Jonvic Remulla said to wear a shirt in public and don’t turn the street into a tambayan. Basic stuff. Civilization-level. And now? He’s the one apologizing. Not the people blocking the road. Him. Incredible. We’re apologizing to the obstruction.

Guy didn’t expose a problem as much as a reaction. Much worse.

“Anti-poor,” they say. Like poverty took their shirt. Anti-poor. Because why should only the rich have places to drink? Unfair. Let the poor have their space too: big space, public. Take the road. Take two lanes. Why not?

Everything is anti-poor now. Even when order actually protects the poor first. The rich have walls. The poor have the street. Fix the street, who wins?

Enforcing order is the only way to give the poor what the rich already buy privately. But I suppose that’s a long sentence, and “anti-poor” is shorter.

Now, you walk into an alley, and suddenly you’re the problem. You’re overdressed. Over-behaved. “Why are you here?”

So anti-poor. Like the rest of us are trespassing through the poor’s living room. Sorry, should’ve knocked. My mistake.

Fine. Let’s go all the way. Really commit. Abolish streets. Get rid of them. Streets are very elitist.

Nobody passes. Why should they? You’re busy? Look at this guy going somewhere. Very arrogant. We don’t like that. You think you’re busier than us? That’s the attitude now? No, sit down. Stay. Tagay. The road is a community experience. Too much passing. Very offensive. Unequal. Some people moving, some people not, how is that pro-poor?

You want to feel important? Don’t build something. Block something. Much faster.

Disorder is a subsidy paid for by the compliant. Only takes a few people to block a road. It takes everyone else to quietly accept it. Instead of feeling angry, you feel adjusted. To act like a guest in your own city. You lower your voice, squeeze, you nod; adjustment means you accepted it even if you didn’t agree.

“That’s the way we are.” Right. And termites are just like that too. We mistake familiarity for correctness. If we see it every day, we assume it must be fine. By that logic, traffic is a cultural treasure.

The real inequality: Who gets to inconvenience others and get away with it.

Somehow, making things harder for each other became “normal.” Even worse: becoming so comfortable living in this place it became something to defend.

The whole point of a city: you give a little, so everybody doesn’t suffer a lot. It’s a machine. Roads are veins, things move. You don’t sit there and debate, “Should the blood circulate today?”

Nobody brings a picnic to a runway. Try it. See how fast that ends. Or a train track. The roads.

That’s all a city is: People getting out of each other’s way. Apparently, that’s very anti-poor.

Fix anything? Anti-poor. So what’s pro-poor? Keeping it broken. Don’t clean it. Stay exactly here. Very pro-poor forever.