Danilo Ramos, known fondly as Ka Daning, has taken on many faces since his inclusion in the Makabayan slate nine months ago. Speaking with him for the first time in October after a press conference in Matalino St., I quickly recognized the signs of decades-long militant organizing: his ash-grey hair, stentorian tenor, and wrinkles shaped by 30 years of farmland and administrative toil. But in other times, like my encounter with him in Cubao last week, I have seen him beam with almost paternal joy, this time to meet face-to-face the volunteers of Taumbayan para kina Ramos at Arambulo. 

Ka Daning, after an hour-long press conference, holds up a placard denouncing land-use conversion alongside other progressive leaders. (Luis Lagman/Philippine Collegian)

Ka Daning, an emotive speaker, could not be confined to his seat. He would address volunteers by name and extend his left hand to them without hesitation, his signature rice prop in the other. His supporters would return such gestures with generous admiration and laughter. With their attention seized, Ka Daning points now to a toy sickle he picked up with the words “lupa” and “soberanya,” two things he had been fighting for even long before the elections.

Ka Daning tells stories of his experiences campaigning across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to volunteers of Taumbayan para kina Ramos at Arambulo. (Luis Lagman/Philippine Collegian)

With an entire life spent in agricultural production, Ka Daning has called for genuine land reform with the peasantry. Now, as a senatoriable, he is ready to bring such calls from the countryside to Congress. To plant a farmer in the senate, as Ka Daning calls for in his slogan, is to plant the seeds of revolution.

Revolutionary Roots

As a third-generation farmer from Malolos, Bulacan, the peasantry’s calls were a heritage to Ka Daning. Many tenant farmers in their barrio went to the Ramoses for advice on land disputes and family problems. Until now, he said, neighbors and farmers still go to him and his wife of 47 years, Trinidad, known affectionately as Ka Ining, for counsel.

Ka Daning’s parents, however, passed away when he was only five. In his stead, his Inang reared him and his three siblings until they started their schooling. Ka Daning recalls conducting batares, or collective farming, with his siblings in the 1970s. Plowing and harrowing the seedbed would be done jointly, not only to streamline the process but to liven it up–weighted steps and bated breath were kept in time by the strains of pleasant guitar playing and singing.

It was not so vibrant come the afternoon, however. With farmgate prices made inhumane by landlords and middlemen, landless farmers either sell their land or become “sidelining peasants,” as Ka Daning calls them. In his stint as one, he tried his luck in construction, as a carpenter with stock knowledge from his father of the same vocation, and as a tricycle driver. “Bilang maralitang magsasaka, ganyan talaga para kumita,” Ka Daning said.

Ka Daning and his fellow farmers would cap the day off by representing their district’s basketball team. Bone-weary and feet calloused, they would make it to championships even against professionally trained opponents. Every triumph Ka Daning made, he gave thanks for in worship. Coming from a Catholic family, he and his siblings always made time for Sunday mass and catechetical activities. In 1981, this same faith would come to spur his militancy. 

He became a parochial catechist in their local parish, and eventually a member of the Kristiyanong Kapatiran (KRISKA) at the age of 25. By way of its trademark basic Christian community organizing, Ka Daning would understand the potency of religion as an anchor for the peasantry. 

“Bilang bahagi ng sambayanang Pilipino, kapag nakikita [ng mga magsasaka] na may panahon ng pagsilang, kamatayan at paghihirap, at kalaunan ay Easter Sunday, ang hatid nito ay pag-asa.” He said that the new life symbolized by Easter Sunday gave him the will to uplift the spirits and welfare of peasants.

Of Soil and Struggle

This newfound revolutionary hope spurred him to join the residents of Bataan and KRISKA against the Marcos Sr.-brokered Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in the 1980s. Ka Daning would continue to join different mobilizations of the progressive movement. This vigor would then bring him to parliament, participating in the 2016 peace talks between the state and the National Democratic Front, as well as overseas as the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas’ (KMP) delegate in international conferences since the 1990s.

