SEPTEMBER 21, 2025, it was fast-approaching 7am when I woke up from a tepid van, still effected by a nicotine afterhigh and midnight sweat. I stooped and exited the service with a minor headache. Muffled rallying cries can be heard from a distance, cheap speakerphones, urban whitenoise, political rap music playing. Trees were there so it wasn’t that hot, though the sun already rose with its fangs. Cigarette smoke, Marlboro reds and blues, peach superslims, blown under the fragmented shades of trees. We were lined up, standing behind an activist-org batch; caps worn, placards raised, and rallying cries yelled here and there. Organizers orienting their respective batches; ours told us to implement a body-body system where we can only detach from the group if we have a partner.

Student-activists look different up here, they style themselves like their Western counterparts. Nose piercings, tibak merchandize (tibak means activist in slang), red flags, occasionally bold communist iconography, emblems, appended on their shoes. Chairman Mao’s hat paired with the Argentine icon and his cigar protesting with style. There were already in the hundreds when we were piling up on the road. Many of them were National Democrats who were essentially Marxists-Leninists-Maoists. Young communist daredevils who’d wear unambigious red articles, or raise KM placards (Kabataang Makabayan, the youth arm of the Communist Party), indifferent to possible watchlisting. All unified in building a long dense line of rallyists.

Red placards, blue, yellow, tarpaulins, streamers with their affiliated orgs painted and their local chapters, black and red spraycans, scarecrows, and effigies — handcarried to their rightful stations. It was a completely different air from where I’m from. After all, rallyists (of our kind) tend to be informed, and disgruntled from what we’re witnessing of our current political climate. Different air, crimson colored; every response to a rally call was pronounced with a surplus of anger and hope. You hear different calls such as: “Ang Tao, Ang Bayan” (The People, The Homeland) replied with “Ngayon ay Lumalaban!” (Today, We Are Fighting), and calls that mention Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte, the incumbent president and vice respectively. Each batch have their own response-call speakers, with their own flag-bearers at the rear end, and streamer holders who carry it at the frontline.

We marched on the way to Luneta Park, the first rally stop where we will all be staging speakers, reps, from various orgs and sectors. By this time, I felt a hit of regret for my two-year hiatus. I simply grew dispassionate; got bored of my study routine. If only I had started earlier, I would’ve been in the movement for longer, with more experience, with minds battlescarred from sticky situations, and fascist intimidations. I would’ve known more and connected with similar-minded people. And I would’ve blunted an intrusive “alienated” feeling I often carried inside my political science class. My intellectual ambitions led me to this stage, and so did the promises I kept to myself two years ago.

JUNE 2023, I pledged myself to undertake a politically active life. To invest hours and days to political engagement, reading history, humanities and the social sciences, and anything else if I have something left in the tank. You could say that I had a personal “Age of Enlightenment.” Each morning I’d wake up with an immediate compulsion to read, to check to-do lists, and find new learnables I’m remotely interested in. A bedroom cleanup and a full sweep, I make the first cup of Nescafe. A quick cold shower, self-care, and I’m on to begin my first study sprint. This made up much of my routine that circled about learning. By virtue of this pledge, I joined an academic/research-based institute situated in the Philippines, Institute for Nationalist Studies. Espousedly, as per one orientation meeting, “nonideological” despite constant preaching MLM (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) gospel. I studied and brushed shoulders with student-activists and intellectuals. They were mostly from the University of the Philippines Diliman and the Jesuits-led Ateneo de Manila, and possessive of polymathic and autodidactic tendencies. At the time of my membership, I felt I had entered a new sphere, perhaps a “next stage” in my life. While I excelled in political science recitations in my local university, I was merely a student-prey amongst my new clique.

