To our friends and comrades in the struggle,

Today, we celebrate the 20th founding anniversary of our humble organization, DAKILA—Philippine Collective for Modern Heroism.

MULA NOON

For two decades now, our organization has been part of the broad social movement participating in the struggle for human rights and democracy. DAKILA was born out of the need to combat apathy. In 2005, the campaign to challenge the Expanded Value-Added Tax (EVAT) was the flame that ignited the passion of a small group of artists and activists to use their creativity towards building a movement of heroism. This small group believed that each ordinary citizen can and should be able to transform society. To recognize, nurture, and facilitate the emergence of people power has always been the North Star of the organization—a nation of heroes, communities working together doing heroic deeds for the nation: Mga Bayaning nagba-Bayanihan para sa Bayan. In this, DAKILA has found its reason for being.

HANGGANG NGAYON

Our organization wholeheartedly embraces an outlook of a nation where DAKILA is not needed anymore—not because we have failed nor our passions have gone cold, but because we have achieved a nation where everyone is already a hero able to live the DAKILA way of life in a society fertile for human rights, democracy, justice, and freedom to grow and thrive.

But this is not the face of our nation today. We have come far, yet the path to dignity and liberation is still a long way ahead. It was corruption then; it is corruption now. We live amid the backdrop of geopolitical and climate emergencies. The organization, in its two-decade short existence, has witnessed farmers and environmentalists being killed in the name of development, the poor being erased in the name of order, activists and advocates repressed in the name of peace, and workers being exploited in the name of progress. These are the times, and the times call for heroes to arise.

DAKILA adheres, always, to the calls of the times, and should the next years and the next generations call for DAKILA to exist, DAKILA will be there. There will always be an organization to be called home and harbor for the tired, cradle and crucible to the angry, to foster and to forge a citizenry fighting for the good, the right, and the just. From the alleys of the metros to the countryside of Luzon, the islands of Visayas, and the expanse of Mindanao, we battle and we blossom.

PATUNGONG BUKAS

“How do we reimagine the world?” remains as one of the core curiosities of DAKILA, shared with the hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals we met and broke bread with in the last 20 years.

In the next 20 and for generations to come, we affirm this question and cast it to ourselves in the pursuit to contribute to the building of a just and humane society.

Humanity’s defining characteristic is the ability to imagine, to foresee the future, and ultimately shape it to our liking. We do not despair. We take comfort in an unknown future, for the future that has yet to take its shape is a future with a thousand possibilities—a chance to build a future where everyone is a hero. We dream and we forge that future into being. Ano ba ang posible? With these hopes and affirmations, we mark this day.

We invite every #LahingDakila, friend, and ally, to dream again like how we did on one quiet night in October 2005. And with that dream, we wake up with the fervor of putting substance on these reimaginations—blood, sweat, tears; laughter, smiles, dancing, and singing songs about the times.

Mangarap, mangarap, mangarap muli.

Ang mabuhay nang dahil sa’yo,

DAKILA

est. 2005