I wasn’t alive when the 1986 People Power Revolution happened. Everything I know about those four days in February comes from history books, stories, documentaries, and the recollections of others. Yet, one undeniable fact shines through all those accounts: millions of ordinary Filipinos came together to end a tyranny. They flooded EDSA with prayers and songs, linking arms to stop tanks, showing that a unified people could topple a dictator and reclaim democracy. This much is not up for debate – it happened. A dictator was overthrown, democracy was restored. People stood together against tyranny, and they won. That truth carries a kind of sacred weight.
But lately I find myself asking: what happens when even that truth starts to get blurry? In recent years, I’ve seen the narrative of People Power slowly being revised, even erased. The collective courage that ended a dictatorship is being downplayed. It’s as if the pages of our history are being smudged, little by little. And if I, who wasn’t even born then, can feel this slippage of truth, I wonder – how much more unsettling must it be for those who actually lived it?
A Conversation Down Under: Honoring Every History
The other day, I talked about this with my partner, Vinny. We now live in Australia, and one thing that struck us when we moved here is how Australians acknowledge their history at every turn. Before events, meetings, even small gatherings, someone often says a few words acknowledging the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional owners of the land. They often mention the specific Nation (tribe or community) of the area and pay respect to the Elders past and present. Sometimes they even allude to the atrocities committed during colonization, the injustices and pain that Indigenous communities endured.
This isn’t an instant fix for the wounds of history. It doesn’t erase the past wrongs or automatically solve today’s inequalities. But it keeps history in the conversation. Every time I hear an Acknowledgement of Country, I’m reminded that the comforts and freedoms we enjoy stand on a land with a very old, very complex story – one that includes great suffering and survival of Indigenous peoples. It’s a small ritual, but it’s powerful: it nudges everyone to remember and reflect, even if just for a moment. History isn’t brushed aside; it’s brought to the forefront of our collective mind.
Vinny and I wondered, what if the Philippines did something similar? Not necessarily the same format, but the same spirit – a kind of commitment to remember. What if every school assembly, every government event, even TV shows, carried a gentle reminder of the past – both the pride of People Power and the pain that preceded it? It’s not about living in the past; it’s about learning from it. In Australia, acknowledging the past has become a norm, a sign of respect. In the Philippines, I fear the opposite is happening: signs of the past are being quietly taken down.
Erasing a Revolution: A Holiday Lost, a Memory Endangered
A subtle but significant change happened recently back home. February 25 – the anniversary of the People Power Revolution – was struck off the list of national holidays. This once-sacred day, when Filipinos would commemorate their victory over dictatorship, is now just a regular working day. The current president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the very dictator ousted in 1986, made this change with little fanfare. In 2024’s official holiday proclamation, the EDSA People Power anniversary was conspicuously omitted , effectively downgrading its importance. Instead of a non-working holiday where people could gather and remember, it was quietly labeled a “special working day” – code for just another day at the office.
On paper, it might seem like a small administrative tweak. In practice, it felt like a gut punch. I saw reactions from people who lived through the revolution – shock, sadness, anger. “Is this how it starts?” many wondered. Is this how we begin to forget?
Critics didn’t mince words. They called it “a clear case of historical revisionism”, an attempt to sanitize or “deodorize” the memory of the martial law regime. And it’s hard to see it any other way. Why remove the holiday? If the concern was purely economic (more workdays, more productivity), there were dozens of other less symbolically-charged holidays to tweak. But this one – the one that marks the fall of the Marcos dictatorship – was chosen for removal. The symbolism is loud and clear, even if the act was done quietly. It sends a message: maybe this event isn’t worth remembering. Maybe it’s easier to move on if we don’t stop to commemorate People Power so much.
But moving on is very different from deliberately forgetting. What’s happening feels like the latter. It’s part of a larger pattern, a slow and methodical rewriting of the narrative. In recent years, I’ve noticed (especially online) a growing chorus of voices saying “Martial law wasn’t that bad,” “The Marcos years were a golden age,” and other versions of alternative history. Social media is rife with posts that downplay the human rights abuses, the corruption, the plunder – things well-documented by historians and eyewitnesses – and instead highlight supposed economic achievements or twist the story to cast doubt on the victims of that era. Historical facts – the thousands imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared – get dismissed as mere political smears . The narrative of People Power being a triumphant restoration of democracy is diluted with cynicism: “Oh, it didn’t really change anything, did it?” or “It was all orchestrated by so-and-so; it wasn’t a genuine people’s victory.”
When you hear these things enough times, you start to worry. What if a lie, repeated often enough, starts to feel like truth? What if the next generation never hears the real story at all? Removing a holiday might seem minor, but it’s like removing a conspicuous plaque from a public monument – people might walk by without realizing what happened there. Today it’s a holiday; tomorrow it could be a chapter in a textbook, a paragraph in a museum, or a page on a website that quietly disappears. It’s a slow erasure. And the thing about slow erasure is that by the time people notice, a lot has already been lost.
Why Remember? Keeping History Alive in a World That Wants to Forget
All this leads me to a bigger, more difficult question: how do we hold on to history when some of those in power want us to forget it? How do we, as a people – especially those of us who only know these events through stories – make sure that what happened in the past isn’t reduced to a sham or a footnote?
We need to keep telling the stories of 1986 – in schools, at home, in art, in media. How can we make those stories engaging for those who didn’t live it? Can we find new ways – films, graphic novels, TikTok videos, community theater – to bring that history to life for today’s youth? We often say “Never forget” about tragic events, but maybe we also need to say it about our victories for democracy. Never forget how people’s courage toppled a tyrant. It’s an inspiring story – why aren’t we shouting it from the rooftops?
History is uncomfortable, but so is an amnesia imposed by someone else. It should be uncomfortable to remember atrocities and dictatorships – that discomfort is the price of vigilance. It reminds us why we shout “Never again!” when we see the warning signs of tyranny. It fuels our gratitude for the liberties we have and our determination to guard them. On the other hand, an enforced forgetfulness – a state-sponsored amnesia that glosses over the painful parts – might feel comfortable for a while (because who likes to dwell on guilt or grief?), but it’s a dangerous kind of comfort. It breeds complacency. It opens the door for the same bad things to creep back in, because if we don’t remember what happened, what’s to stop it from happening again?
So I write this to invite conversation, not to close it. I am still learning, still grappling with these questions myself. Maybe you have thoughts on this, or maybe you have your own memories of People Power to share. How does a nation balance moving on with remembering? How do we deal with leaders who prefer us to “move on” a little too quickly? Where is the line between forgiveness and forgetting – and who draws that line?
What I do know is that the story of the People Power Revolution is not fiction. It’s as real as the ground we walk on. And it’s still being written – not just by those in power, but by all of us in how we choose to remember or forget. I hope we choose to remember.
For if we hold on to the truth of our history – however we can, wherever we are – then no amount of holiday-stripping or narrative-twisting can truly erase what happened. The memory will live on in us, in conversation and conviction, and that might be the best defense against any attempt to reduce our past to a mere fairy tale or, worse, a meaningless footnote.
In the spirit of the millions who found their voice in 1986, let’s keep talking, questioning, and remembering. After all, a people’s memory is itself a kind of power – one that no dictator’s son or revisionist trend should ever be allowed to snuff out.