This past weekend, on Oct. 28, California Attorney General Rob Bonta was honored with the Larry Itliong Leadership Award by the Filipino American Voices United or FAVU. Bonta is the fourth recipient of the award.
FAVU’s mission is to raise up and mentor new generations of Filipino American leadership specifically and Asian American leaders broadly and to influence elections in the U.S. and the in the Philippines.
The nonprofit organization sees Filipino Americans as a political sleeping giant. The last three honorees included: former City of Carson Councilman Elito Santarina, Veterans’ War Memorial Commisioner Rudy Asercion from San Francisco, California; and Christopher Carbonell, first Filipino Guardian Angel in New York.
The Attorney General’s name recognition presents a strong case to become the state’s next governor and Filipino Amercican governor at that.
Bonta, who has been in the state government for more than a decade, has a deep and personal connection to Itliong even though his parents joined the UFW after Itliong had left. The former legislator began his remarks by expressing his gratitude for the fact that more people are learning about the life and legacy of Larry Itliong.
Bonta recounted visiting the Delano Hall for the 50th anniversary of the Delano grape strike.
“I felt the ghosts and the spirits of the room and I just imagine what it would have been like for Larry to call a meeting to ask all of the members of AWOC for a thumbs up or thumbs down are we gonna go on strike and stand for what’s right,” Bonta said.
“The harder path, the path where we could lose we could risk it all and lose our livelihoods and not be able to support our families. Are we going to do what’s right or are we going to do what’s easy? They did what was right and it was the harder path.
Bonta recounted growing up in a trailer at the United Farm Workers of America headquarters in La Paz due to his parents being a part of the movement.
“My parents got paid five dollars a week for their service to the movement my dad work in the front office and the headquarters,” Bonta recounted. “[My father] helped set up health care clinics for farmworkers and my mom was in the preschool helping to make sure that the children of the workers and the activists were learning and growing while their parents worked.”
Bonta recalled seeing Dolores Huerta there and the great labor leader Phillip Vera Cruz.
“Larry was no longer there. But what we were part of Larry started it. He started it in 1965 with the Delano grape strike and on September 8 led the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee,” Bonta said.
He, like so many other of our hermanos who were working in the fields was away from [his] families. They were following the work route West Coast as far up as Alaska into Washington throughout California, and they were alone by design, Bonta explained.
“They came here searching for work and the ability to support their families and adopted to send their money back home to the Philippines. They had a lot at stake. They also looked at the conditions that they lived under and thought they were unfair — and they were unfair– and that they could be better and that if they didn’t take a stand, if they didn’t take action, nothing would change.”
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Up until that point, he had decades of labor organizing experience with the Alaskan salmon cannery union and the ILWU, Local 37. He organized a failed 1948 strike of the asparagus workers in Stockton and a successful strike in 1949. Arguably, he had more organizing experience than Dolores Huerta or Cesar.. Unfortunately he died a few years after the UFW was founded. He was pivotal to the Delano Grape strike and the early years of the UFW.
The Delano grape strike was organized against table grape growers in Delano, California for better wages and work conditions. The strike began Sept. 8, 1965. A week later, the predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) joined the cause. In August 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to create the United Farm Workers (UFW) Organizing Committee.
The strike lasted for five years and relied on consumer boycotts, marches, community organizing and nonviolent resistance, gaining the movement national attention. In July 1970, the strike led to a collective bargaining agreement with the major table grape growers, affecting more than 10,000 farm workers.
FAVU hopes to one make Itliong’s a federal holiday recognized in all 50 states. In 2010, Carson’s City Council passed a resolution establishing Oct. 25 as Larry Itliong Day in Carson and has annually celebrated his life ever since.