An open letter to the FACC

Dear members and officers of the FACC:

Susan is my name not Silence. 

As a former journalist, I've gotten used to the fact that people either like you or hate you for your work. I chose to believe that many have benefited from my work especially the voiceless.

I am an old-timer who experienced all sorts of “hate remarks”, threats and ad boycotts to my program during the course of my career.  I'm no troublemaker, I don't go looking for trouble. 

I settle things, I mediate but I don't back down from any fight I believe is worth pursuing. When I arrived here in the US, I didn't expect that I would also experience vicious attacks to my person since I believed that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, where speaking out is not only allowed but encouraged as well.

We are all human beings who get hurt by whatever is spoken out or written against us. As a former journalist, I've been on the receiving end of attacks or “violent responses” from people who were hurt by what I wrote or spoke about them.

I know they got hurt and as a fellow human being I have feelings too but I won't let sentimentality and friendships get in the way of doing my work.

Right now, I am not happy when people or members of the organization would ramble because of an OPINION I wrote. “There are so many friendships and trusts that had been broken because of your current article. I hope that's nothing to be proud of,” was one such message I received. 

If anything I exercised my freedom of speech. Who was it who said “I would rather have a bad press than no press at all.” “Life would to be boring and boredom is a sin,” was one other saying I've learned about relating to freedom of expression.

To anyone reading this, I apologize if what I am posting today is long winded but I have to lay down my background first to help you understand where I'm coming from in light of the attacks against me. 

Trust me this is not Writing 101. Just read on. When I left the Philippines six years ago, I left both careers in journalism and teaching that touched a lot of colleagues back there.

One fellow practitioner is Maricel Casino-Rivera, a former broadcast journalist who is now City Information Officer of Cagayan de Oro City Hall. 

Her post in my own Facebook page reads thus: Hi ma'am San, so proud of you and of what you have become. We were together in the media years back but before I entered d media community, I have already known madame Susan Naelga P. Dennis as one of the fearless, independent and respected broadcasters in Cagayan de Oro City...she was a mentor to many budding journalists then.” 

“Anyone here who has been trained by Ma'am Susan would still remember how conscious she is of her integrity and credibility as a media person......even politicians, community leaders, high ranking officials in the military and law enforcment agencies regard her with respect that many journalists envy for it is something not easily earned.”

Okay, now let me proceed. Arriving in Charlotte, I looked for churches and libraries and then newspapers, since I used to work for one back home. I found some one page newsletters at the Food Lion and Harris Teeter until I finally found Asian Herald, a monthly publication. 

I finally met Dr. Nini who recommended me  to Asian Herald and I wrote for them for about a year until I stopped since I was maintaining a blog already.  

It was during the term of Florami Lao Cordero-Lee, past president of the Fil-American Community of the Carolinas (FACC) that I started writing about the events being held by the group and I branched out to writing about Fil-Americans in the North Carolina community and about issues and events concerning my home country and the US. 

I maintained a weekly column in Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro Publications and my blogs in Google (Blogger.com) and Bloghernetwork.com. I write for free though I do get a dime or two if anyone bothered to click on the Google Ads.

So my writing about the past activities of FACC and its current state of affairs is not new. I post my writings on the FACC group even if many of my friends are not members of FACC. 

Last night with some IT assistance I checked on the FACC page, a closed group composed of 688 members and seven administrators. They are all friends or acquaintances but I am surprised that there's no administrator from last year's board of directors or the newly installed interim BOD.   

Now on to current FACC issues which have turned me into a target of attacks. The December 5, 2015 election raised some issues which I am convinced should be written about so that FACC members may know about it. 

There were so many questions that came out after that any journalist with hard earned experience in the street would really love to do a follow-up. 

This second piece which is actually an “opinion” and is not, I would like to stress, a news story has sparked a firestorm of controversy of sorts in the FACC circle. 

Many or if not all of them are educated and they know the difference between a news story and an opinion. Writing my opinion doesn't necessarily mean I have to get your side because it is my opinion.  

I posted the second piece that I wrote on the FACC page after a long answer or comment from one of the FACC founding fathers, Wally Penilla. 