When months prior I thought computer science was a destined choice, a gateway to Silicon Valley and prosperity, now I’m dissolved of capitalist ambitions. In this new anticapitalist and antiliberalism circle I’m in, my liberalism was shredded through a gradual process of reeducation and a reversal of capitalist-internalization. And since I had shallow reasons for my program choice, I lost most drive. It’s barely self-rewarding. Staring at lines of codes that evoke no “human quality.” And I couldn’t see the immediate benefit it can bring to people. Hence, my shift to political science. In INS and LFS (League of Filipino Students), I was embraced by young student-intellectuals and activists earnest in precipitating a National Democratic revolution. From a capitalist, status-quo affirming milieu, I went down to the masses with radicalized politics and with a new idea in mind to change the world, politically, in lieu of changing the world by capitalist exploitation/affirmation. I went idle and eventually left both organizations due to difficulty in juggling academia, the gym, and other hobbies I’d rather not sacrifice.

The two-year hiatus contained days where I just drifted by, barren of any obsession. Days and weeks have passed by without any serious political study, and only studied “what interests me”. Only when the flood-control projects anomalities blew up did I rekindle a dormant political obsession. It was September’s first week and the Discayas are catching internet fire. Posts about the Trillion Peso March set for September 21 were appearing on my newsfeed. So I planned that I catch with the news and materialize my frustrations with the government by joining the March. Weeks prior I was inagurated as a Kabataan Partylist recruit in the national chapter and I hurriedly studied everything learnable about the current state of Philippine politics. I made sure I was intellectually ripe for the day.

FAST FORWARD, from Luneta Park to Mendiola we marched on the way to the president’s house — the Malacanang Palace. A hundred thousand of us went past crowds of people filming, buses and jeepneys beeping, even trains honked on beat with our chants. It was surreal, the movement and rallying cries were felt by bystanders. I saw boys of the urban poor, who looked around eight, raising their clenched fists in solidarity. Even drivers who’d stick their arm out while passing us by. All this had happened before we ended up on a gridlock in Mendiola. The path en route to Malacanang was blocked by thousands of cops. Each armed with dispersal equipment, police batons, riot shields, and Israel-funded light rifles. We stood still for a couple; shedded by a bridge, doused in sweat. We didn’t know what was going on; suddenly the chants halted and we sat on outdoor mall benches. At a certain point, there was mild panic as most were clueless on what’s going on. We thought someone was shot, or at least I did. We cussed and booed at the cops and raised middle fingers at them.

The deadlock lasted quite a while that it culminated to urban delinquents breaking property. Stalled, vandals and graffiti artists began breaking glasses with their skateboards. Rocks were thrown at glass boards and invitations to join the NPA (armed wing of the Communist Party) were spraypainted in columns. A UPLB writer (University of the Philippines Los Banos) was shot by tear gas to which a nurse friend I invited aided. After some time, the cops pushed us back. About 300 of us were trapped in a tight alleyway and covered ourselves with umbrellas lest they shoot tear gas at us. They hunted the anarchists down and beat them up upon capture. I saw kids with bloody noses and clips of young boys rolled over by police mobiles. I watched clips of a young kid getting beat up in a SOGO motel while it’s being burned — haymakers were thrown and it was multiple against one. Another clip shows a walking bystander getting shot at random, on its right. That if I’m not mistaken, was Eric Saber.

Street kids who wore black hoodies and masks vandalized even more property, breaking glass on roads, and starting fights in the streets. In the morning ’til afternoon sharp, they were already hurling rocks at a barrage of shielded cops. Even before this dispersal, they burned wheels of a ten-wheeler, a cop’s motorcycle, stomped on cops in their formations, and raised Luffy’s flag. I saw a jeepney-full of street kids went down to ambush a rival gang. We even hid inside a local church to evade warring streetgangs. It wasn’t as violent as I expected it to be. I thought it will equal the French or the UK in escalations. I thought we will recreate the Gen Z revolutions in Bangladesh and Nepal with politicians getting burned alive or killed. Nonetheless of our failure to overthrow Marcos and Duterte, it was successful in that of reawakening a largely-dulled spirit of the masses.We’ve shown through this that a revolution is utterly possible and that we can effect regime change. It was a historical dent that will mark its place in our history books. And I’m proud for being a part of history who stood up, who went outside the confines of my four walls, and be one with the crying, wounded nation.

