💛Its been almost 6 years since Liyang’s founding! We wanted to reintroduce ourselves and our campaign work.
🦋Our ongoing Defend the Defenders, Education is a Right, and Climate Justice campaigns respond to ongoing struggles of communities and organizations in Mindanao, Philippines. As communities continue to fight for self-determination and justice, we continue our mission to amplify the calls to action from these frontline environmental and human rights defenders.
🪁Swipe through to learn more about our campaign framework, efforts on the ground, and a few ways you can support!
✊🏽LONG LIVE Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay: 1930s – November 20, 2023
Liyang Network offers our highest tribute to Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay. On the afternoon of November 20, 2023, Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay passed away while surrounded by loved ones. As she requested prior, she was buried soon after passing. Although her body is now laid to rest, her courageous spirit and lasting legacy live on through our struggle.
Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay’s lifetime of strength, sacrifice, building collective unity and of unwavering commitment live on through generations of us in the Philippines and around the world who will continue the struggle!
WHO IS BAI BIBYAON LIGKAYAN BIGKAY?
Bai was a Matigsalug-Manobo leader born in the Pantaron Mountain Range in Natulinan, Talaingod, Mindanao sometime in the 1930s. She is the first and only woman chieftain of her tribe, the Talaingod Manobo of Mindanao. She is most well-known for uniting Lumad tribes across Pantaron Mountain Range, to wage ‘pangayaw’ (traditional tribal warfare for self-defense) which successfully drove out the illegal operations of big logging firm Alcantara and Sons from Lumad ancestral lands in 1994.
This victorious act of defense was just one milestone in her lifelong commitment to liberation and unity with all sectors in the Philippines who experience interrelated oppression. She was part of the assembly which in 1986 established ‘Lumad’ as the collective identity term of the 18 Indigenous tribes of Mindanao, in the face of attempted ethnocide by the Marcos dictatorship.
Bai went on to help found the Salugpungan Ta Tanu Igkanugon council, helping establish 50 Lumad schools which provided a new generation of Lumad with formal education. The curriculum better enabled them to defend their lands and serve their communities. In 2003, she founded Sabokahan To Mo Kamalitan (@sabokahan ) an organization for Lumad women, to better develop their capacity to combat feudal-patriarchal practices and displacement of their communities and continue their fight for self-determination.
**Continued in comments
or at
tinyurl.com/LiyangTributeBai **
May 15th is Nakba Day, commemorating the Nakba or “catastrophe,” when over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced through settler terrorism following the 1948 declaration of the state of Israel.
🚨Today, the Palestinian people continue to struggle for their homeland against ongoing military occupation, settler-violence, ethnic-cleansing, and genocide, inspiring people throughout the world to take up calls for a free Palestine.
▪️This month, we’ll be sharing reflections from a Liyang member who joined Eyewitness Palestine on a ten day immersion throughout Jerusalem and the West Bank. From activists, researchers, artists, and everyday Palestinians, they learned firsthand about life under occupation there and made connections between the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the struggles of environmental and human rights defenders in the Philippines.
#freepalestine #endtheoccupation #endimperialistwars
This May Day 2026, Liyang Network highlights the impacts of the US militarism and the US-Israel war in Iran on everyday working peoples in the Philippines!
With record high inflation rates and a looming food crisis, we echo the calls to repeal the Oil Deregulation Act and the other neoliberal economic policies that continue to prioritize corporate profit over the livelihood of the Filipino people.
While everyday Filipinos suffer some of the highest costs of the fuel crisis, corporations continue to get richer. Meanwhile, the U.S. seeks to expand their military presence in the Philippines through multimillion contracts that provide no benefit to its own people.
People over profit!
P1200 Wage Now!
Repeal the Oil Deregulation Act!
Cut the excise and VAT taxes on oil!
Cancel Balikatan!
Justice for Negros 19!
Resist the Terrorist US-Marcos Jr. Regime!
Liyang Network condemns the brutal attack against the Toboso 19!
On April 19, 2026, the 79th Infantry Batallion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines forcibly displaced 650+ civilians and killed 19 people through indiscriminate firings and aerial strafing in and around Toboso, Negros Occidental.
We echo the calls of human rights organizations and advocacy groups throughout the Philippines and the world exposing the AFP’s crimes against civilians, demanding an independent investigation of the massacre, and calling for an end to the indiscriminate attacks against human rights and environmental defenders!
We urge our supporters to join in demanding justice for activists and journalists Kai, Lyle, Errol, Maureen, RJ, and Alyssa, community members, Roel, Jemina, and Dexter, and the rest of the Toboso 19!
As the Philippine government uses fascist tools like the NTF-ELCAC to vilify activism and justify their crimes, we must continue to assert the people’s right to organize and struggle to change their conditions! The murder of civilians is unjustifiable. Activism is not a crime!
Uphold International Humanitarian Law!
Today marks the 4-year anniversary of New Bataan 5 Massacre where our lumad school teachers Chad Booc and Jurain Nguho, community health worker and their two accompanying drivers Tirso Añar and Robert Aragon were massacred by the 10th Infantry Division of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in New Bataan, Maco, Davao del Norte on February 24, 2022.
