For my Leadership in Action, I have been working closely with Kabataan Alliance’s Northeast chapter. Kabataan Alliance is a Filipino organization dedicated to educate ourselves as Filipino youth as well as others outside of the community about our culture, history, and pressing issues surrounding our community, both at home and abroad. In honor of Philippine Independence Day last Thursday, I will be spending three posts overseeing  the first stage of my LiA as a part of Kabataan’s planning team to march during PIDC, or the Philippine Independence Day Parade in New York. Our theme surrounded the future of the Philippines and what our contingent envisioned for that future. Theme for the 2025 parade was “Embrace and Preserve Our Culture by Uniting and Empowering the Future.” Our first week consisted of meetings figuring out the cause for our contingent. When facing a group of people, what would you want to tell them? In a world with so much hate, turmoil, and fear, how will you use your voice? I had never marched in a parade before. However, as a Black-Filipina I was always taught the importance of voice, of using your means to fight injustice. These thoughts and emotions led to me working with the team on choosing our slogan for the contingent: “Money for Jobs and Education, Not for War and Deportation.” Filipinos are being threatened daily by ICE raids, many of whom have been wrongfully detained in the past few months. Our communities have since then been living in fear, educating themselves on their rights, and fighting for those who were taken. Not only that, but the Filipino government has been advocating for historical revisionism regarding the dictatorship run by Ferdinand Marcos. As someone whose mother always taught her about the horrors of growing up under Martial Law, I firmly believed in advocating against historical revisionism and the erasure of Marcos’s crimes. Even more so, as a Black woman, I have witnessed the effects of historical revisionism in the United States surrounding Black history. If I could help advocate against clear attempts at erasing my mother’s and many other Filipinos’ experiences, I would. After this theme had been decided, we began our networking campaign. That portion will be discussed in my second post on the development process!