ABSTRACT
Toward midnight on Tuesday 16 January 2001, text-messaging mobile phones in and around Manila, Philippines, began transmitting the message Go 2EDSA, Wear blck. Within an hour, tens of thousands arrived at Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, which Manileños call Edsa. The avenue already featured a People Power shrine, Our Lady of Peace. The shrine stood at the spot where in 1986 praying nuns had faced down the tanks of President Ferdinand Marcos and helped drive Marcos from power. Over the next four days in 2001, more than a million people, many of them wearing black clothing, gathered in downtown Manila, calling for President Joseph Estrada to step down. A defeated Erap (as Filipinos commonly called Estrada) actually abandoned his office on 20 January.
