No rest for the dead

Aaron Inciong

Every September 21, we light candles, whisper prayers, and post “Never Again, Never Forget”. We are told to remember Martial Law—the arrests, the torture, the silencing. But remembrance without anger is useless. Memory without action is like surrendering.

And this year, the streets know it.

Walk through the campuses today and you’ll see it: pens set aside for placards, classrooms giving way to streets. This isn’t a ritual, it is defiance that students are marching not for commemoration, but because corruption has drained this country hollow—and they refuse to inherit the ruins.

This is why 2025 feels different. From the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University to De La Salle University, Bulacan to Cavite, and across Tarlac to Mindanao, students walked out of their classes to march. Entire classrooms spilled into the streets carrying banners against budget cuts and different grievances. The Martial Law anniversary is no longer about ghosts of the past; it’s about the monsters of the present—confidential funds worth billions, missing disaster relief, and schools forced to beg for crumbs while politicians swim in luxury.

And in UP Diliman, the facsimile of the First Quarter Storm and the Diliman Commune remind us that history doesn’t live in books alone—it comes alive whenever students choose to fight back.

Martial Law thrived on unchecked power. Today, corruption thrives on the same disease. Then, the alibi was “saving the Republic.” Now, the alibi is “building the nation.” Same promise, same betrayal, different faces.

What’s striking? The defiance comes from a generation that never lived under Martial Law. They didn’t hear midnight knocks. They didn’t watch journalists being dragged away. But they know. They know because the lies have not stopped, because the hunger is real. After all, the stench of stolen peso is something you don’t need history books to smell.

This is why this matters. Not because rallies look good in drone shots. Not because politicians will suddenly repent—they won’t. 

It matters because students are choosing to carry the torch of rage, turning memory into weapons. They are not commemorating; they are confronting.

I’ve heard people dismiss student protests as “pa-rebelde lang.” But tell me: isn’t it rebellion enough to care when the easier choice is to scroll past the headlines? Isn’t it rebellion enough to march in slippers under the sun when silence promises comfort?

And let’s stop romanticizing this. Protesting isn’t a costume party nor an avenue for you to clout. It’s standing in heat, risking red-tagging, braving water cannons and batons. It’s staking your future because the present has already been stolen. 

Corruption is not numbers on audit reports. It’s the flood swallowing your barangay because up to ₱118.5 billion in flood control funds have allegedly been misused or lost since 2023—projects that never materialized, or were built poorly. It’s the tuition rising even as student subsidies are slashed—the Tertiary Education Subsidy cut from ₱60,000 to ₱20,000 for many college students, leaving the poorest more vulnerable.

So here we are, 53 years since Martial Law, and the young are still in the streets. That should shame us all. Didn’t our elders promise that their fight was so their children wouldn’t have to? Yet here they are— the children, marching. Again.

We will hear them now—that much is certain. Their chants will echo through the streets, their placards will rise like warnings. 

The real test comes after, when the noise fades. Will we keep listening once the streamers are folded away? Or will we, as we always do, wait for the next scandal, the next flood, the next betrayal before we remember to care again?

History does not repeat itself by accident. It repeats because we let it. Because we excuse, normalize, romanticize, and scroll past. Because we would rather stay quiet than risk the discomfort of truth.

The youth are carrying a memory that isn’t even theirs to bear. If they can fight a battle they didn’t start, what excuse do we have?

And maybe that’s the cruelest truth: September 21 stopped being a date we light candles for. It’s a wound that won’t close. A wound that keeps asking the same question—will you finally speak, or will you surrender in silence?