One line from Atom Araullo's graduation speech at UP Baguio this week hit me harder than I expected. "You don't have to kill your dreams in the name of service. Just make sure your dreams don't require you to kill your conscience."

But his is not only a story about gender. His is also a story about poverty, recruitment, ideology, fear, and the long road home.

For former rebels who spent years organizing in labor and peasant communities, the issue is not as simple as choosing between government praise and leftist rejection.

Sino nga ba talaga ang pinoprotektahan ng Karapatan? Ang mas nakararaming mamamayang nais maging ligtas laban sa terorismo, o ang mga indibidwal na nahaharap sa kasong may kaugnayan sa mga grupong iniuugnay sa armadong kilusan?

The recent Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) mobilization along EDSA deserves attention, not as an endorsement of its objectives or its politics, but for demonstrating a level of organizational capacity that few groups in the Philippines can still match. Regardless of where one stands on the rally’s purpose, the facts are difficult to ignore. The demonstration forced road closures along EDSA, disrupted rush-hour traffic across Metro Manila, prompted the deployment of hundreds of police