Justice for New Bataan 5!
Education is a Right!
Defend Ancestral Lands!
#DefendAncestralLands
#LumadSchools
#lahatngsangkotmanagot
#JusticeforNewBataan5Massacre
Bandcamp Friday is this Friday, February 6th — and we have a limited number of LY003: Weaving CDs available on our Bandcamp. ❀ Don’t miss your chance to grab a copy!
The special two-disc CD set features WARP and WEFT discs in a jewel case, with cover and design by @saizami ❀ The central form on the cover is an abstracted Tinampuso, an Agusan Manobo embroidery motif for community. Each stitch lifted and flickering along waxy blooms of hoya, nestled in the Pantaron Range.
The mixtape is also available as a digital album. Link in bio.
All proceeds of this mixtape go to Liyang Network’s ongoing work to sustain those on the frontlines of land, environmental, and human rights defense in Mindanao, Philippines. Liyang Network’s campaigns expand access to education among disenfranchised youth; advocate for political prisoners and persecuted activists; provide aid in the wake of climate catastrophes; and support the organizing work of those most affected by corporate plunder of water and land in Mindanao.
‼️Release Chantal‼️Filipino-American Activist held in custody by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
On Jan 1, the Armed Forces of the Philippines violated international humanitarian law by indiscriminately bombing and strafing a community in Occidental Mindoro. The attack led to the death of three Mangyan (Indigenous) children and integrating student researcher Jerlyn Rose Doydora, as well as the displacement of 188 families.
Chantal Anicoche, a 25 year old Fil-Am activist from Maryland was integrating with indigenous Mangyan communities in the area. As an international advocacy network supporting the calls to action of environmental, Indigenous and human rights defenders in Mindanao, we commend Chantal’s example of going to the Philippines to learn directly from Mangyan communities who face similar issues of extractive mining and destructive renewable energy projects. We decry the violent targeting of the Mindoro people by the AFP for their resistance to these extractive projects.
Liyang Network joins the demands for the immediate release of Chantal Anicoche and her safe return home. Please sign and circulate the petition below organized by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP-US), Malaya Movement USA, and the Philippines Human Rights Act Coalition to help build international pressure.
/petitions/surface-chantal-anicoche/.
Release Chantal Anicoche!
Justice for the victims of the Cabacao Massacre!
Stop the bombings! AFP out of Abra de Ilog!
Defend Mindoro!
This past summer, Liyang Network partnered with Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation, Inc. (MISFI), to help program a psycho-social focused day of activities with our collegiate level scholars as part of our ongoing Education is a Right! Campaign.
The main activity of the program was centered around around a “Roots to Fruits” activity in which the scholars drew their own personal tree or plant, with the roots representing where they came from and what shaped them, the stems and trunk representing what they are currently working on, and the fruits and flowers representing what they want to bring into the world in the future.
Through the Roots to Fruits activity, Liyang Network members were able to learn a lot about the scholars’ backgrounds and future plans, and helped facilitate small group discussions where both the facilitators and scholars could connect over what they shared with each other.
Thank you to all who have contributed to our Education is a Right! Campaign! Stay tuned for more ways to plug in and support our scholars as part of this ongoing campaign.
At long last, the latest installment in our mixtape series ‘LY003: Weaving’ is out today on digital and in a special two disc-CD format – WARP and WEFT – grab a copy at our Bandcamp! The mixtape is also available for digital purchase on Nina and streamable on YouTube and SoundCloud.
Featuring over two dozen incredible artists, this mixtape is centered around the theme of Weaving – calling to mind iterations on traditional forms, material exploration, and layers across time, labor and place. Liyang is the Manobo word for a traditional woven basket made from abaca, rattan and bamboo. It is a symbol of the collective struggles we carry together.
All proceeds from this mixtape go to Liyang Network’s ongoing work to sustain those on the frontlines of land, environmental, and human rights defense in Mindanao, Philippines. Liyang Network’s campaigns support the education for children of activists; advocate for political prisoners and persecuted activists; provide aid in the wake of climate catastrophes; and fortify the organizing work of those most affected by corporate plunder of water and land in Mindanao.
This mixtape is dedicated to the memory of Lawu. Through their personal advocacy and creative collaboration with dagger wound as Mirrored Fatality, they used their art and talents to interweave struggles against displacement, militarization, and state violence in the Philippines and abroad. They remain an exemplary force for us in practicing solidarity and using each day to envision and support the creation of a better world.
For those in the Los Angeles area, we’ll have physical CDs available for purchase at our Winter Market this Sunday, December 7th at the Harriet Tubman Center from 11am-5pm.
Artwork by @saizami
Liyang Network, in partnership with Sabokahan and other partner organizations on the ground, conducted a recent earthquake relief mission for the Mandaya-Lumad communities affected by the October 10th earthquakes. As a result of our fundraising, we were able to pack and distribute relief goods to the rural communities who were living in the epicenter of the recent climate disaster.
This relief mission was just one part of our ongoing climate justice campaign working to help the communities in the Philippines who are among the most impacted by the constant state of climate calamity.
If you are interested in supporting, there is information on our last slide or share this post!
