Walden Flores Bello (born November 11, 1945) is a Filipino academic who served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines. He is an international adjunct professor at Binghamton University, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines Diliman, and executive director of regional policy think-tank Focus on the Global South. Bello is also the founder and chairperson of the left-wing alliance Laban ng Masa. (lit. Fight of the Masses) On October 20, 2021, Bello filed his candidacy for vice president in the 2022 Philippine elections as the running mate of presidential candidate and labor leader Leody de Guzman. Their platforms focus on progressive, democratic socialist, and pro-poor systemic change. Early life and career Bello was born in Cardona, Rizal to Luz Flores and Jesse Bello from Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur, respectively. His family paid for his Jesuit schooling at the Ateneo de Manila University and he attended graduate school at Princeton University. While attending Princeton in the United States, he was introduced to the anti-war movement and led an occupation of the Woodrow Wilson Center. The confrontation with police during these protests radicalized Bello and inspired him to pursue a life of activism. For his graduate studies, he traveled to Chile and stayed in shanty towns following Salvador Allende's socialist rise to the presidency. When he returned to the United States to defend his dissertation, he lost his ability to return to the Philippines after his passport had been revoked when the declaration of Martial Law by President Ferdinand Marcos on September 21, 1972. Politics and activism Bello received his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton in 1975 after completing his doctoral dissertation titled "The roots and dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution in Chile." he then became part of the anti-Marcos movement, began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and became a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines. In 1978 after being arrested multiple times during protests, he was arrested after leading the takeover of the Philippine consulate in San Francisco. Bello was later released following a hunger strike to bring attention to the situation the Philippines was facing. In the early-1980s, Bello also broke into the World Bank headquarters and stole 3,000 pages of confidential documents that he said would show the connection of the IMF and World Bank to Marcos. He later wrote Development Debacle: the World