Streets named after Fil-Am labor pioneers

Larry Itliong

ALAMEDA, California — The City of Alameda has named two streets in a major property development in honor of Filipino farm workers movement heroes Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz.

Naming the streets after the legendary labor leaders coincides with this month’s observance of Filipino American History Month.

A third street at the Alameda Landing mixed-use community by the San Francisco Bay, Bohol Road, was named after a province in central Philippines.

The Alameda Development Board had invited residents to help name the streets of Alameda Landing after historic figures in remembrance of the city’s rich ethnic and cultural diversity, and Itliong and Vera Cruz perfectly fit the bill.

Last year, the New Haven Unified School District, comprised of 11 public schools in Union City and South Hayward, renamed Alvarado Middle School Itliong-Vera Cruz Middle School in honor of the two Pinoy labor leaders. The Union City school was the first school in the United States to be named after Filipino Americans.

Child laborer turned organizer

Larry Dulay Itliong, a migrant farm worker from San Nicolas, Pangasinan, was the founder of the Filipino Farm Labor Union and served as an organizer for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), an affiliate of American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Itliong started as a child laborer in plantations near Seattle, Washington, and later worked in the Alaskan salmon canneries.

After moving to California in the late 1930s, Itliong helped organize the growing ranks of Filipinos who worked for the fruit and vegetable farms. By this time an estimated 30,000 Filipino workers were employed by the thriving plantations, which also imported labor from Mexico, China and Japan.

By early 1960s Itliong and other “manongs” united Filipino vegetable and grape workers into a cohesive group and established a union headquarters in Delano, California. In the summer of 1965 Filipino farm workers under Itliong staged a sit-down strike after growers refused their demands for better wages. They were soon joined in the strike by Mexican workers belonging to National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by Cesar Chavez.

About two years later the AWOC merged with the NFWA to form the United Farm Workers Union, with Chavez as national director and Itliong as his deputy — an alliance that would change America’s labor landscape.

Philip Vera Cruz

Delano grape strike

Born on Christmas Day 1904 in Ilocos Sur, Philip Vera Cruz came to the United States in 1926, taking menial jobs in farms, canneries and restaurants in Minnesota and Washington States.

Vera Cruz moved to California in the 1950s and with Itliong and fellow workers Benjamin Gines and Pete Velasco organized small groups of Filipino farm workers who ignited the famous Delano grape strike.

Confronted with the prospect of lower wages for their backbreaking work, the Filipinos started a series of strikes in the agricultural towns of Delano and Coachella to demand a better deal from growers.

The protest actions led by Vera Cruz and Itliong soon spread like wildfire in other towns as the Mexican workers joined the protracted strikes and eventually joined their Filipino counterparts in forming the United Farm Workers.

The union, of which Vera Cruz served as vice president, engaged in a series of strikes from 1966 to 1970 to press for recognition and better wages and working conditions.

The strikes gained national attention and paved the way to a forging a collective bargaining agreement with growers that improved the lot of more than 10,000 of the farm workers.

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