Talking about freedom

It was called a “talakalayaan,” collapsing the words “talakayan” (discussion) and “kalayaan” (freedom) into a term meaning a discussion about freedom. More specifically, it referred to a way of sharing stories, opinions, views and insights on martial law, the 1986 Edsa Revolt, and the 30 years that ensued after that massive gathering on the highway.

Following the “World Café” format of small-group discussions covering a specific issue instead of a huge symposium featuring a few or a single speaker, the “talakalayaan” was subtitled “Let’s Talk about People Power and Social Change.” It featured invited resource persons who had all lived through not just Edsa but even the years preceding it, talking and interacting with millennials, or young Filipinos who had had no personal experience with martial law and had been but babies, or indeed had not been born yet, during the four days of Edsa 1 (Feb. 22-25, 1986).

For this Edsa “veteran,” it was also an eye-opener to the thoughts and views of young people that explained why they seem so emotionally distant to the events of 30 years ago, and why they might be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the Marcoses and to the folks who benefited from martial law.

“Louie,” a Naval Academy cadet, seemed to sum up the extent of young people’s knowledge about those years. According to her parents who are farmers, she said, “in those times, they benefited from agricultural inputs like fertilizer and irrigation. There was also better peace and order, people were more disciplined; nowadays, society is so lax.”

She may have been reflecting her parents’ opinions and stories, but this may explain the rosy recollections of the past, nostalgia coloring the past with the mists of faulty memory.

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But the young people at our table were curious, too.

They gaped goggle-eyed when, asked to imagine a future if the events at Edsa 1 had not occurred, I said one strong possibility was that there would be no “Internet or social media as we know it today.” The Marcoses would most probably have remained in power, and if the next generation chose not to step into power, then their friends and sympathizers would have taken their place.

KM from De La Salle agreed, shuddering at the thought of losing access to the Internet which, I pointed out, was very much possible given the experience of China where access is strictly limited and use is monitored.

At one session (the young participants were instructed to change tables about three times, as the theme of each discussion changed, but the “veterans” could stay put), Ariel, a young police officer, acknowledged that “discipline born of fear” was not sustainable or long-lasting, while airing his own concerns about how criminality and lawlessness seem to have grown in the years after Edsa 1.

Told of the atmosphere of prevalent fear and suspicion during martial law, when ordinary folks could not even talk openly inside taxicabs or among strangers, the young people frowned and shook their heads—but clearly couldn’t understand the emotional context of those times.

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At another session, communications students from the University of Makati seemed particularly interested in the ways the media operated during and in spite of martial law.

They listened in rapt attention to stories of surveillance of the media, and the perils that came as part and parcel of covering protest rallies and demonstrations, like tear gas and police batons, as well as the threat of “salvaging.”

Clearly, for them press freedom had become a given, and they couldn’t imagine a regime of curtailed information at this time when information is so easily accessed that with a click of a mouse, the entire world is available online.

Their professors have told them of the history of the local press, they said, but perhaps in this case, context is all. It is difficult to appreciate stories of a repressive past unless the prevailing atmosphere of caution and guardedness is taken into account.

To be fair, it’s not that millennials lack the interest or compassion to understand just what those who lived through martial law and Edsa went through. It’s just that their parents’ generation chose not to talk about these at length, or perhaps these were so colored by nostalgia that their recollections seemed distant and unreal to the next generation.

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Perhaps more “talakalayaan” should be held to spread the word, keep the situation in context, and remind the youth that the freedoms we enjoy and cherish today came at great expense, of a generation who sacrificed freedom, leisure, even life, that the country would be free.

At least that is my hope, on the eve of the Edsa celebrations, on yet another anniversary of our freedom.