Bill Text: CA ACR77 | 2013-2014 | Regular Session | Chaptered
Bill Title: Filipino American History Month.
Spectrum: Slight Partisan Bill (Democrat 56-21)
Status: (Passed) 2013-09-27 - Chaptered by Secretary of State - Res. Chapter 149, Statutes of 2013. [ACR77 Detail]
Download: California-2013-ACR77-Chaptered.html
BILL NUMBER: ACR 77 CHAPTERED
BILL TEXT
RESOLUTION CHAPTER 149
FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE SEPTEMBER 27, 2013
ADOPTED IN SENATE SEPTEMBER 11, 2013
ADOPTED IN ASSEMBLY SEPTEMBER 3, 2013
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY SEPTEMBER 3, 2013
INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Bonta
(Coauthors: Assembly Members Chau, Fong, Muratsuchi, Pan, Ting,
Williams, Yamada, Achadjian, Alejo, Allen, Ammiano, Atkins, Bigelow,
Bloom, Bocanegra, Bonilla, Bradford, Brown, Buchanan, Ian Calderon,
Campos, Chesbro, Conway, Cooley, Dahle, Daly, Dickinson, Donnelly,
Eggman, Fox, Frazier, Beth Gaines, Garcia, Gatto, Gomez, Gonzalez,
Gordon, Gorell, Grove, Hagman, Harkey, Roger Hernández, Holden,
Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Levine, Linder, Logue, Lowenthal, Maienschein,
Medina, Melendez, Mitchell, Morrell, Mullin, Nazarian, Nestande,
Olsen, Patterson, Perea, John A. Pérez, V. Manuel Pérez, Quirk,
Quirk-Silva, Rendon, Salas, Skinner, Stone, Wagner, Waldron, Weber,
Wieckowski, and Wilk)
(Coauthors: Senators Lieu, Liu, and Yee)
AUGUST 19, 2013
Relative to Filipino American History Month.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
ACR 77, Bonta. Filipino American History Month.
This measure would recognize the month of October 2013 as Filipino
American History Month and the 426th anniversary of the first
presence of Filipinos in the continental United States.
WHEREAS, Filipinos and Filipino Americans have been contributing
to California and the United States for hundreds of years, ever since
October 18, 1587, when the first "Luzones Indios" set foot in Morro
Bay, California, on board the Nuestra Señora de Esperanza, a
Manila-built galleon ship captained by Pedro de Unamuno of Spain; and
WHEREAS, In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Filipinos helped
Father Junípero Serra establish the California mission system; and
WHEREAS, Since the late 1800s, Filipino communities have existed
in southern Louisiana, according to oral histories recorded by Rhonda
Richoux Fox; and
WHEREAS, After the Philippines was colonized, Filipinos began
immigrating to San Francisco, where they contributed to the city both
as military personnel and as service sector workers such as
bellhops, dishwashers, servants, and cooks; established, by the
1920s, a thriving community around Kearny and Jackson Streets, which
became known as "Manilatown"; and settled, during the post World War
II era, into the Fillmore, South of Market, and Excelsior districts;
and
WHEREAS, Between 1906 and 1935, the first large wave of Filipino
immigration to the United States began, as Filipinos were recruited
to California, Alaska, and Hawaii to work in the agricultural
industries, canneries, and sugarcane plantations, respectively; and
WHEREAS, The Filipino contract workers in Hawaii, or "Sakadas,"
became the largest group of Asians on the sugarcane plantations by
the 1920s; and
WHEREAS, At the turn of the 20th century, Filipino students, or
"pensionados," farm workers, and laborers in manufacturing and in the
service sector began settling in Stockton and the surrounding San
Joaquin Delta area, where they built a community that became the
largest concentration of Filipinos outside of the Philippines and
established a thriving six-block ethnic neighborhood that became
known as "Little Manila"; and
WHEREAS, In 2000, the Stockton City Council designated this area,
in downtown Stockton at the intersection of Lafayette and El Dorado
Streets, as the "Little Manila Historical Site," the first
designation of this kind in the country; and
WHEREAS, In the first decades of the 20th century, thousands of
Filipinos in California worked in agricultural fields throughout the
state, in cities and regions such as the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta, the central coast, Imperial Valley, Orange County, the Inland
Empire, Delano, Bakersfield, Coachella Valley, and the San Francisco
Bay area, and became a critical element in the growth and political
economy of the state, often enduring harsh labor conditions and poor
wages, but persevering and creating a strong legacy of mutual
support, strikes, and organization for farm labor unionization; and
WHEREAS, In the 1920s, Filipinos in California also worked as
laborers in the shipyards of Vallejo, where they established a
Filipino American community and business center, and became so
successful that there were thousands of Filipinos working as
shipbuilders by the start of World War II; and
WHEREAS, During World War II, approximately 200,000 Filipino
soldiers battled under the command of the United States to preserve
the liberty of our country and win back the liberty of the
Philippines from the Japanese occupation; and
WHEREAS, Thousands of these Filipino soldiers came from
California, served in the First and Second Filipino Infantry
Regiments, underwent training at Salinas and at Fort Ord, California,
and were stationed at Camp Beale near Sacramento and Camp Cooke near
