The rise of student power today is reminiscent of the revolutionary, dictator-toppling times of Lean Alejandro and Edgar Jopson. Days after an Ateneo student strike was announced against government negligence, student councils and organizations started following suit. As you read this article, more student strikes from beyond the hill are being planned, coordinated, and executed. 

Duterte is familiar with student power; he’s been trying to stop it for years. His regime’s anti-communist seminars in high schools and allegations of youth recruitment by the New People’s Army show that the fear of a student-led uprising lives in the back of his head. And now that student organizing is rapidly growing, he had no choice but to threaten students in a recent national address. That was a concession of fear from the highest official of the land.

He should be scared. The poor quality of textbooks and classrooms, the sheer number of students’ rights violations, and the forcing of remote learning mid-pandemic and mid-disaster are only some examples of his administration’s continual disregard for education. Students were bound to rise; Duterte himself has made this an inevitability.

The marginalization of students has also made us witness to the similar, if not worse, marginalization of other sectors. After all, within and beside our campuses are ambulant vendors, jeepney drivers, indigenous people, informal settlers. This constant multi-sectoral interaction has led to a warm solidarity between students and larger mass movements, manifested in the active political orientation of student councils, organizations, and alliances. Now, student formations are no longer just pro-student; they are also pro-people. This solidarity work that students perform ties sectors together and serves as a force of unity – essential in anti-fascist movements.

It will thus be of no surprise if Duterte’s downfall begins with student strikes. This generation of students is one that breaks cycles, challenges systems, and fosters intersectionality – in unrelenting fury and hope. It is one that comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable, including themselves. It is one that recognizes the primacy of collective struggle, even if in exchange of personal sacrifice. Even when it is imperfect, it dedicates itself to change. Unfortunate it is for the fascist, the strikes have already begun. And we know how history unfolds upon this turning point.

In fact, it is the irony of all ironies that students now realize the revolutionary importance of liberating education, even as we are constrained to the front of our laptops. Instead, we learn from the masses and go to the streets. We participate in relief and activist efforts as if on instinct after crises. We study in educational discussions and alternative schools those lessons which are relevant to the nation. For us, education goes beyond grades and modules, especially when the people we’re meant to serve are made to drown and suffer. 

Contrary to what anti-strikers say, student strikes are also practical. History knows what coordinated, simultaneous student protests can do – successful examples of which include the First Quarter Storm in the Philippines, the state-flipping Black Lives Matter and anti-mass shooting protests in the United States, and the famous pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and Thailand. When students work together, we can achieve victory. 

Sometimes, the win isn’t direct. Sometimes, protests are beginnings, not ends. The global climate strikes, for example, haven’t reversed the climate crisis, but they’ve raised the collective cognizance on it. At their most naked minimum, student strikes still serve incredible utility for increasing consciousness and practice among people. They agitate and inspire. They set a precedent. They widen students’ options, and add to the repository of collective memory. The first strikes may not achieve the initial goals for which they are set, but they will significantly ripen the times for student organizing and action – as they already have. 

In truth, students face no setback in wielding student power other than a lack of imagination. We aren’t taught the history of the student movement in the classroom, nor are we institutionally empowered to join or create progressive organizations. We have to learn to do these ourselves, and in the process, defy the rules and expectations that are set for us. 

But we are also caring less about those rules and expectations, especially as we see our fellow students struggling to cope in dismal conditions. Harry Roque’s “babagsak kayo” threat was met with strong repudiation; in fact, professors were among the most adamant to reject it, saying they wouldn’t fail their striking students. Labor groups, political organizations, and student council alliances across the board have also been vocally in support of the student strikers. Elsewhere, strikes are being initiated by faculty members, then followed by students. The solidarity is so real and wide, that the setbacks that students face are nothing compared to the threat of a critical mass awaiting the dictator.

Of course, students alone will not stop Duterte. That fight is for the whole country to take. But there is triumph where students side. And because today’s generation of students sides with the country’s oppressed, marginalized, and excluded, Duterte and all that he symbolizes will soon no longer have a place in Malacañang. His fear – nay, his faith – in student power is warranted. The Edgar Jopsons and Lean Alejandros of our times are among us, and they are angry, many, and keen on making new history. – Rappler.com

Aleijn Reintegrado is a Development Studies major in UP Manila and former Rappler intern. She is also the incumbent Chairperson of Akbayan Youth-Taft, and former Vice Chairperson of Students’ Rights and Welfare Philippines.