This conference begins with the premise that traumatic cultural and ecological events have affected our very being, psychologically and otherwise, yet most of these experiences lie hidden from our consciousness. That by remembering and recovering these experiences, there is potential for healing and transformation. As Octavio Paz3(1976) said, "when History wakes, image becomes deed, the poem is achieved: poetry goes into action."
I'd like to bring Aurora Levins Morales4 (1998) into this discussion. In her book, Medicine Stories, she says:
"Those with privilege cover up the bare bones of what they're up to with all kinds of elaborate theories and justifications, until they persuade themselves [and us] that living at the expense of other people is the right thing to do, a luxury they have earned by excellence, the natural way of life, the righteous and inevitable order of things. Some go so far as to convince themselves [and us] that exploitation is not only justifiable but a kind and compassionate expression of their superiority. These lies saturate our culture in ways both subtle and obvious." [comments added]
"The stories of the abused are full of dangerous, subversive revelations that undermine the whole fabric of inequality."
Senior organizers and tenants in Manilatown. Photograph by Steve Louie, 1976
The International Hotel is one of these stories and is an example of what happens when History is awaken.
In the period after WWII, from the 1950s through the 70s, the city of San Francisco was changing. Whole communities were being dispersed, existing residents moved out. In the word of the times it was called redevelopment. So-called blighted neighborhoods would be demolished and new ones built.
Two of those blighted areas were known as Manilatown and Chinatown. Tens of hotels, long since past their prime, had become SROS, single room occupancy units, and older retired Pilipino and Chinese men and women had moved in. Stores, markets, restaurants grew and a community flourished. But as the financial district in downtown San Francisco expanded, these communities were dispersed, destroyed to make way for new commercial buildings.
The International Hotel was one of the last of a series of large SRO hotels that were demolished. The resistance that arose around the Hotel was driven by a community fighting for its very right to exist.
The struggle was marked by four significant elements:
- Tenants fought the evictions, refusing to move, instead of meekly giving in.
- In the context of the Black liberation movement in the U.S. and anti-colonial movements throughout the world, but particularly in Asia, a younger generation of Asian Americans awoke to the histories and herstories of their own communities and returned to join them.
- It became a city-wide, regional campaign. Groups from all over SF and the Bay Area; who were fighting for housing, labor rights, women's rights, against racism and homophobia - unions, groups from different communities - Asian, Black, Latino, White, Gay, Lesbian - all joined together to support the tenants.
- It was part of a larger movement for housing rights and against the displacement of Asian American communities that included Seattle's International District, Waipahu, Hawaii, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, Boston Chinatown, and many others. Communities from different parts of the world were awakening to a common and related story.
"This system which oppresses us all has the courts, laws, and police but our weapons are much stronger - the people and their righteousness." Felix Ayson, I-Hotel tenant [see note 5]. Rachael Romero, San Francisco Poster Brigade, copyright 1976.
Organizing against the evictions began in 1967 and went on for ten years with residents waging a struggle - in the community, at city hall, and in the courts. In 1977, police went into the hotel with horses and weapons to forcibly remove the tenants.
Since 1977, after the evictions, organizing continued and is still going on today, as tenants, their supporters, and the next generation are involved in the creation of the Manilatown cultural center as a new International Hotel is being constructed on the same site as the old one. Today, the memory of the I-Hotel serves as inspiration to a whole new wave of tenant struggles against evictions in San Francisco, Oakland, and the rest of the Bay Area.
On the question of liberation, Aurora Morales (1998) writes:
"A stance of opposition creates a liberated territory, a psychological space in which we can act on the belief that we deserve complete freedom and dignity even when achieving such freedom collectively is still out of reach."
The refusal to cooperate with our dehumanization even when we may not yet be able to stop it is the most essential ingredient of our liberation."
This is exactly what happened at the I-Hotel.
The community that formed around the struggle against evictions at the Hotel created just such a liberated territory. Like the action of Rosa Parks, the tenants refusal to move despite overwhelming odds was the essential ingredient of not only their own but their community's liberation.
The struggle at the Hotel represented the kind of values that people wished for, their deeper aspirations. Values for human life, respect for elders, that people, all of us, matter, didn't generally exist in the world - on the surface maybe, but not in a deeper sense.
Police with tenants' belongings, much of which was never returned or compensated. Photograph by Susan Ehmer, 1977.
In the case of the I-Hotel, when we remember, folks often talk about the Manongs, the older Pilipinos, the residents of the Hotel, of Manilatown. By remembering them, we honor these people, but more so, we honor and remember their efforts to defend their community.
