[News] Estella Habal's book launch: San Francisco's International Hotel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

From: Manilatown Heritage Foundation <mhf at manilatown.org>


estella_web1.jpg picture by DiFlooism


________________________________________________________________________

San Francisco's International Hotel
Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement
By Estella Habal
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS; 227 PAGES; $54.50

This is not a spoiler: Estella Habal's " San Francisco 's 
International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in 
the Anti-Eviction Movement" is a story with a happy ending. Proof 
positive is the 2-year-old International Hotel, which stands proudly 
at Kearny and Jackson streets in downtown San Francisco where the 
city's Financial District and Chinatown meet. Topped with 14 stories 
of apartments, including some designated for low- income seniors, the 
building today also houses the International Hotel Manilatown Center 
on the ground floor, which holds more than a century of Filipino 
American history.
The original International Hotel, intended as a luxury destination 
for wealthy travelers, was built on Jackson Street in 1854, moved to 
its 848 Kearny St. location in 1873 and was rebuilt in 1907 after the 
great San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. By the 1920s, the 
International Hotel, known locally as the I-Hotel, found itself 
squarely in the middle of a 10-block Filipino American enclave along 
Kearny Street known as Manilatown, the first Filipino American 
community in San Francisco , and one of the first (and few) across 
the country.
Through the decades, the I-Hotel - and its surrounding neighborhood - 
was home for mostly male migrant Filipino workers. More than rooms 
for rent, "[t]he I-Hotel also served as a social network and cultural 
center," writes Habal.
By 1968, the I-Hotel's tenants were predominantly aging 
first-generation laborers referred to as manongs (a respectful 
Filipino term for elder brother or uncle) who, as victims of 
exclusive anti-Asian immigration laws, had been forced to live 
isolated bachelor lives. Many were also U.S. war veterans. Most, by 
virtue of U.S. colonial occupation of the Philippines from the turn 
of the 20th century until 1946, were American nationals.
These manongs - some of whom had called the I-Hotel home for half a 
century - were served eviction notices in October 1968. The final 
vestige of a once-bustling Manilatown, the I-Hotel stood on a 
valuable piece of commercial property that would bring in more income 
as a parking lot for then-developer and owner Milton Meyer and Co. 
Long familiar with discrimination, the elderly tenants adamantly 
refused to leave. Joined by a new generation of activist Filipino 
American youth who relished the opportunity to reclaim their roots, 
the bitter battle over the I-Hotel spanned three decades, with an 
all-star cast that featured San Francisco 's powerful and elite, 
including George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein and even Speaker Nancy 
Pelosi's brother-in-law Ronald Pelosi. "The effort to save the 
International Hotel was one of the most extensive grassroots 
movements in San Francisco 's history and a major moment in the 
development of the Filipino American community," writes Habal.
The struggle took on behemoth proportions. The manongs fought for 
nine years before they were finally dragged, kicked and carried out 
of the I-Hotel in the middle of the night on Aug. 4, 1977. Despite 
public promises of alternative housing by then-Mayor Moscone, the 
tenants had nowhere to go. Although the fragile community was 
shattered, the struggle continued. More than two more years passed 
before the condemned building was demolished in 1979. Shockingly, 26 
more years would pass before the empty hole along Kearny Street - 
"like an open wound for Filipino Americans, a reminder of both 
discrimination and defiance that marked our history in the United 
States " - was finally filled. Unfortunately, few of the original 
manongs lived to experience the final bittersweet victory.
Habal, an Asian American studies professor at San Jose State 
University and a member of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation's board 
of directors, captures the struggle as a "direct participant": "I 
worked so quietly with the elderly members of the International Hotel 
Tenants Association that many of the thousands of people who also 
participated may never have known my name. Nonetheless, I was there," 
she writes in the opening acknowledgements. "I was one of those young 
activists, and I played a key role in the anti-eviction movement as a 
member of the leading Filipino radical organization at that time."
In spite of a tendency toward repetition and an overabundance of 
minute details that sometimes impedes pacing, Habal's text is 
inarguably thorough scholarship; her supplementary appendices alone 
cover almost 40 pages. Habal's title also serves as a noteworthy 
companion piece to Curtis Choy's award-winning documentary, "The Fall 
of the I-Hotel" (1983, revised 1993 and 2005), in which the tenacious 
manongs live on forever in celluloid.
Habal's dense title is both testament and tribute to a determined 
group of Filipino American men and women who took on corporate and 
government bigwigs and, against all odds, eventually won. What 
emerges is a story of universal struggle - across arbitrary ethnic, 
gender and class lines - the ultimate right for every human being to 
have fair access to decent, affordable housing, to establish a home 
for once and for all.

Terry Hong is media arts consultant at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific 
American Program.

___________________________________________________________________

Press release featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, front page of 
the Book Review section. Sunday, August 19, 2007.

SFChronicleHowonecommunitystooditsg.jpg picture by DiFlooism


SFChronicleHowonecommunitystooditsg.jpg.jpg picture by DiFloois






Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20070912/1a0a5685/attachment.htm>