Tenant demonstration, 1972, opposed eviction from the International Hotel. Tenants and community activists opposed then-owner Walter Shorenstein's plan to raze the low-income, residential hotel in order to build a parking lot that would make more profit. Tenants and community activists argued that social needs are more important than the bottom line.

Finding Our Common Interests: Personal Reflections About the Asian Movement

By Liz Del Sol

It was through this network [of students] 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.

While actively supporting the International Hotel struggle, I learned that the Manongs' early experiences were not disconnected from today's fight for equal opportunity and other civil rights issues.

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