The riots in Mendiola and Ayala Bridge last September 21 were one of the global protests in 2025 against corruption and the suppression of civil liberties. These riots occurred simultaneously with the peaceful organized protests in Luneta Park and Edsa Shrine. Such violence was unexpectedly beyond what the protests organizers had anticipated: with the country’s progressive left who hoped to maintain a peaceful protest, young individuals wearing balaclavas attempted to storm Mendiola and the Ayala Bridge with the intention to burn the presidential palace. After a violent confrontation between the police and the rioters, 277 individuals were arrested without stepping foot into the presidential palace. The response of progressive left towards the spontaneous riots were divided: some chided the rioters as ‘agent-provocateurs’ and ‘irrational’ for sabotaging the organized program. Other members of the progressive left who sympathized with the rioters hoped that these rioters would be integrated into organized groups: that their outrage can be effective only if they are shoehorned within an ideological banner. Despite the divergence in opinions, the problem still persists: from the purview of Philippine social movements, public outrage is legitimate only when it is caged within the values of organized politics. Hence, the research asks: How does one make sense of the rioters’ worldviews in relation to traditional political protests? To what extent does their worldview diverge from the discourse of Philippine social movements? The paper will employ the Moral Economy framework (Thompson, 1971; Scott, 1976; Bayat, 1996) to understand the relation between the socio-economic conditions of Philippine urban spaces in the formation of public outrage vis-a-viz street rebellion. To further delve into the inquiries, the paper is organized as follows: (1) The Formation of Political Consciousness in Philippine Urban Spaces, (2) The Rise of the Moral Politics of the Philippine Middle-Class, (3) The Variations of Public Outrage in the September 21 Anti-Corruption Protests, and (4) Street Rebellion and The Creation of Resistance in the Illiberal Turn. After conducting interviews with the protest organizers and the rioters, the research suggests that the logic of ‘deliberative rationality’, ‘political correctness’, and ‘ideological agendas’ behind ‘Good Governance’, 'Accountability Politics', and ‘Organized Politics’ explicitly celebrates the values of the educated middle/upper-middle class sector, prioritizing clarity, discipline, and respectability in the movement by monopolizing social justice values and domesticating the so-called ‘illiberal’ moral universe of the urban poor and the working class.
Keywords: Moral Economy, Anti-Corruption Protests, Uncivil Society, Street Rebellion, Organized Politics