On the evening of February 26, members of the Filipino community attended a lightning rally at the Southcenter mall in Tukwila to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution, a series of peaceful demonstrations that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
In addition to celebrating the Philippines’ history of resistance and activism, attendees also brought up current concerns of the Filipino community, including the continued detention and deportation of migrants, corruption of Philippine officials, and the persistent, unexplained lack of a Philippine consulate in Washington state.
The People Power Revolution was a series of mass popular demonstrations that was held from February 22 to 25, 1986. Thousands of Filipinos from all walks of life and from all regions of the Philippines congregated on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, commonly referred to as EDSA, which is a major thoroughfare in the Philippine’s national capital region of Metro Manila. It became known worldwide as a sustained campaign of peaceful civil resistance that resulted in the end of Ferdinand Marcos’ 20-year dictatorship in the Philippines. “My mom was there when she was in college,” said Tracy, an attendee of the event and a member of grassroots organization Migrante sa U, “and she always would look back on it so fondly. It was such a positive experience to be with so many different types of people… the people’s collective power was really the key.
The celebration showed that for many Filipino migrants, including those in Washington state, Marcos, his dictatorial regime, and the subsequent People Power Revolution that toppled him continue to hold a strong place in their memory, 40 years on. Some were forced to leave the Philippines and migrate due to political repression or economic stagnation under Marcos’ regime, as Kat, another event attendee, and member of Gabriela Seattle, shared: “A lot of us are drawn to the movement exactly because of the stories of our families who were forced to move here because of the conditions in the Philippines.”
The celebration is tinged with a bitter irony. 40 years after Ferdinand Marcos was ousted, his son, Ferdinand “BongBong” Marcos, Jr. has now become president of the Philippines, and for many Filipinos, the continuity does not stop there, according to Tracy: “We see in the statistics that thousands of Filipinos leave the Philippines every day, and that’s because the conditions that were there when Marcos, Sr. was in power still continues today.”
Kat is especially concerned about the conditions and situations that migrants, especially migrant women, face, such as discrimination, economic exploitation, and sometimes even sexual and domestic violence. She, like most of the attendees, has been especially critical of the Philippine consulate, who has proved largely ineffective in the past few months in protecting Filipino detainees such as Kuya G, Filipina survivors of domestic violence, and other aggrieved Filipino migrants. “Why do they need to leave [the Philippines] in the first place? To feel so much at loss, only to have to come here and to experience further exploitation and then further neglect by the Philippine state via the lack of consulate, or the neglect of the consulate is really enraging.”
For Kat, Tracy, and the other attendees of the anniversary event, the lightning rally does not just commemorate the successes of People Power, but to also bring it back to the forefront in the future. It is about bringing that legacy and lessons learned to the current situation of the Filipino migrant community, as Tracy points out. “To fast forward to now, we see that the lessons from People Power are still needed,” she said. “We know we’re seeing history repeating again, but that’s why we commemorate: it is to really remind the people that we do have the power collectively to change society for the better.”
Adrian Alarilla, PhD, is a program evaluator, writer, researcher, and filmmaker. Born and raised in the Philippines, he is currently based south of in Seattle, and has a PhD in History from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Besides contributing to the International Examiner, he is an associate with Alaska-based consulting firm Stellar Group, and has worked with Tribal, governmental, and nongovernmental agencies in Alaska, Hawaiʻi, and the Pacific Islands.
