EDSA @ 40: A Democracy Still in Question

Forty years after the EDSA People Power Revolution, we return to the same avenue and ask the same question. Not about whether it happened. Not about whether it was peaceful. But about whether we still believe in what it asked of us.

For decades, EDSA was treated as a settled story. A peaceful mass movement that restored democratic institutions after the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.. It was a lesson passed down with confidence. Ordinary people came together. Violence was avoided. Democracy returned. It was supposed to be the moral foundation of our political life.

But that foundation now feels unstable. EDSA has become less of a shared memory and more of a political battlefield. It is invoked, rejected, or reshaped depending on who needs it. The same revolution that once legitimized protest is now used to question it. The same history that once united people is now used to divide them.

Disinformation, historical revisionism, and the steady normalization of authoritarian nostalgia have worked slowly but persistently. The return of the Marcos family to power under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has slowly shown how easily the past can be rewritten when memory is treated as optional.

What is at stake is not only how we remember EDSA. It is how we understand dissent, participation, and citizenship today.

When activists take to the streets, they are no longer met with automatic recognition. Instead, they are asked to justify their presence. They are accused of destabilization. They are red-tagged. They are told that protest is unnecessary, disruptive, or even dangerous. In this climate, citing EDSA can become a liability rather than a source of legitimacy.

This is the quiet but profound shift. The revolution that once expanded democratic space is now being used to narrow it.

Some movements still draw strength from EDSA. They see it as proof that collective action matters, that institutions do not correct themselves without pressure, that democracy requires vigilance. Others avoid it, worried that the symbol has become too politicized, too easily weaponized against them. Both responses reflect the same reality. EDSA is no longer a stable reference point. It is a contested resource.

But perhaps the deeper question is this. Who benefits when EDSA loses its meaning?

Because when memory fragments, accountability weakens. When history becomes negotiable, injustice becomes easier to repeat. When people begin to doubt that collective action works, silence becomes safer than solidarity.

What happens to a democracy when its most powerful example of peaceful resistance is treated as suspicious?

This anniversary forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth. Commemoration alone is not enough. We can light candles, hold concerts, and share photos every February. But rituals without reflection only create distance. They allow the revolution to remain in the past instead of shaping the present.

If EDSA is to mean anything today, it cannot remain a performance. It must remain a practice.

A practice that insists on truth even when it is inconvenient. A practice that defends the right to dissent even when it is unpopular. A practice that recognizes that democracy is not self-sustaining, and that institutions do not protect people unless people are willing to protect institutions.

The challenge is not to return to 1986. The conditions are different. The threats are different. The platforms of struggle have changed. The battleground is now digital as much as it is physical. But the responsibility is the same.

We are not only inheritors of EDSA. We are participants in its unfinished work.

Forty years later, the revolution is no longer about the fall of a dictator. It is about the survival of democratic values in an era of disinformation, fear, and fatigue. It is about whether we allow history to be reshaped into a tool of apathy, or whether we continue to treat it as a call to action.

Because the most dangerous outcome is not that EDSA becomes contested. The most dangerous outcome is that it becomes irrelevant.

And if we allow that to happen, we are not only losing a memory. We are losing the belief that ordinary people still have the power to shape the future.