For Asian Americans, by remembering the I-Hotel, we remember our own parents and grandparents; we remember not just Manilatown but Japantown, Koreatown, Chinatown, Little Saigon, Little Bombay, liberated territories where we could speak our own languages, eat our own foods, be safe from racist laws and environments.
For African Americans, perhaps when you hear about the I-Hotel, you will remember the evictions and displacement of your communities, in the Fillmore district in the city of San Francisco, currently in West Oakland or somewhere else in this nation. You might also remember the history of slavery and the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule.
For German and Italian Americans, you might remember how some of your grandparents were rounded up or almost rounded up and placed in concentration camps, along with Japanese Americans during World War II. For all of our communities, are there not similar hidden memories of cultural trauma? And, like the I-Hotel, doesn't each community have its own examples of resistance and liberation?
On another level, it's about remembering the people and their actions that helped to transform society and transform themselves. Remembering that change is possible, that liberation is possible, that each of us matters, and that the power to change things is within us. It's amazing how much we remember these things; how much we want and need to remember these things.
Keeping history alive: Mythologizing and building living organizations
The I-Hotel was one of many struggles of its time. However, unlike many of the others, this particular story has become fable, myth, so that subsequently, each person, each generation takes what it needs from it. It's like a link in a chain, from one generation to the next and to the next again. Through the telling and retelling of the story, our psyches, our communities, succeeding generations become fuller, more connected and more whole.
People remember the I-Hotel. People remember that it was a group of tenants struggling against an unfair situation. Whenever people are working on a housing issue, whenever people are working on a community issue, the I-Hotel often comes up in their conversations.
Today, there are strong intergenerational ties. Rex, one of the second-generation organizers, was just a baby when the evictions happened.
It's become an institution, a living institution, organizationally as well as mythologically. They have established a foundation. They've been able to create a structure to keep it alive, to keep it going. This structure has been built in five specific ways:
- By preventing commercial development on the physical site where the Hotel stood.
- Through annual commemorations at the site that have continued for over 25 years after the evictions.
- Through the presence and activities of the people that fought against the evictions and continue to fight for the Manilatown cultural center.
- Through the creation of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, and
- Through the building of the new I-Hotel.
Past and Present
Looking at the I-Hotel, it's not just about one moment in time.
Because the spread of the events went beyond just the group of people that was directly involved, it united groups that would not have otherwise come together. It made a mark in history that could not be erased, partly because there were so many that witnessed and participated in the events that coalesced around it.
"Ode to Al Robles," a poem written at the site where the old I-Hotel stood that was vacant for over 20 years. Photograph taken in 2001 at the 24th annual Eviction Commemoration by Belvin Louie.
Because it's been kept alive, it's not just a memory of the past. It's not bound to that time. Either through the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, or the new building, or other events that are happening around it, it makes you want to participate. It's not a static event. It's not just reliving it. It's still very much in formation. It's still open to being shaped. It's about taking what it was and making something new out of it.
For the Trinity plaza and Pacific Renaissance tenants who are currently fighting evictions in San Francisco and Oakland, the I-Hotel stands for the possibilities of what they can do. Looking at the construction of the new Hotel, being able to touch and engage the I-Hotel folk who have been fighting for so long, it gives them hope. It tells them that what they're going through has meaning and significance.
For the next generation, it reminds them of the living history of the Pilipino and Chinese American communities, the physical embodiments of racism and the struggles against it. For those not in those communities, it is a parallel image of your own experiences of oppression. It is a part of cultural memory that legitimizes and validates all of our own progressive ideas and activities.
As one younger activist said, we grew up thinking that it is not Chinese to protest. It is not proper, not the right way to do things. So when she heard about the I Hotel, for the first time she realized that she wasn't crazy for being different. She realized that this has happened before, that there are others that have come before.
What can we glean from this discussion?
- That the tenants' refusal to move opened up a liberated space - a space of resistance.
- Retelling the story is a reminder that the struggle is a long struggle and doesn't end. Even with the construction of the new I-Hotel, the issue of affordable housing for people that have no power still remains.
- Retelling the story helps the generations to remember that our herstory is full of resistance and liberational practices and that this legacy exists for all of us, and
- The soul of the Manilatown community, of all our communities, is indestructible but needs living organizations to keep their memories alive.
Where do we go from here? The awakening process for many is just beginning. Perhaps, part of that awakening is the rediscovery and reclaiming of our collective liberational past, including its failures as well as its successes. If we look deep, each of us can probably find an I-Hotel or similar story in our past. Let us also not forget that regardless which 'side' our ancestors were on, we are free to choose which 'side' we will be on. Finally, in remembering these stories, we may rediscover common and related stories that will not just awaken us individually but bring us together in a larger community, in el pueblo unido, and in a participatory universe.