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Filipino history has always been very complex — and there’s a lot about Filipino Americans that have been ignored in classrooms and textbooks. While some might know about the history of U.S. imperialism and Spanish colonization, there’s lesser known history about the solidarity between Filipino Americans with Latino, Black, and Indigenous communities.
According to Kevin Nadal, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, the history of Filipino Americans and building coalitions with other groups fighting for social justice, dates back to when Filipinos first arrived in the United States in 1587.
He spoke about everything from Filipinos that fought the civil war with the North in fighting for the freedom of enslaved people in the United States, to more contemporary moments, including the time when Filipinos fought alongside Mexican American farm workers during the Delano grape strike in 1965.
“Understanding the true history of Filipino — or Asian American people — in this country, and recognizing the amount of struggle and oppression as well as resilience and activism that previous generations have done to give them the liberties that they have today can help them to better understand and appreciate their own identities,” Nadal said.
Larry Itilong, a Filipino American labor organizer, was one of the prominent leaders in the Delano grape strike, when he joined forces with Mexican American labor and civil rights activist César Chávez to fight for better wages.
In recent years, more literature has come out about Itliong. For instance, Historian Dawn Mabalon, who passed away in 2018, and writer, artist, and activist Gayle Romasanta wrote the children’s book, Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong. Romasanta also wrote Larry: The Musical based on the book which was performed in San Francisco earlier this year.
The story of Itliong striking alongside Chávez and Mexican Americans shows not only the strong bond Filipino Americans had with the Latino community, but it was one of the prominent examples of solidarity as well as the fight for better wages.
Solidarity across racial lines
There’s also many instances of Black-Filipino solidarity — and vice versa — including when Black soldiers fought alongside Filipinos during the Philippine-American War, which took place from 1899 to 1902, and chronicled Filipinos’ fight for independence from the United States following the end of the Spanish-American War. In the 1970s, when police officers raided the International Hotel in San Francisco to evict Chinese and Filipino residents, students which consisted of Indigenous people of the Reclaim Alcatraz movement and Black Panthers.
“There’s been more than a century and a half of Black-Filipino solidarity that we don’t really talk about that much,” New York-based queer/non-binary writer, dancer, and activist Rhou Zhou-Lee said. They wrote an essay for Reappropriate last year that went in detail about some of those documented histories.
Nadal also spoke about the history of Filipinos fighting alongside Black, Latino, Native American, and other Asian groups for ethnic studies at San Francisco State University — and later UC Berkeley. The former movement was later known as the Third World Liberation Front strikes of 1968.
“Being Filipino — given our history of colonialism and fighting against oppression — it’s part of our fighting spirit,” Nadal said. “It’s something that has always been there. Maybe we have suffered from oppression and colonialism and injustice. But at some point, Filipinos will stand up and say ‘We won’t take this anymore.’ We’re going to fight for what’s right.”
Nadal mentioned that there are many Filipinos presently fighting for the Free Palestine Movement, which defends and advocates for the human rights of all Palestinians. Other Filipino-led movements like GABRIELA USA and BAYAN USA have been vocal about their support for Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war, which has recently put the spotlight on the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine.
A legacy spans generations
Nicole Salaver, project manager at San Francisco-based nonprofit economic and arts organization Kultivate Labs and host of the Cultural Kultivators podcast, is the niece of Pat Salaver, who was instrumental in the founding of the Third World Liberation Front as well as what is now known as Pilipinx American Collegiate Endeavor. Salaver said before that, Pat had a connection to Itliong (who was Pat’s uncle through marriage) and would go to the Delano strikes as a teenager.
“You know how in the movie Forrest Gump where Forrest just happened to be at all these important historical events?” Salaver said. “Somewhat similar to my Uncle Pat Salaver, he was there during the Delano strikes and he was there during the [San Francisco] I-Hotel protests.”According to Salaver, her uncle was a student at San Francisco State University in 1967. “At the time, even though Filipinos represented like one in three of the population in San Francisco, there was still a majority of Filipinos coming to study at SF State, but they didn’t have a political organization to align with,” Salaver said.
She said he was inspired by the strong organizational structure and political activism of the Black Student Union (BSU), so he asked to join since there was no student organization dedicated to Filipino students. While they didn’t reject him, BSU along with Dr. Juan Martinez, a history professor at SF State, encouraged him to start his own Filipino organization to march and protest in solidarity with BSU and the other student activist groups.