Ka Daning speaks passionately about his experiences—a zeal that, according to Ka Ronnie Manalo, KMP secretary-general, also bleeds into his work. Working with Ka Daning since the 1990s, Ka Ronnie narrated that his peer is ever mindful amid hectic schedules, always reminding his deputies of the week’s assignments. He cited Ka Daning’s penchant for public speaking: “Laging masiglang nakikipagtalakayan [si Ka Daning] sa mga kasama, masang magsasaka at laging may dala-dalang exhibit at props kapag inimbitahan sa mga porum-talakayan at sa pagtatalumpati.”

Barely keeping up with Ka Daning’s stories, my note-taking is cut as he suddenly takes a breath. This pause precluded his narration of the Mendiola Massacre, of which he is a survivor. “Alalang-alala ko, 1987 yun. Yung kasama kong tumabi, tinamaan sa tuhod.” 

When Ka Daning was appointed as KMP’s chairperson in 2017, his run-ins with state aggression only increased. From August 2023 to January 2024, riding-in-tandem duos patrolled the area around Ka Daning’s home and spread word that he was a terrorist. Ka Ronnie tells me that while internal conflicts and funding are ever-present, most exigent still are red-tagging, enforced abduction, and killing of KMP’s leadership–a problem they share with other groups aligned with the Makabayan bloc.

After recalling Mendiola, Ka Daning paid tribute to the 13 martyred on that day, as well as other comrades gone too soon. But instead of being haunted by their deaths, Ka Daning is invigorated by the lives they spent in the struggle.

“Determinado akong magpatuloy lalo pag naaalala ko yung mga martir tulad nina Ka Randall Echanis, Joseph Canlas, sina Erickson at si Kerima, at marami pang iba.” He continues this uphill climb not only for land–but for the martyrs who had cultivated it with their blood.

Reaping What Has Been Sown

It is this drive that enlivens Ka Daning to catch a flight at 3:25 a.m. to Bacolod after tireless campaigning in Mindoro, a feat for a 68 year-old no less. This is only one in many snapshots of his grueling work as a senatoriable since he filed his candidacy last August. 

“Mas madalas ako sa kampanya [nitong mga nakaraang buwan]. Bihirang-bihira ako nakakauwi sa pamilya … kapag nasa Central Luzon, dadaan lang [sa bahay] para kumuha ng gamit,” he said. His rare downtimes at home he spends irrigating and fertilizing their tomato, eggplant, okra, and other crops with cow manure. 

Such recesses, however, fail to refresh him like the smiling faces of those in the farmlands, jeepney terminals, marketplaces, and other places that traditional politicians veer away from. “Noong nasa Nueva Ecija kami, dalawang palengke yung pinuntahan namin. At sabi nila, ‘kayo po yung unang pumunta rito’,” Ka Daning said. It invigorates him to see in their eyes the hope that dynastic politicians have stolen from them.

Throughout the past nine months, Ka Daning, accompanied by over 100 volunteers under Taumbayan para kina Ramos at Arambulo and the Makabayan coalition’s campaign teams, has flown across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to speak of the bills he wishes to author: the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill that aims to freely distribute land to tenant farmers, the Rice Industry Development Act that pushes for added support for farmers to attain food sufficiency, and the outlawing of political dynasties–all of which remain in limbo in Congress.

Ka Daning and volunteers share in the joy of finally meeting and a hope for the realization of their calls (Luis Lagman/Philippine Collegian).

In Cubao, I asked Ka Daning about his lowest point in the campaign period. He, however, was tight-lipped. “Sa panahon ng elektoral, wala akong naramdamang lungkot. Pagod meron, pero yung lungkot, wala.” He owes this self-possession to his knowledge that the long haul toward realizing farmers’ calls does not end on election day. For as long as peasants remain landless, and as they harvest crops that fall in others’ hands, they will always struggle to uplift their conditions—in parliament or on the streets. 𖧹