1Sambayan: Community pantries show Pinoys' innate kindness

Democratic coalition 1Sambayan on Wednesday expressed support for the community pantry organizers as it slammed the “absurd and insensitive” linking of the initiative to communist rebels.

“We stand by the organizers of these community pantries, and we salute them for their zeal, leadership, and compassion for the Filipino nation,” the 1Sambayan said in a statement.

It issued the remark after the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and the Quezon City Police District posted graphics on their Facebook pages supposedly linking the community pantry to reds.

The 1Sambayan said that the community pantries embodied the innate kindness and the ingenuity of Filipinos.

“Why, then, is it being politicized? Why the clampdown? This is the Filipino people saving the Filipino people. Why ‘profile’ the movement’s progenitors,” it said.

"Is it not because of this government’s absentee leadership that community pantries were born in the first place, out of Filipinos’ beautiful sense of community and compassion?” it later added.

Ana Patricia Non, the Maginhawa community pantry organizer,  has pleaded with the public to not destroy the Bayanihan spirit created by the movement.

“But what does this administration know of community and compassion? In this hour of great desperation, when disease and hunger pose a mortal threat to Filipinos, all it cares about is its pursuit of political objectives, and who knows what else,” it said.

The Maginhawa community pantry resumed distributing and receiving goods on Wednesday after it was forced to temporarily close down on Tuesday due to the allegations.

Meanwhile, the QCPD and has apologized to the community pantry organizers.—Joahna Lei Casilao/LDF, GMA News