From there, PACE was officially born and became one of the groups that made up the Third World Liberation Front, the Latin American Student Organization, the Mexican American Student Confederatio, and the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action. With that movement, the student groups led a five-month strike on campus to protest the college’s admission practices and curriculum which often excluded nonwhite students.
Later after Pat dropped out of college to support his family, he was imprisoned for two years after refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. Salavar said that after he was pardoned, his fire for political action was washed out and he felt regret for not being able to be there for his family during that time.
He passed away in 2019. While Salaver said her Uncle Pat felt shame and guilt for being away from his family during that time, he has made a huge impact in the community and continues to inspire the work she does as well.
“He definitely created change,” she said. Salaver said she’s currently working on a script about her uncle which she hopes to develop in the next few years.
Filipinxs for Black Lives
Kalaya’an Mendoza, is a queer and hard of hearing human rights defender, street medic, and community and safety and mutual protection trainer, whose activism began in the ‘90s when he was a teen fighting to have the San Jose Police Department removed from his high school campus for discriminating against Filipino, Vietnamese, and Mexican youth.
Mendoza worked closely with the Free Tibet movement in 2008 and was at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in support of the Indigenous community. In recent years, Mendoza has also been essential in the Black Lives Matter movement.
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During the Ferguson protests in 2014 following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, Mendoza said he was on the ground as a human rights observer protesting communities from state violence.
“I don’t like transactional solidarity,” Mendoza said. “I don’t like the whole ‘Black folks showed up for us, now we have to show up for them.’ Unless we actually see that our fates are interlinked and intertwined, we have to move from transaction to transformational solidarity, or things are not necessarily going to change for our communities.”
Mendoza also created the poster campaign for “Asians for Black Lives” and “Filipinx for Black Lives” in 2019 on the fifth anniversary of Eric Garner’s death. The design features a raised Black power fist surrounded by golden Philippine sun rays as a way to center the lives, struggles, and liberation of Black people.
“I wanted it to be a mirror for us to see ourselves in the struggle with our Black siblings,” Mendoza said. “It resonated with a lot of folks because it was both a mirror, but also an invitation for how people can show up.”
Present day Black-Filipino solidarity
Blasian March, a solidarity movement for Black, Asian and Blasian communities, was started by Zhou-Lee in Oct. 2020, It held its first inaugural march to commemorate the death anniversary of Jennifer Laude, a trans Filipina woman who was killed by U.S. Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton in 2014.
Zhou-Lee said the movement was born out of what they observed in the movement spaces in New York City, especially at the beginning of Stop Asian Hate, a series of protests held in 2021 in response to the surge in violence against Asians and Asian Americans who were discriminated against during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I noticed there were a lot of offshots for different kinds of rallies that are more specific for the more marginalized communities,” Zhou-Lee said. “There was the Black Women’s March. There were Disabled Black Lives Matter rallies. There were Stonewall protests, which was to uplift the Black LGBT community. But there wasn’t any room for Black Asians.”
And while Zhou-Lee said there were respective movements for Black activists and Asian American activists, they still didn’t see any groups dedicated to both.
“You’d see a few Asian Americans here and there,” Zhou-Lee added. " I learned that a lot of folks might stay away to give the Black community space to be seen and be heard. But I need to give our communities permission to hold space together. So this was a space that specifically called Asian Americans specifically called Black people into one space.”
While Zhou-Lee said Blasian March was only to be a one-time event, it’s since expanded into five cities including Los Angeles and Chicago, where Zhou-Lee used to live and collaborated with many Filipino organizers there. This past summer, the movement hosted its first march in Sacramento, with over 120 people in attendance.
Zhou-Lee said there’s many ways for Filipino Americans to continue to show up for their community as well as others, but they said it all begins with knowing oneself and history.
“Know history, know self,” Zhou-Lee said. “I think once you know that history and start to connect the dots and start to see where your story or struggle is similar to other stories of struggles with the Indigenous communities, with Latino communities, Black communities, other Asian communities. Where do our circles kind of overlap?”
They also said the work needs to be rooted in joy especially since so much of their communities have experienced trauma.
“What I do with our organizing is definitely centering our joy in movement work,” Zhou-Lee added. “We live in a society that is so built on our communities being isolated, our communities not really sharing ourselves as individuals. But once you know your story, once you know the stories of others, how do we now use our joy as a method for liberation?”