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From: Manilatown Heritage Foundation <mhf@manilatown.org><br><br>
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________________________________________________________________________<br>
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San Francisco's International Hotel<br>
Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction
Movement<br>
</font><font size=5>By Estella Habal<br>
</b>TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS; 227 PAGES; $54.50<br><br>
</font><font face="Georgia" size=3>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.<br>
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. <br>
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.<br>
By 1968, the I-Hotel's tenants were predominantly aging first-generation
laborers referred to as <i>manongs</i> (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.<br>
These <i>manongs</i> - 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.<br>
The struggle took on behemoth proportions. The <i>manongs</i> 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 <i>manongs</i> lived to experience the final
bittersweet victory.<br>
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."
<br>
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
<i>manongs</i> live on forever in celluloid.<br>
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. <br><br>
<i>Terry Hong is media arts consultant at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific
American Program.<br><br>
___________________________________________________________________<br>
<br>
Press release featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, front page of the
Book Review section. Sunday, August 19, 2007.<br><br>
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