Kasalanan ba ang EDSA?

I could not say no, when asked to be patched in for a radio interaction with students. The program: UNTV Radio LA VERDAD 1350 kHz which had launched “Student Hour” 12:30 – 01:30 PM. The topic:  “Essence of EDSA People Power Revolution for the Youth.”

My first job in June 1964, a few months after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Maryknoll College, was teaching English Literature and Public Speaking to juniors and seniors in the high-school. I was among a mixed faculty of lay and religious, the elders of whom made the best mentors for someone entering the classroom fresh from one’s own schooling. I loved teaching. But it would be too difficult I think to do for long. This was a time when teachers did not have to compete with the many distractions that draw students’ attention from their studies. Maybe, it was just not my calling.

That experience confirmed for me the importance of schooling and that teaching itself was a lot of work to do well. Learning is more than just the organizing of content that a student must know. It also involves inculturation in shared values. Again, I realize that most teachers these days are happy enough just to be able to have their students pass tests to prove they learned something.
So the topic last Tuesday was more than the recollection of the events in February 1986 and perhaps a sharing of what meaning it had for me. I felt that more important, I would also connect them to values underlying those events and the obligations forthwith that those events called an entire nation to live.

I felt compelled to accept the invitation. These students were no longer in high school but the period of tertiary education is empowered even more to teach values. They were students of the Philippine Normal University, gathered as an audience in the school quadrangle with a selected few connected in the mobile unit to be able to ask me questions.

This generation was unborn during the time of People Power Revolt. Their questions showed that the celebration of EDSA each year and the reports on media about this passage in history had not connected them in any meaningful way to the story even just as events.

So, in the limited time given. I told the story in brief, the fissure within the Marcos government which led two leading government officials Defense Chief Juan Ponce Enrile and then Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel V. Ramos, who were threatened with arrest by AFP Chief of Staff Fabian Ver, to call for help, to seek the protection of the people as they sequestered themselves in Camp Crame. Thus, the call of Cardinal Sin and the voice of June Keithley on Radyo Bandido and the gathering of the throng on EDSA.

But it saddened me to see how quickly and easily historical memory was lost to time. In 27 years, we had failed to pass on even the bare story line to a generation of youth. This youth no longer know what happened, the reason for the gathering, the ascendancy of a president on the heaving force of people power.

I found it startling to be asked: Kaninong kasalanan ba ang EDSA? I asked back: Kasalanan ba ang EDSA?

So in the mind of the questioner, it was as story framed like most news accounts with forces in opposition to one another and someone had to bear the blame. For him, it was important to identify the culprit in EDSA.

I did not say that if indeed it was a fault, it was like Adam’s sin in the Christian narrative, a happy fault. In our historical narrative, EDSA caused the re-birth of freedom and gave our nation-building a new beginning.

I did not mention that the toppling of the Marcos dictatorship by People Power was the first of its kind to be reported real time on the newly founded 24 hour news channel, CNN. I mentioned that in the weeks that followed, moving around the US, we were cheered by many who had watched the events, and that those who stood on the streets to face the tanks holding up rosaries and flowers inspired many others around the world who were chafing against their own dictators and military juntas.

It is sad to know that such a story would be lost even to our own.

How do you connect through such a chasm of un-knowing? How does one tell this story so it can indeed have meaning for the youth who were unborn at this time of history?

Perhaps, it is because the overburdened system of education has simply not caught up to close the gaps of various historical texts about Martial Law, the assassination of the opposition leader, Benigno Aquino Jr., the role of the alternative press, the formation of a parliament of the streets and the rising challenge of people power in protest against the shackles of military and dictatorial rule.

These students know now that government did not deliver the promise of a better life after EDSA. And maybe for them, that is the only thing that matters.

But the only promise of EDSA was freedom from dictatorship. It is the first step in the establishment of a democratic system. With our freedom and autonomy, we must learn to build up a community believing in the common good and in the equitable access to opportunities and a rule of law that makes all men and women equal.

On EDSA, we took the first step. It was only the beginning. We must be willing to take up the responsibilities that go with this freedom for EDSA to have meaning in our life.

And the young people must understand that they too need to bear their responsibility to know.