Finding Our Common Interests: Personal Reflections About the Asian Movement
[excerpt]
By Liz Del Sol
It was through this network [of student activists] that many of us actively supported the farmworkers in Delano [to organize a union], especially the Manongs [older Filipino men], and the struggle of the International Hotel in San Francisco. There was a direct link between the Filipino farm workers in Delano and the struggle for the International Hotel [where low-income seniors were threatened with eviction]. Many of the retired Filipinos in the hotel had been farm workers, and many of the older Filipinos in Delano had stayed in the International Hotel in the early 1940s and 1950s. The International Hotel tenants' struggle for decent affordable housing and the farm workers in Delano fighting for collective bargaining through the grape boycott empowered the people in both cases.
My level of political and humanitarian consciousness developed while participating in these struggles. I learned that it is important to know your own ethnic history. And besides that, it is important to take a stand.
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