The sun blazed all morning Sunday and rain poured intermittently starting in the early afternoon in Metro Manila. Still, attendance was vigorous at the twin protest rallies—dubbed “Baha sa Luneta” at Rizal Park and “Trillion Peso March” at the People Power Monument on Edsa—condemning the brazen corruption in flood control projects and demanding accountability. Attendance at other mass actions in various cities and towns nationwide, while lesser, was no less impassioned.

“Di mahulugang karayom” was how the space between the Edsa Shrine and the People Power Monument was described at the peak of the assembly—in the picturesque but precise metaphor, a breathless crowdedness of bodies drawn to a specific occasion and mission: to deliver a message to those who plundered taxpayer money and those in the position to impose the correct punishment for the crime.

A variety of messages, in fact: corny or droll—for example, “Bahain ng galit ang mga buwayang kurakot” or (though it suffers in the translation), “Flood the plunderers with anger”—expressing not only outrage but also, in case the critical point is missed, an obvious intent to exact justice. 

It rang true in Bulacan (the province particularly stricken by floods, mostly manmade), where, in Malolos, whole families of parents and young children were reported at a protest march heading to the public market in Calumpit, where residents of 28 barangays took part in the demonstration. 

“Kurakot, ikulong!” (“Imprison the corrupt!”) is the overriding cry. As well: “Panagutin, magnanakaw ng pera ng bayan!” (“Hold the thieves of the people’s money to account!”). The aspired-for scene is obvious: all the crooked, cocky personages in suits and silk dresses who had gotten away with murder, past and present, finally making a perp walk on an imagined stage. 

Those who can read will doubtless detect the messages’ subtext of warning: Ignore at your peril.

Rallies and pickets have been occurring almost daily after revelations of how the public coffers have been pillaged by public works officials, private contractors, and their enablers in strategic government posts such as the legislature. (The economist Solita Monsod is forthright in her view: The guilty lawmakers, whether in the House of Representatives or the Senate, should be made accountable.) Those driven to dire straits by the constant floods—farmers, food delivery riders, sidewalk vendors, housewives on side hustles, many more—are at the end of their rope. Even the wealthy grown jaded to chicanery in high places and the excesses of the politically privileged are revolted by the shamelessness of this crime that runs in the billions of pesos. (And the constant floods are now disrupting the convenience to which they are accustomed.)

Sunday’s mass actions, viewed as the biggest protest demonstrations yet in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration, and which ran the length of the archipelago in smaller versions, thus do not seem like a flash in the pan. (Although it has been made absolutely clear that regime change is not among their demands, they call to mind the protest rallies that sprang unstoppable after Ninoy Aquino’s assassination on Aug. 21,1983.)

For one, the Church, which led the Trillion Peso March, has become involved. Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ Commission on Public Affairs, said in an interview with dzMM that it’s unlikely nothing else will follow: “Hindi puwede na pagkatapos nito, wala nang kasunod.”

He spoke of how the Church has always looked after the poor, and coolly remarked that the protest actions will move forward—“Tuloy-tuloy na ito.” He said a pastoral letter on the matter may soon be issued.

For another, and most significant, young people, including those whose lives have been impoverished by the nonexistent and/or substandard flood control projects that finance the decadent lifestyles of the plunderers and their well-fed progeny—what else can be meant by Sarah Discaya’s blithe remark to her interviewer that the rise in their family fortunes began when she and her husband hitched their wagon to the Department of Public Works and Highways?—are taking their future in their hands.

In an interview with dzMM, Ceejay Angela Bebis, secretary general of the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), provided an encouraging glimpse of the state of mind of young people in these discouraging times. “Malinaw ang tindig ng NUSP,” she said, explaining in eloquent Filipino how her organization is clear in its stand that stolen money should be returned and used for public benefit, and that both the Marcoses and the Dutertes should be made accountable for crimes against the people, including but not limited to ill-gotten wealth and misuse of government funds.

She also said it is correct to put the burden on students to be critical, to uphold the people’s rights, to nurture the spirit of struggle—“ang diwang palaban.”

As it happened, Bebis’ group had spent Sunday morning at the Baha sa Luneta led by the Tama Na network. She said they were to proceed afterwards to Mendiola, where there was a similar although smaller protest action being held closer to Malacañang’s ear, as it were, and thence to the Trillion Peso March on Edsa. But along the way they encountered the beginnings of a scuffle between another group of demonstrators and antiriot police, at which point, she said, they embarked on an organized dispersal.

Asked what she thought of these demonstrators throwing rocks at the law enforcers, Bebis said their action indicated a valid and understandable rage at the plunder of resources that keeps the people in poverty.

On the day made memorable by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s imposition of martial law 53 years ago (on paper; it was actually imposed two days later, on Sept. 23), one listened to this young woman speaking calmly and clearly about the continuing unhappy state of the motherland.

And one became convinced that she is on the way to becoming a socialist—in the manner Terry Eagleton defines the term: “just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.”

Read more: Martial law and the urgency of remembering