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

The recent school shooting in Tacloban City has shocked the nation and reopened urgent discussions about the state of Filipino youth. In the aftermath, various political actors have offered explanations for the tragedy. Among them, Kabataan Partylist Representative Renee Co argued that a “culture of impunity” associated with former President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration may have contributed to the normalization of violence among young people.

Manila — Inihain ni Senador Robin Padilla ang Senate Resolution No. 468 na naglalayong imbestigahan ang patuloy na spy-tagging at summary executions sa Negros Island na iniuugnay sa Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). Matapos ang patuloy na paglolobby at pananawagan ng mga dating rebelde at ilang ahensya ng gobyerno, nakatuon ang resolusyon sa mga kaso ng pagpatay sa mga sibilyan na mga magsasaka, barangay officials, agrarian reform beneficiaries,

Thirty-nine people, including 22 children, were killed in the Rano massacre, one of the bloodiest attacks attributed to the New People’s Army in Southern Mindanao, 37 years ago.

But not every father deserves celebration.

Very few of us former rebels knew Bobet before his tragic death. But when the news came, we grieved because his life represented the same ordinary dream we once shared before ideology taught us to look down on ordinary dreams as too small, too reformist, too insufficient.