of hard work you fought us every step of the way and we are not going to take this anymore that is the character of the leadership the committee for justice has such is the good feeling determination by terry mas as they were doing the justice efforts and the personal recollections of that day cindy wrote a very moving remembrance of her brother and her struggles it was called the long road to justice that ended with that sentence my only wish now is that mike with the would come to me today and tell me that a piece of damning evidence to surface revealing the u s complicity in the murders without any hesitation i know that mike and i would be ready to organize again and write the final chapter of this book and folks such as the leadership and determination of cindy domingo for thirty seven years in a fight for justice well guess what the day cindy talked about in her book has come last wednesday we went to the f b i office in seattle because this is not coming clean about what they knew about the f i was sharing my city and terry and i went up there and after a while of security measures and cetera et cetera they brought a young young looking down the f b i day agent came down and you read the petition back up until when he asked when were these murders i s hundred eighty one he goes well you know i was three  so i said yeah well look it up and they ask what crime was supposedly committed so he took notes and said oh ok i see so thanks to our recent foia efforts freedom of information and efforts that sharon and i have we now have a lot of information we didn't have before and that we are determined over the next however long it takes i was about to say thirty seven years but since you wouldn't let me do that because the f b i is now covering up to the office seattle offices role in these murders after saying they had fifteen hundred pages they will give them in seven months and they said they had eleven hundred pages will give them in twenty two months now they have twelve hundred seventy six pages but guess what it's all in the seattle office of the f b i related to this informant now they had forty two federal agents f b i agents investigating the domingo various murders you think one of them might have heard about this f b i informant being at the scene of the murders you think one of them may have heard that this guy there and former went in to perjure himself to let the hitman off and let the marcos regime off i think so that's what we're about that's what we're going to do we're going to fight this petition in the courts we're going to fight it in the streets we've got to get to the bottom of these murders because there are questions we have and they need to be answered so many deserves an answer gene variant this deserves an answer to how our government could perpetrate this or in this crime so please sign the petition there's people here with the