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I N T R O D U C T I O N “Coming Home to a Fresh Crop of Rice” “W E WON’T MOVE!” thousands chanted on August 4, 1977, as police on horseback clubbed their way to the front door of the International Hotel at 848 Kearny Street.1 The hotel was the last remnant of the ten-block Manilatown neighborhood that stretched along Kearny Street between San Francisco’s Chinatown and financial district. After hours of attacks by police swinging batons, the “human barricade” of thousands of nonviolent demonstrators who had massed in front of the building relented. People inside the building sat on the floor, locked arms, and prepared for passive resistance. In the early-morning hours, sheriff’s deputies rousted each tenant from his room, and the elderly Filipinos and Chinese were led out the door with only the clothes on their backs. Each tenant was accompanied by at least one young activist who served as caretaker and eyewitness to possible police brutality. As the frail tenants emerged from the front door, thousands who had stayed up through the night cheered in support and wept. When the Sheriff’s Department evicted the I-Hotel tenants, it was the culmination of a conflict that had had lasted almost a decade. Starting in 1968 with a core of elderly first-generation Filipino immigrants, the anti-eviction movement quickly grew to incorporate radicalized Asian American youth, particularly Filipinos. The first generation of Filipinos in San Francisco’s Manilatown planted the seeds of activism when they resisted eviction from their home and community , and their example inspired Filipino college students and other young people to become activists themselves. 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, the Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP), or Union of Democratic Filipinos. Before becoming involved in the I-Hotel struggle, I had participated in the emerging Filipino American identity movement in Los Angeles as a founder of Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), one of the first Filipino youth organizations formed during the upsurge of the late 1960s.2 I moved to San Francisco in 1971 and became involved in the activities surrounding the International Hotel, including those that led to the formation of the KDP. I was a member of the three-person KDP I-Hotel team that collaborated with the elderly tenants to lead the struggle, and in this book I tell the history of the anti-eviction movement as a direct participant. I was not there for the entire struggle, but I was present for much of it, and for a time I worked as the bookkeeper for the tenants’ association. During the crucial period leading up to the eviction, I was a full-time cadre assigned by the KDP. There was such a swirl of events, so many activities happening simultaneously, that even when I was directly and deeply involved I could not keep track of it all. Consequently, I draw on many resources in addition to my firsthand experience to tell this story. They include expanded interviews with the two other members of the KDP I-Hotel team, Emil de Guzman and Jeanette Lazam, and interviews with other participants ; newspaper clippings, official documents, letters, meeting notes, and internal memos; and many other sources. I tell the story of the anti-eviction movement from its inception, focusing on the role of Filipinos. At the same time, the story of the International Hotel intersects with the origins of the Asian American movement and the upsurge of the New Left in the 1960s and ’70s. It is also, importantly, a story of how the people of San Francisco resisted the destruction of affordable housing and the expansion of “downtown” corporate interests. I tell these stories to a certain degree, but I pay particular attention to how the International Hotel helped to shape a distinctly Filipino American consciousness. As broad as the movement became (and as intertwined as it was with other narratives), the I-Hotel provided a distinctly Filipino experience characterized by a unique intergenerational bond. The struggle to keep the Filipino immigrants , affectionately known as the “manongs” (a Filipino term of endearment for elder brother or uncle), in their homes for almost a decade created deep ties between these impoverished pioneers and the college-age Filipino activists who came to their aid. For the youth, the...

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