During the campaign period, despite losing some hours of campaigning in campus, we kept ourselves involved in the brewing movements and the growing calls for the resignation or ouster of President Arroyo through the various marches and mobilizations that took place.

February 22. The entire day, aside from delivering the usual campaign line in the rooms, we invited people to the march around the academic oval in support of Jun Lozada who was to arrive that afternoon in the UP College of Law. By afternoon almost five hundred students joined our bulk behind the law students. By the time the march ended at Malcolm Hall, the crowd had swelled to around a thousand.

February 23. Together with Youth ACT Now, we held another protest march in Quezon Hall which was exclusively covered by Ms. Korina Sanchez of ABS-CBN. Prior to the march, I was also interviewed by Zen Hernandez in Vinzons Hall for a story regarding the ouster campaign on the internet.

Later that afternoon, we proceeded to the Church of the Risen Lord, still in UP, for an interfaith candle-lighting protest, still with regards to the corruption scandal hounding the administration of President Arroyo.

February 25. In commemoration of the first People Power Revolution that ousted President Ferdinand Marcos, STAND-UP joined groups belonging to Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) and other militant organizations in what I could describe as the largest Mendiola rally I’ve been to. A program was initially held at Welcome Rotonda, after which the thousands of people who showed up marched together along Espana all the way to Mendiola. I was surprised we didn’t encounter police barricades that stopped us from marching, and that we were able to take Mendiola and hold a program at the symbolic site.

February 29. It was the last day parties could campaign the entire day. We spent the entire morning inviting fellow students to join the march that would join the interfaith rally in Makati. In the afternoon, we held a short program at AS steps before joining other sectors of the UP community in a march around the academic oval up until Philcoa. Hundreds of students and teachers joined the march.

By the time we reached Philcoa, however, we were met with dozens of policemen who immediately formed a barricade under the overpass. Traffic was stalled and was rerouted because of the barricade. Despite diplomatic negotiations, the police wouldn’t budge and allow us to proceed beyond Philcoa. The bulk of students, teachers and other members of the UP community decided to break up into small groups and commute to Makati and converge at a specified rendezvous point.

In less than an hour, we were able to regroup in Makati and march together to join the estimated 80,000 other Filipinos in the rally.

This was half the crowd in Ayala that afternoon. It was definitely more than the bulk of people who went to the February 15 mobilization. Photo from here, taken by Teddy Casino.