On Edsa on a Friday night

Picture this: Walking through a public school cum prison and torture chamber, makeshift cells no bigger than a toilet cubicle. Reading stories from prisoners being given bottles to urinate in, making sure not to spill, or else they’d be forced to lick the floor clean. Gazing at shared shackles for efficiently immobilizing groups.

This was the S-21 museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I spent the All Saints Day long weekend.

The prisoners of S-21 were taken to the outskirts of the city to die. Somewhere quiet, so nobody would notice. Under the Khmer Rouge, you’d be killed for simply wearing glasses (it connoted smarts and therefore the threat of resistance). In the words of their dictator, Pol Pot, “It is better to accidentally kill an innocent than to accidentally spare an enemy.”

Citizens were worked to death, or tortured with anything available—to hell with guns when you could get the job done with a cost-efficient beating.

Having developed an early obsession with the Holocaust, I had a strange appreciation for commemoration museums, survivor accounts and historical novels about it. Far away in time and space, Hitler’s Germany seemed like fiction—wildly interesting, yet never gonna happen. Going through the Khmer Rouge memorial museums, I felt disconnected and jaded, though this happened so close to home, and only in the 1970s.

Both the Khmer Rouge and the Holocaust shouldn’t have felt so distant, because martial law in the Philippines was, in essence, the same thing. Yet even the same story, with Filipino characters, remained just a story—something that happened before, but was never gonna happen again.

I was born in 1990—one of the millennials accused of not understanding martial law, because I wasn’t there. I studied Philippine history every year in grade school, and revisited it in high school and as a freshman at the University of the Philippines. On a logical level, I got it. But as it turns out, I wasn’t paying full attention. So, yes, they were right about me—but not about my entire generation.

On Nov. 8, news broke about the Supreme Court decision to allow the burial of Ferdinand Marcos’ remains in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. A friend was planning to join the protests, “Baka di ako umabot ng 26th birthday ko kung magkagulo sa rally.” It was a joke maybe half-meant: I might not make it to my 26th birthday if the rally turns violent.

Ranting to another friend, I asked: Why the fixation on doing the big heroic gesture (joining a risky rally) when in the long run, you can do the real heroic thing (staying alive and doing something bigger)? In my mind, at a rally, you’re just a statistic. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she shut me up with: “Rallies get stuff done. Pwede pumunta tapos di mamatay, pag di ka tanga.” One can go and not get killed if one is not stupid.

Perspective changed, I was entertaining the idea of joining #occupyLNMB on Dec. 11. When to my surprise, Marcos was already being flown into the Libingan on Friday. Then the 21-gun salute was done. Then there was a same-day edit video a la big-budget wedding. Then there was a call to go out into the streets for an indignation rally. There it was.

Save for my black shirt, I was unprepared logistically (no food, no umbrella, almost out of cash), mentally and emotionally.

On Facebook, I follow an acquaintance I’ve probably never spoken to in my life. He’s witty and I get a kick out of reading his posts. But it was also his words that night, “Today is not for tolerance and bridges. Today we divide who among us has stood on the right side of history,” that drove me to Edsa.

Who was I not to join? My work for the day was all but done by 4 p.m. (a huge feat in a digital agency, I kid you not), and I am frequently wondering why my life choices don’t allow me to make the difference my fresh grad self hoped to. How millennial can you get? I’m a huge believer in getting stuff done, and I didn’t want to remember standing on the wrong side of history. So it was out to the streets for me, armed with a few bills, my phone, my house keys, and a dash of paranoia from the circulating posts about how to deal with tear gas.

I may not have been fully equipped, but there’s no use in waiting for the perfect moment. Who knows when the freedom to make a stand will disappear? Mine may not have been the strongest voice at that rally. Even on my way there, I was doubtful about what my contribution could possibly be. But if we leave it all to the strongest voices, how can a movement be sustained?

I found my spot standing on the ledge of the monument, exactly at the corner of Edsa and White Plains Avenue, holding up a borrowed illustration that read “BUSINA para sa HUSTISYA” in front (and what a heartwarming thrill to have the buses and cars honk, and the motorcycles rev their engines, for justice) and “PILIPINAS, GINAGO NA NAMAN TAYO” at the back. Philippines, we’ve been shafted again.

Luckily, it was a completely peaceful protest, comfortable even. Other instances may not be as safe, so it pays to be prepared.

Listening to “Bayan Ko” blaring in the background, seeing smarter (better prepared) protesters bringing around food to share and garbage bags to make sure we didn’t leave a mess, reading witty lines on placards that all communicated the same message that resounded loudly: “Diktador, Diktador, di bayani!” and “Hukayin!” A dictator, not a hero. Dig him up! Being part of something bigger, instead of sitting by the sidelines and letting other people count toward the statistics on my behalf.

Sometimes all it takes is a little push from different people (knowingly or not), to get you where you need to be.

I’m grateful to the ones who burst me out of my bubble, and can only hope this story does the same for someone else. Never doubt what influence you can have in driving one person to take one step, and in effect, driving an entire movement. When that happens, maybe the bigwigs will be persuaded to do what’s right, too.

Cecilia Ejercito, 26, is a digital account manager.