Forty years after the EDSA Individuals Energy Revolution, we return to the identical avenue and ask the identical query. Not about whether or not it occurred. Not about whether or not it was peaceable. However about whether or not we nonetheless imagine in what it requested of us.
For many years, EDSA was handled as a settled story. A peaceable mass motion that restored democratic establishments after the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.. It was a lesson handed down with confidence. Atypical folks got here collectively. Violence was averted. Democracy returned. It was speculated to be the ethical basis of our political life.
However that basis now feels unstable. EDSA has develop into much less of a shared reminiscence and extra of a political battlefield. It’s invoked, rejected, or reshaped relying on who wants it. The identical revolution that after legitimized protest is now used to query it. The identical historical past that after united folks is now used to divide them.
Disinformation, historic revisionism, and the regular normalization of authoritarian nostalgia have labored slowly however persistently. The return of the Marcos household to energy underneath Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has slowly proven how simply the previous will be rewritten when reminiscence is handled as non-compulsory.
What’s at stake isn’t solely how we bear in mind EDSA. It’s how we perceive dissent, participation, and citizenship as we speak.
When activists take to the streets, they’re now not met with computerized recognition. As an alternative, they’re requested to justify their presence. They’re accused of destabilization. They’re red-tagged. They’re advised that protest is pointless, disruptive, and even harmful. On this local weather, citing EDSA can develop into a legal responsibility relatively than a supply of legitimacy.
That is the quiet however profound shift. The revolution that after expanded democratic house is now getting used to slim it.
Some actions nonetheless draw power from EDSA. They see it as proof that collective motion issues, that establishments don’t right themselves with out strain, that democracy requires vigilance. Others keep away from it, frightened that the image has develop into too politicized, too simply weaponized towards them. Each responses mirror the identical actuality. EDSA is now not a steady reference level. It’s a contested useful resource.
However maybe the deeper query is that this. Who advantages when EDSA loses its that means?
As a result of when reminiscence fragments, accountability weakens. When historical past turns into negotiable, injustice turns into simpler to repeat. When folks start to doubt that collective motion works, silence turns into safer than solidarity.
What occurs to a democracy when its strongest instance of peaceable resistance is handled as suspicious?
This anniversary forces us to confront an uncomfortable fact. Commemoration alone isn’t sufficient. We will gentle candles, maintain live shows, and share images each February. However rituals with out reflection solely create distance. They permit the revolution to stay prior to now as a substitute of shaping the current.
If EDSA is to imply something as we speak, it can not stay a efficiency. It should stay a observe.
A observe that insists on fact even when it’s inconvenient. A observe that defends the proper to dissent even when it’s unpopular. A observe that acknowledges that democracy isn’t self-sustaining, and that establishments don’t shield folks until individuals are prepared to guard establishments.
The problem is to not return to 1986. The situations are totally different. The threats are totally different. The platforms of wrestle have modified. The battleground is now digital as a lot as it’s bodily. However the accountability is identical.
We aren’t solely inheritors of EDSA. We’re members in its unfinished work.
Forty years later, the revolution is now not in regards to the fall of a dictator. It’s in regards to the survival of democratic values in an period of disinformation, worry, and fatigue. It’s about whether or not we enable historical past to be reshaped right into a software of apathy, or whether or not we proceed to deal with it as a name to motion.
As a result of essentially the most harmful final result isn’t that EDSA turns into contested. Essentially the most harmful final result is that it turns into irrelevant.
And if we enable that to occur, we’re not solely shedding a reminiscence. We’re shedding the idea that atypical folks nonetheless have the ability to form the longer term.
