this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on April 22, 1999.
I was still in high school when I first heard about student activism. My sisters, who were studying in Manila at the time, would come home to the province and talk about the US bases and mass mobilizations in Mendiola. They also sang progressive songs while I listened, enthralled.
Someday I am going to live a life as exciting and interesting as theirs, I promised myself. In school, I would tell my friends and my homeroom teacher that I was going to become an activist when I went to Manila. I recounted to them my sisters’ stories and imagined myself marching on Mendiola with a tubao wrapped around my head. I even thought of buying nothing but red shirts (until my best friend told me she saw activists wearing black on the six o’clock news) and two pairs of secondhand jeans that I would wear until they become fashionably faded and wrecked. They would look good with old rubber sandals that one of my sisters would hand down to me.
My adviser and Christian Living teacher dismissed these as products of an adolescent’s overactive imagination. But they warned me, in case I would take my ideas seriously, that I could get into trouble. I started watching the six o’clock news and made sure I was still in front of the TV set even after the show-biz segment was through. I stayed up late to watch newsmagazine programs. I went to the library daily to read the newspapers and looked up ”feudalism,” ”imperialism” and ”bureaucrat capitalism” in the encyclopedia, unaware that I was reading the wrong books. I also did a paper on the rise and fall of feudalism for my English class in fourth year.
Forgotten plans
During my first semester in college, I temporarily forgot about my grand plans and went out with the bourgeois crowd. I saw activists sitting at their tambayan or going from one room to another campaigning against oil price hikes and other issues, but I was enjoying life so much that I hardly gave them much thought. I did not even bother to read the statements they passed around.
During the student council elections, I campaigned for the party where my friends were. Joining activist organizations was farthest from my mind. It was in the second semester when I met and befriended some activists. They started inviting me to join their educational discussions. I also helped make posters and streamers for their rallies. Sometimes I would hang out with them, but I didn’t consider myself to be one of them. I still went out with my old friends and carried on with my old lifestyle. The first mass rally that I joined was on Dec. 10. On the way to our point of assembly, I was telling myself, ”This is it! This is the big day! This is what I’ve been dreaming of for a long time.”
But other than that, I can’t remember much about that big day. I was so afraid that the police would arrest us. A million questions raced through my mind. What would happen if my parents found out? What would my friends say if they saw me? What if somebody threw a pillbox at us? What if the police started firing their guns? What if my voice squeaked as I shouted, ”Imperyalismo, ibagsak!”? That night, I was supposed to go on an ”operation dikit” with my activist friends, but after that day’s experience, I thought they could never convince me to join them again. I was wrong.
The next day, my activist friends invited me to go to a picket line and integrate with the masses. Always eager for a new adventure, I joined them. After a few months of joining picket lines, educational discussions, urban poor communities and mass mobilizations, I found myself going out more with my activist friends. My old friends did not understand what I was doing. They read passages from the Bible every time they saw me. They scheduled ”gimmicks” every time I was supposed to meet my activist friends. But when I campaigned for the activist alliance during the student council elections, my old friends thought it was so ungrateful of me to forget the people who helped me adjust to college life and who treated me like their own sister. And they laughed at me when their party won by a landslide. I kept many of my old friends, but it was just not the same anymore. I could not relate to their jokes. They started to call me balimbing. My boyfriend tried to stop me from hanging out with the activists and ultimately it led to our breakup.
Greater involvement
The next year, I transferred to the Manila campus. I was still a member of the same organization, but I was more involved in its activities. I helped facilitate discussions and organize pickets. I became assistant team leader of our cell. I stopped going to classes. I lived in picket lines and gained many friends among the urban poor living on the other side of the campus. I felt I was doing everything right. I was wearing shirts emblazoned with ”Serve the People” every day. I ate fishballs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I accepted every task given to me even if I was very tired. I refused to go out with my old friends. I smoked a lot because everybody around me was doing it.
Going to the mall and watching the movies was a no-no. I learned many progressive songs and played them on the guitar. I never stopped to rest and ponder. I was so engrossed with my tasks as a student activist that I forgot I had other responsibilities. I forgot to write to my parents and I did not help with the household chores. My behavior resulted in heated arguments with my siblings, until they finally sent me away. Those were very hard times for me. I barely had anything to eat and I was not sure where I would sleep every night. I was not able to perform my tasks properly. I often cried in my sleep and sometimes even in the middle of educational discussions.
Finally, some of my kasamas could not tolerate my ”weakness” and confronted me. I felt misunderstood and I left them without any intention of ever going back. I transferred to another school. There I became the editor of a student newspaper. Then I realized that as a student writer, I also had responsibilities to my fellow students and to the other sectors of society. I could help educate them and make them aware of what was happening around them. Then I stopped going to school again. Many of my friends blamed the movement for that, but it was my own laziness which made me stop.
Learning from the masses
Now, I am back, doing what I used to do. This time, not as an adolescent with an overactive imagination but as a Filipino citizen aware of her rights and willing to fight for them. I have lost my idealism. I take everything I studied about society and the masses seriously. And I don’t just read anymore; I go to where the masses are and learn with and from them. I still have my petty bourgeois needs and I am not ashamed of it. I watch movies. I eat out. I have learned to open up to my kasamas and tell them when I am hurt. I rest when I am tired. I am much closer to the family. I write and call regularly to my surviving parent, siblings and nieces and nephews in Mindanao. I also call and visit my other siblings in Manila.
The movement has helped me realize a lot of things. It helped me become more human, to be more sensitive to the needs of others and responsible for whatever decision I made and will make. I am glad I am back.