I happened to know that my post was deleted/taken out/removed because someone asked me that she could not find the post. I told her that it was there,  just scroll. She later told me that the “attachment is not available.”

I went to the page and true enough, I saw that the “attachment is not available.” I also checked my own Facebook Profile page and my Straight from the Carolinas page to see if the blog was there. The post is still there until now. 

Now I am being accused of having deleted or removed my own post. Excuse me, I didn't remove or delete it. I don't care how they came out with that accusation, I am no IT expert.

That said, I can post my own blog and share it since it doesn't require that much expertise. Again I must stress that I did not remove or delete it. Why should I? I want the FACC members to know what is happening to them so they can form their own opinions too. 

They may not agree with my opinion but at least they can have one or two. Second point is that my piece is still posted in my Blogger.com blog. The link is not broken nor moved to another folder as suggested by an IT expert I knew.

But here is the kicker and it is sad for me to say it but I have to do it. 

Hours before my post was removed from the FACC Facebook page, a former FACC president requested me to just delete it because she is a member of the FACC Advisory Council which I described as “pathetic.”

She said she was hurt by the comment and explained that it was damaging to the FACC. It would drive away other Fil-Americans out of the group and discourage others from joining.

Much as I respect her sentiments, I told her I cannot do it. But I told them that I can follow it up by sitting down with them and letting whoever wants to answer the questions I raised about the FACC election.

I quote her verbatim: “Hi Susan, I know I've been so quiet and have not posted anything but I'm one of the advisory council that you're referring in your blog. We had the meeting and since this organization was founded by just a few and now became the advisory council and that includes me. I would like to ask you for the sake of the community to remove your posting, it will just damaging the integrity of FACC. ..thank you.”

She might have good intentions to resolve the issues but giving in to her request would run against everything I believed in as a journalist which is to expose the truth for the sake of public interest or in this case the interest of the whole FACC membership. 

Dare I say it, the request was tantamount to censorship which is anathema to my sensibilities as a former journalist and as a person. I had no idea what happened to my controversial post at the FACC page when I haven't experienced anything like it since I started blogging.

It is strange indeed. But now I am being schooled, lectured and told about putting the interests of a group of officials above anything else, even the truth. Please don't do that to me, don’t insult my intelligence.

Maria Weezorak's post at the FACC page explains what may have happened to the post and I am quoting it. “Post and link/attachment are totally different. Removing post and reporting a link are totally different. A post can be removed by the user and admin only (and FB of course).”

“Links and attachments are controlled by a user (person who posts it), by FB authority and by the blog/website host. But once it is reported as an offensive material and FB thinks it is a violation of Community Standards, then the "particular" link will be broken. Note: The original blog/or material will still be available at the original location.”

As someone familiar with online social media, I know what a post and a link are. But I don’t know how and why the link to my post was broken. I suspect that it is a diversionary tactic meant to cloud the election issues hounding the FACC leadership.

I want to use the right words in describing whoever made the decision to delete my post. "Good writing is the hardest form of thinking." It involves lucid, crystal clear thinking and conveying these thoughts into language that is both visible and resonant to the reader. 

 I want you, the reader, to feel what I write. My choice of the word “pathetic” means sad, deplorable, wanting. 

I used it to describe the current election troubles at the FACC. There is no malice or bad faith in my choice of words. I was not writing a praise release. Does it hurt because it is true? 

If it did, then too bad. According to Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton there are no band-aids for hurt feelings. My answer to all these accusations and complaints against me for my controversial post and link: Quo Vadis, FACC.

(Susan Palmes-Dennis is a veteran journalist from Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental, Northern Mindanao in the Philippines who worked as a nanny and is now employed as a sub-teacher and a part-time teacher assistant in one of the school systems in the Carolinas.

Read her blogs on susanpalmesstraightfrom the Carolinas.com and at http://www.blogher.com/myprofile/spdennis54. These and other articles also appear at http://www.sunstar.com.ph/author/2582/susan-palmes-dennis.

You can also connect with her through her email susanap.dennis@yahoo.com as well as her Pinterest account at http://www.pinterest.com/pin/41025046580074350/) and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Straight-from-the-Carolinas-/494156950678063)