150 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy All told, Philippine civil society, a force that played a critical role in the political transition, has expanded rather than been demobilized after EDSA1. In the last 25 years we have seen CSOs exhibit the firebrand political activism, the zeal in community organizing and implementing development projects in urban and rural areas. We have also witnessed how a number of CSOs collaborated with each other to pressure or work through and with the state, other social institutions (media and the Church) and the private sector on shared interests. These collaborative initiatives have produced tactical alliances or coalitions and in some cases, more enduring networks. In the area of community and sector organizing, CSOs worked within the so-called the democratic space to pick up the organizing initiatives in virtually all sectors—from the artisanal fisherfolks to the more dispersed informal economy “workers” (street vendors, unaffiliated small transport operators), and persons with disabilities, to mention a few. The involvement of CSOs in communities is also equally far-reaching, with a number of interventions extending beyond addressing community or local concerns as the propagators of such initiatives were conscious to link these initiatives with larger local, national, and even global issues. Steeped in the tradition of protests, civil society groups retained the capacity to mobilize people on occasions when such mobilizations were needed, be it at the community, local, or national level. The more significant protests that have shown the power of civil society groups in the past 25 years include the sustained mobilizations against the retention of the US Bases (Carranza 2002), the mobilization against constitutional change in 1997, and the popular uprising that led to a change of leadership in 2001. In the area of legislation, a number of laws have been significantly influenced by CSOs, such as the Urban Development and Housing Act (Republic Act 7279) (Shaktin 1999) (Covey 1994), the Anti-Rape Law (Republic Act 8353) (Reyes in Wui and Lopez 1997), the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (Republic Act 8371), the repeal of Presidential Decree 772 or the Anti-Squatting Law, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (Republic Act 9344), and the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Republic Act 9700) (Pakisama 2010) (Bello 2010). On the other hand, despite equally, if not more extensive and sustained campaigns, civil society groups fell short in pressuring the state, specifically Congress, in passing their own version of a statute that was directed at more significant asset/land redistribution, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (Republic Act 6657) (Wui and Lopez 1997).