Those who’ve criticized millennials as being the self-absorbed, entitled, video-game-playing, selfie-taking, no f’s-giving generation must have been amazed at the turnout of young people at the recent rallies against the Marcos burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
In fact, the demonstrations were youth-driven, as far as I could tell, and this reflects a pattern for such movements, in that they are often student-led and–organized. Students are the ones who immediately take to the streets even as their elders are still mulling over the contending philosophies and sticking Salonpas on their backs before heading out the door to follow in their wake. Students bore the brunt of the First Quarter Storm. Students faced down tanks during People Power. It is the country’s pride that millennials are taking a stand during these troubled times.
Young people have made these protests their own by putting their own spin on the communication materials they create for these events. During the 1970s and 1980s, protest slogans were more forceful and direct. Nowadays they are more trendy and humorous, in line with social media standards: “Make ganda, not propaganda!”; “Stop making Martial Law happen. It’s not gonna happen!” (a reference to the film Mean Girls); “Beshies against bardagulan.”
One group has even adopted an insult leveled against them —“temperamental brats”—and used it on their Twitter account which serves as a message board and documentation platform. However other people may view these signs, for millennials these words have significance, and are the most effective means of reaching them in this instance, as they themselves have constructed these meanings.
Researcher Gayle Kimball, who studies youth activism, said that “youth power rests in their numbers, education, and ICT [information and communication technology] communication. Comprising over 40 percent of the world’s population, young people under 25 are the largest youth cohort in history, the best educated, and the most connected via the internet.”
Young activists engage in civil resistance out of a desire to effect social change. They are often motivated by anger in relation to certain issues, rather than being concerned with party politics. Where formerly adults dominated the public discourse, the Internet gives young people a voice that the youth of previous generations did not have, provides them with information, and at the same time empowers them to lead, organize, gather, act, and respond.
Pro-Marcos supporters have derided these young people as clueless about the issues involved because they weren’t born yet during the Martial Law years and lack the proper context to understand them. But that is what history lessons are for, and the Marcos years are recent enough that there a great many people still alive who survived those times and serve as primary sources for facts and narratives.
What is appalling to realize is that despite celebrating People Power annually since 1986, many adults who were around during those times have suffered amnesia about the excesses perpetrated by the Marcos regime and are now burnishing his image tarnished by monumental corruption and violence. Marcos was not a benevolent dictator; he was no Lee Kwan Yew nor Kemal Ataturk, no father of his country. And it is this fact that propels many of the youth and Filipinos in general to protest Marcos’s burial in what is perceived to be sacred ground.
“The phenomenon of civil resistance is often associated with the advancement of democracy” (Ackerman, Karatnycky, et. al.), and it is frustrating to see that Philippine democracy and its manifested aspects are still something precarious, something to be constantly fought for, protected, and preserved. Nothing seems to have changed much since Jose Rizal’s time; the same cancer he lamented is eating away at our society, and attempts to cure the disease turned out to be no more than Band-aids.
The struggle is not over. It is continuing. The youth are fighting for their future with their hashtags and selfies and tweets. And unlike that moldered corpse in its stolen grave, it is they who are the bayani, the heroes of the moment.
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Dr. Ortuoste is a California-based writer. Follow her on Facebook: Jenny Ortuoste, Twitter: @jennyortuoste, Instagram: @jensdecember