February 25, 2016 marks the 30th year since the EDSA Revolution, which overthrew a two-decade oppressive regime characterized by rampant corruption, abuse, and unjust rule of law. Throughout the series of demonstrations, more than two million Filipinos united under cries of “Laban!” along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, with thousands more in other cities and provinces, as the whole world watched a peaceful revolution unfold.
It has been three decades since this spectacle, and to this revolution we owe the democracy we enjoy today. Since then, we as a nation have grappled with the responsibilities of a free society, figuring out what to do with ourselves now that the freedom to decide has been bestowed onto us, learning to embrace both process and result.
The revolution makes us proud of what Filipinos can do and how hard we can fight for our own freedom. But along with this pride, we must raise two questions — first on what exactly has changed since then, and second, how our freedom is applied on a day-to-day basis.
The Filipino people went on to conduct another EDSA Revolution in January to March of 2001, 15 years after the first EDSA Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of people flocked back to the streets in order to oust then-President Joseph Estrada after allegations of corruption, only to reinstate him into power as the mayor of the country’s capital 12 years later, in 2013.
Today, the son of the man whose violent dictatorship was overthrown by millions of Filipinos three decades ago claims his family owes no apology for the dark days of Martial Law, his face and name ubiquitous as he runs for the second highest position in the government. He currently ranks second in pre-electoral surveys.
Throughout our country’s rich and colorful history are important heroes who fought and died for the nation — brave warriors and generals, intelligent writers and poets, even the bespectacled man in yellow himself. But what does any of it mean if the ideals these heroes died for are forgotten mere years later? When the very names that people fought to remove from power are the same names topping polls and surveys decades after?
At the end of the day, what our society considers heroism should not be limited to the image of a man shot in an airport or at Bagumbayan, or otherwise executed by brothers-in-arms after a false trial. Societal change should not begin and end with hands raised in the shape of the letter L, yellow ribbons, and songs sung for freedom. The revolution continues to this day, and the journey towards an effective and genuine democracy isn’t about grand gestures or demonstrations, but through little things that each of us can do everyday. This is not to say that the heroism exemplified by the great Filipinos that came before us are any less important. What we mean to say is that we can honor those Filipinos better by embodying their ideals in small things and passing the heroism forward, by thinking that Filipinos are, indeed, worth living and dying for and behaving like it.
The role of heroes is not just to die, but also to live. Their place is not within statues, textbooks, or halls of fame. Rather, they should be present in classrooms, public utility vehicles, hospitals, government halls, shopping malls, and corporate offices — in other words, anywhere and everywhere that a Filipino is. Only when this is held true will the true spirit of the 1986 revolution be fully realized.
