The
People Power Revolution in the
Philippines:
Lessons Learned for
the Twenty-first Century
By Richard Deats
In response to an urgent Appeal from all the living
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, the General Assembly of the
United Nations, on November 1998, unanimously declared
the first decade of the twenty-first century to be The
Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. While
people are naturally concerned about the amount of
violence in our world and how it threatens our future,
the Nobel Laureates are right to remind us of the
potential of nonviolence and our calling to build a
culture of peace and nonviolence.
The twentieth century is instructive in the way that
the philosophy and practice of nonviolence have begun to
flourish and in the way that nonviolent movements have
had an exponential growth across the world. Mohandas
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are the most famous
nonviolent leaders but many have built upon the paths
they charted as in country after country, tyrannies and
oppressors on every continent have fallen to the
concerted efforts of nonviolent movements. One of the
most significant of these movements is the 1986 People
Power overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines
in which masses of unarmed Filipinos rose up to affirm
the upset election of Corazon Aquino as president and, in
an amazing 77-hour period, nonviolently force from office
Ferdinand Marcos.
What are the lessons learned in that People Power
movement, lessons that we need to study and apply to
current problems in order to help us build the culture of
peace and nonviolence to which the United nations has
called us?
First, People Power forced us to ask, What is power?
Many think of power strictly in a military way. Mao Tse
Tung summed it up when he said, "Power grows out of the
barrel of a gun". It is not only Maoists who subscribe to
this belief. We see it in those who say, "Prepare for
peace by preparing for war". We see it in the budgets of
most nations, rich or poor, religious or secular, where
enormous amounts are spent for the military.
People Power taught us a different way of looking at
power. Marcos and his powerful army were no match for the
nonviolent people who rose up against the regime. If we
define power as "the ability to achieve purpose" then we
see that a large, well-equipped army may not enable a
ruler to provide jobs and highways and schools for a
nation. When India exploded a series of nuclear weapons
in 1998 to prove itself a great "power". S.K.
Bandopadhaya of the Gandhi Memorial Trust wisely
remarked, "While our leaders are talking about nuclear
bombs as a deliverance, 350 million of our people remain
below the poverty line, nearly fifty percent of our
population is illiterate, and 100,000 of our villages
don‚t even have safe drinking water. In the villages
of Rajasthan, where they detonated those bombs, many
women still walk ten to twelve miles a day just to fetch
water. This is the real India, the India that Indians
already live in. And when all the fuss and shouting dies
down, they will realize that nuclear bombs do nothing,
absolutely nothing to help them".
Secondly, People Power showed us the power of Truth.
Gandhi defined nonviolence as satyagraha, truth power.
God is Truth and that Truth is planted in every human
heart. As the Quakers say, "There is that of God in
everyone". Within every person is the hunger for Truth
and if that Truth is denied by lies and falsehood, people
begin to feel violated. It is natural that all people
want to be treated fairly and honestly. When they respond
to the claim of Truth and join with others, they begin to
express real power, a power that can reach a critical
mass that becomes irresistible. Such is what happened in
the Philippines in 1986.
This leads us to our third lesson learned: people have
power. No matter how humble or poor or lacking in social
status, when people rise up against evil, they are
powerful. Poll watchers in the Marcos-Aquino contest
stood their ground against armed goons. Thirty computer
operators risked their lives to tell the world that
Marcos was trying to falsify the election results. The
world marvelled at Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA)
when tanks and armored personnel carriers were stopped by
the prayers and good will of the people.
A related lesson is that everyone can play a part in
people power. Military power depends on highly
trained, well armed soldiers, especially young strong
men. As the Gandhian and Kingian movements showed, people
power can draw upon everyone--old and young, rich and
poor, abled and disabled. Old people and children
did their part at EDSA as part of the "unarmed forces of
the Philippines". Youth standing their ground in front of
armed soldiers unnerved them as they gave their fierce
foe sandwiches and candies.
Fifth, government rests upon the consent or the
acquiescene of the governed. The way that corrupt or
tyrannical or incompetent governments rule is through the
passive acceptance of the ruled. But if the ruled begin
to resist, even tyrants are weakened and can eventually
be brought down. Andrei Sakharov, though internally
exiled to Gorky, was a force the Soviet Union did not
know how to control: one unarmed person speaking out for
human rights in the Russian interior could not be
stopped. The brutal government of Burma today does not
know what to do with Aung San Suu Kyi, a slight, unarmed
woman whose voice expresses the longing of the Burmese
people for freedom. Benigno Aquino was kept in
prison for seven years and still he was a threat to
Marcos. Even when he was killed at Manila International
Airport, his spirit lived on with power to challenge the
seemingly all "powerful" Marcos. When people
withdraw their consent to be governed, the government
experiences a loss of power. As the resistance grows, the
government finds itself increasingly weakened.
Sixth, an indomitable will can bring down an
oppressor. The Brazilians call nonviolence firmeze
permanente, relentless persistence. The old chant, "The
people united can never be defeated" holds great truth.
