The recent anti-corruption protests at EDSA, the so-called Trillion Peso March, set on the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law and Bonifacio Day, recall the activism of the 1970s, this time launched with the extended concerns of the Gen Z and Millennial cohorts.
Today’s youth might be doing it their way, but the historical rhymes and full circles are owed to the militancy of their parents, who are now well in their late 60s and early 70s.
While the EDSA protests led by yellow and pink forces in this current iteration was more of a family affair, with generations Y and Z and their boomer parents in attendance, a substantial number of the latter lived and fought through the marked event of Dekada 70, the so-called First Quarter Storm triggered by the heavy hand of the then authoritarian regime.
Meanwhile, their forebears were driven to the streets this year by the very son of the late dictator who exposed the plunder of the people’s coffers. They positioned ourselves against systemic ills denounced through Vice Gandaisms, instead of the red book of Chairman Mao. The former governor Chavit Singson, who was shunned and booed out of EDSA, had some sense in remarking that the Luneta and EDSA rallies lack cohesion and unifying protest framework.
Yet what kept the EDSA spirit alive were the legacies and memories that could be fading with the advancing age of the cohort that embodied best the spirit of protest in Philippine post-independence history.
Millennials and Gen Z hardly take after their boomer parents and professors in mobilizing. While they had the hide and the vigor for a day out, rain or shine, lusting for the rolling heads of lawmakers named in the colossal flood control projects kickback scheme, and nodding to the self-appointed influence of celebrities and their infectious denunciations of politicos on social media, the activist movements of the 1970s penetrated jungles, rice fields, urban poor and remote communities.
This latter framework and utter immersion of protest threaten to be bygone modes of struggle and sacrifice. Present youthful generations of Filipinos, at least as could be gleaned from the EDSA and Luneta mass actions, are turned off by violence and any form of armed conflict. There were no sightings of agents provocateurs among university students, and hardly any Nepal-, Indonesia-, and now Madagascar-level shakeups.
Just a day before the Trillion Peso March, former activists were pondering with levity about their state of health for rallies. “Will I even be able to march along EDSA?”, my own mother’s friends asked out loud, to the laughter of her longtime barkadas from college.
They were former members of LIKAS, a progressive history-oriented organization of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, gathered into a mini-reunion for the launch of Mga Dasô, a compilation of martial law stories in the Bicol Region, at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City. Among them were the book proponent and editor Soliman S. Santos, a retired judge, and Paz Verdades Santos, a retired literature professor, who are currently based in Naga City.
The couple have kept at it — the writing, not so much the street protests. Their work cuts out the efforts of remembering and retelling of the activism during the martial law years to the younger generation driven by the mission of preserving historical accuracy. . The measured scope of Dasô, a “regional approach” to documenting the gruesome martial law years, feels like the gentle shove needed for the young to take up the research and figure out the current parallels.