Lack of radicalization & passive “anticorruption”

We did invite plenty of students in our respective campuses. I targetted the left-leaning, progressives, pre-law and law students, the debaters, psych majors, and randoms. I dm’d likely prospects from my program and others from the College of Arts and Sciences. Much efforts beared little fruit, many had birthday excuses, or “too busy” with school duties, perhaps prepping for the next Monday. Some were afraid of violence, and frictions against the fascists and riot police. I noticed, much to my dismay, a poverty of radicalized students — who’re apparently intelligent but unwilling to join a one-day event to commemorate the 53rd year of Martial Law since it’s promulgation, and to protest the widespread corruption amidst the flood control scandals.

Even in traditionally pre-law programs, they were hesitant. It’s important to show support this way, to present a lively barrage of directly involved people ready when politics go “too south.” Joining meant socializing with fellow concerned citizens. If you seek to expand your network, broaden and crystallize your politics, this is the place. The sole act of joining is an act of resistance and a net positive against the Establishment. Resistance by memory lacks the material aspect of getting organized, helping affected local communities and as cliche as it sounds, “spreading awareness.” Sharing posts about corruption or the rallies to “show support” lacks the important material aspect of being present. There is no +1 addition to the cause against the Establishment, and there is no strengthening of the march when we stay in our homes.

It wasn’t an armed revolt, that wasn’t even the plan. There was no pre-rally rumors that it’s going to be militant or extremely violent, or that an insurgency will sprout. Carrying arms was not even a requirement for joining. You just have to show up and take the shared yet inevitable risk of being injured, wounded, even to much negligible chance, of death. And I think behind this withdrawal to join, except for plausible reasons, is rooted in false self-importance. That one’s life is too valuable to risk the slimmest chance of being a figure report, a casualty. That one’s life is too busy with ordinary work to even entertain the thought of it. That their efforts and everything they’ve built hitherto could fruit into nothing because of fatal injuries, or set them back because of imprisonment, or kidnapped by the fascist State.

These are valid reasons after all. But we must remember that violence and antagonism is inherent in creating history, in effecting radical change. Behind every countries’ achievement of independence, is a protracted struggle of the masses, the intellectuals, and devout revolutionaries who’ve suicidally helped to advance the liberation movement. And that plenty of them in the struggle, were slained by reactionary forces, by the fascist Establishment, and by their colonizers. No nation has ever been successful in emancipation by appeasing to their oppressors that bear no conscience. Violent antagonism is an embedded part of effecting radical change. And if you can’t even show up in this “relatively peaceful” historical march, under implausible grounds, then you’re simply not angry enough.

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Esmaquel, Paterno II (September 12, 2025). “Luneta, People Power Monument rallies held on September 21”. Rappler. Retrieved September 15, 2025.

“Violence erupts in Mendiola: Masked youths attack cops”. OneNews.ph. September 21, 2025. Retrieved September 22, 2025.‌‌‌

jpcruz0306. (2025, October 15). Sarah and Curlee Discaya no longer cooperating with ICI. RAPPLER. https://www.rappler.com/philippines/sarah-curlee-discaya-no-longer-cooperate-ici/

‌dhojnacki. (2025, November 6). Gen Z protests have spread to seven countries. What do they all have in common? Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/gen-z-protests-have-spread-to-seven-countries-what-do-they-all-have-in-common/

‌Matamis, J. (2025). What’s behind the global Gen Z revolution? Stimson Center. https://www.stimson.org/2025/whats-behind-the-global-gen-z-revolution/

Oakes, N. (2025, October 19). A Revolution Without a Square: Gen Z’s New Playbook. Modern Diplomacy. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/10/19/a-revolution-without-a-square-gen-zs-new-playbook/

‘INAGAW NILA ANG BUHAY MO, KUYA.’ (2025). https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3698995720235973.

More of the author’s work:
Read Journaling Stopped Me From Killing Myself
Read When I was nine, I experienced my first culture shock

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