After all these years

opinion / Columnists Columnists Gray Matters After all these years By: Michael Lim Tan - @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:15 AM July 28, 2026 Share: As with mass actions past, we had a buddy system in place. Everyone was supposed to keep vigilant about the entire group, but with a special responsibility for at least one “buddy” from the start to the end of the mass action, more popularly known as a rally. One of the organizers approached me at the start and asked if I needed a wheelchair.

(I was using a walking cane, but I declined the offer for a wheelchair.) But times have changed in the 50 years or so since the rallies I participated in, shortly before martial law was declared. Most notably, we were much more leisurely, almost like strolling.

And we respected an agreement with the mall not to chant slogans. Yes, our protest action was in a mall, and it wasn’t against the mall. We would approach people and tell them who we were: a group of elderly, “mga matatanda,” who were as concerned as many Filipinos about corruption and plunder (kurakot), who wanted to make sure the corrupt people in and out of government knew we were not taking things passively, whatever our age might be.

Article continues after this advertisement We were all elderly, although the age range was wide, from the late 40s to the 80s. There was a lot of talk about personal health issues, mostly dietary restrictions (sugar, sugar!), therapies (acupuncture was popular, as was tai chi), but people were not complaining, except about corruption.

We were all just happy to see each other again; some reunions involved people we hadn’t seen in decades.FEATURED STORIES OPINION Four truths on Sara’s trial OPINION A Sona for real life OPINION Captive audience I got to think about the first Philippine rally I ever attended, and it went back more than 50 years, if my memory serves me right. (It seems it might have been the La Tondeña strike, the first ever under martial law, in defiance of a Marcos proclamation.)

The bold move, which had Catholic religious groups providing security by marching on the sides as a cordon, emboldened more strikes—labor and students in particular. The one we had last Saturday was different in many ways. For one, it was being held inside a mall with some tacit agreements with mall management.

No chanting, for example. It was also fairly short; we did three stories, using escalators. (At one point, the straps of my bag—a shopping bag—got caught on the escalator, and I imagined I’d be dragged down rather inelegantly like the American dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan, whose scarf got entangled in a wheel of a car she was riding, strangling her.

She was 50.) Generally, our event was, well, uneventful. No speeches, and even if we had them, there would have been no disagreement, no heckling.

The purpose of the rally was to be visible, our way of speaking out and saying “we do care.” Article continues after this advertisement One janitor did ask my “buddy”—known in her heyday to beat any megaphone—if we were supporting Marcos or Duterte (no one asked about fathers), and we chimed back, “Neither.” The question did get us thinking about how people are still emphasizing personalities rather than issues, but that was to be expected.

People seem to expect saviors and messiahs, and that can be problematic. When I got back home after our senior rally, I caught up with news from India about their education minister finally resigning after massive protest actions against his incompetence and corruption, notably the repeated leakages of licensure exams. I’m still catching up with the details, but it’s striking that amid all the rage, there have been parallel protest currents, including satirical websites where the protesters have been dubbed “cockroaches” and where profiles of suitable leaders would be posted (example: not more than two college degrees).

Article continues after this advertisement The cockroaches have been effective, and I wonder if we shouldn’t have our own ipis brigades. Remember, the dictator Marcos used the term “mosquito press” to insult the opposition press that rose in the wake of the Aquino assassination. The Inquirer was in the forefront.

Cockroaches and mosquitoes can be more than irritating, it turns out. More on India’s cockroach opposition in future columns. But let’s get back to the geriatric brigades, which have been building up slowly.

They actually date back several months, and many people might not even be aware of their existence. More than a protest group, it has its own dynamism (gray dynamism), maybe almost therapeutic for the elderly to feel they’re doing something. It’s therapeutic in the sense of the elderly doing something for each other.

Just remembering our own activism from decades past is important. I found myself being comforted by stories of activists who have passed on—we would make quick calculations about the ages of our deceased friends, sometimes fighting back tears w