When I was teaching nonviolence to representatives of the
South Africa Council of Churches in l988, the government
had just declared emergency rule and the anti-apartheid
movement was very discouraged. Things had never been
worse. Repression was enormous. But one old woman
stood up and said, "In Soweto we have a saying, ŒThe
dying horse kicks hardest just before it dies.‚ The
South African government is coming down harder than ever
because our movement is wearing it down. They know if
they don‚t stop us, they will collapse". She
was very wise. It was not long before President deKlerk
released Nelson Mandela, called for national elections
and the apartheid regime was thrown out by the people
they had oppressed for so long. In like manner, the
Filipino people‚s resistance to dictatorship finally
won the day.
Seventh, training is important in preparing a people
for nonviolent resistance. In 1984 and 1985 many
workshops in nonviolence were held with student, labor
and religious activists opposing dictatorship. When the
elections were called poll watchers were trained all over
the country. During the EDSA resistance, Radio
Veritas continually prepared people for the struggle,
with such things as readings of Jesus, Gandhi, King and
others, along with practical instructions (bring food and
water, no weapons, damp clothes and calamunsi in case of
tear gas, etc.). We should not rely on spontaneity
to bring about a culture of peace and nonviolence. It
must be prepared for in our churches and schools and
community organizations. Step by step, vision, strategy
and tactics need to be developed for hopeful, peace
change. Eighth, the People Power movement was only a
first step; it is not magic nor does it by-pass the need
of careful, wise next steps. Systemic change is an
ongoing, organic process that has to deal with all the
pillars of oppression in a society. Bringing down an
oppressor must be followed by replacing the oppressive
structures with structures that are just. This is the
role of a real democracy, which is the
institutionalization of nonviolent problem-solving in the
social order. Education, conflict resolution, the
struggle for justice, nonviolent direct action,
organizing for special needs, voting on issues,
adjudicating differences, framing laws for change and
reform: all of these need to be perfected as we seek to
build a culture of peace and nonviolence.
Ninth, we need to re-learn history. Too much of what
we have learned centers on battles and wars and minimizes
the multitude of nonviolent episodes and movements in
history. People often scoff at nonviolence as
impractical, even impossible, forgetting Gandhi who said
"Undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be
made in the field of nonviolence". And this has
been happening! In the 1980s alone, dictatorial regimes
were brought down peacefully across Latin America, the
Soviet bloc and parts of Asia and Africa. These have
scarcely been studied; the lessons to be learned are
massive and need to be appropriated for the struggles of
the coming century. And long before the recent past there
is a vast, largely unknown or forgotten history of
powerful nonviolent efforts (e.g., such as the way
Norwegian teachers and judges successfully resisted Nazi
efforts to make Norway a corporate state fashioned after
Nazi edicts; and the 6,000 women in Berlin during World
War II who demonstrated for the release of 1,500 Jewish
men and who would not stop until the men were
released).
Finally, People Power demonstrates the potential power
of religious faith in the building of a just society.
Filipinos, driven by faith and determination, discovered
courage, forgiveness, compassion and hope, as they risked
their lives to save their country. Attending workshops,
campaigning for a dictator's opponent, guarding polling
places--all required a courageous willingness to take a
stand for freedom. Going to "Tent Cities" to pray and
fast and be trained grew out of a determined faith.
Ordinary people did extraordinary things as they sang and
prayed in facing down armed soldiers. Enlisted men
and officers risked arrest and even execution when they
disobeyed orders to open fire on the protesters. People
of various faiths came together at EDSA in a great
ecumenical--nay, interfaith--movement for justice in the
tradition of Gandhi and King. Both Gandhi and King were
grounded in Jesus‚ teaching to love the enemy and
overcome evil with good as they developed the philosophy
and practice of nonviolence. King took the methodology of
Gandhi and the spirit of Christ to fashion a dynamic,
morally grounded, approach to social change that proved
to be revolutionary. People Power was another step in
humanity's quest to build a just and free society.
A global civilization is struggling to be
born.Technology increasingly brings the world closer
together and our interrelationships grow in complexity.
We have become more and more interdependent upon people
ev erywhere. As Dr. King put it, "We are tied together in
a single garment of destiny".
All people of goodwill, who honor truth, goodness and
beauty, are called to work together to fashion a world
culture of peace and nonviolence. We have precedents such
as the People Power movement in the Philippines to
inspire and instruct us.
Dr. Richard Deats taught social ethics at Union
Theological Seminary inthe Philippines 1959-1972. Since
1972 he has worked for the US Fellowship ofReconciliation
and taught nonviolence in over a dozen countries. He
returnedto the Philippines in 1985 and 1986 with Stefan
Merken to do trainings in active nonviolence
sponsored by the International Fellowship
ofReconciliation(IFOR) and hosted by Methodist, United
Church of Christ, RomanCatholic and ecumenical
institutions and groups. Dr. Hilario Gomez and ateam of
students from Union Theological Seminary were a part of
that trainingeffort, as were Fr. Jose Blanco and Tess
Remiro and the nonviolence organization, AKKAPPA. The
IFOR workshops with Roman Catholics were primarilycarried
out by Dr. Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayer of Vienna and
Paris.
Copyright © 2001 TFF
& authors
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