Santa Maria; and
WHEREAS, After World War II ended, many Filipinos who had served
in the United States Navy settled in National City and elsewhere in
the County of San Diego, as well as in the Cities of West Long Beach
and Wilmington, where they worked in the Long Beach shipyards and
Terminal Island canneries, served in the harbor area as nurses and
medical workers, and created flourishing Filipino American
communities numbering in the tens of thousands; and
WHEREAS, Between 1941 and 1959, the second wave of Filipino
immigration to the United States began, as nurses, students, "war
brides" and fiancées of World War II military personnel and veterans,
tourists, and Filipino members of the United States Navy came to the
United States; and
WHEREAS, In 1965, the third wave of Filipino immigration to the
United States began, as the passing of the Immigration and
Nationality Act abolished "national origins" as the basis for
immigration, allowing for more immigration from Asia and Latin
America and for much-needed Filipino medical professionals to come to
the United States to fill United States labor shortages; and
WHEREAS, On September 8, 1965, Filipino American agricultural
labor leaders, including Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz,
organized more than 1500 farm workers from the Agricultural Workers
Organizing Committee in the Delano Grape Strike of 1965, in
partnership with César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and other Mexican
American labor leaders of the National Farm Workers Association,
sparking one of the greatest social, economic, and racial justice
movements in the history of California and the United States, and led
to the establishment of the United Farm Workers of America; and
WHEREAS, These agricultural workers, along with other volunteers,
also built Agbayani Village, a retirement facility for elderly
Filipino farmworkers, or "Manongs," located at Forty Acres in Delano
in the County of Kern; and
WHEREAS, In 1968, Filipino student organizers were instrumental in
the leadership of the Third World Liberation Front that led to the
founding of our nation's first Third World College at the University
of California, Berkeley, and the first College of Ethnic Studies, at
California State University, San Francisco, that was part of the
larger effort to democratize higher education for all; and
WHEREAS, From 1968 to 1977, Filipino American activists and
residents of San Francisco's International Hotel organized a popular,
multiracial campaign that challenged local authorities and private
development to place people and the public good ahead of profit, and
support affordable housing for Filipino and Chinese immigrants and
community members; and
WHEREAS, From 1972 to 1986, Filipino American activists organized
massive educational and political campaigns to restore civil
liberties in the Philippines during the period of martial law in that
country, creating dynamic local responses to international politics
and placing pressure on the United States government to end its
support of the Marcos dictatorship; and
WHEREAS, In 1973, the fourth wave of Filipino immigration to the
United States began, as political exiles and refugees from the Marcos
era, intellectuals, tourists, students, student activists,
professionals, semiprofessionals, and families came to the United
States; and
WHEREAS, In 2002, the City of Los Angeles, home to over 120,000
Filipinos, designated part of the city as the "Historic Filipinotown"
district, the largest designation of this kind in the country; and
WHEREAS, The Filipino Community Center of the Los Angeles Harbor
area in the City of Wilmington continues to serve as a model
organization, facilitating community events such as weddings,
baptisms, pageants, and fiestas; and
WHEREAS, Today, numerous other community-based institutions that
take responsibility for the services, advocacy, and civic engagement
needs of the Filipino American community exist throughout the state;
and
WHEREAS, The Filipino American population is currently the largest
Asian American and Pacific Islander group in California and the
third largest Asian American and Pacific Islander group in the United
States; and
WHEREAS, Nine Filipino Americans have received the Congressional
Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor in action against an
enemy force that can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the
United States Armed Forces; and
WHEREAS, Filipino Americans have served the public in a wide range
of capacities, including, but not limited to, Chief Justice of the
California Supreme Court, representatives to the United States
Congress, legislators in the state legislatures of California and
other states, and other city, state, and federal leaders of the
United States; and
WHEREAS, Throughout the history of the United States, Filipino
Americans have made cultural, economic, political, social, and other
contributions to our country that have become an important part of
the fabric that keeps the American people unified; and
WHEREAS, Since World War II, federal, state, and local
redevelopment projects, freeway and highway construction, urban
decay, private development, demographic shifts, and poor city
planning have destroyed a significant number of Filipino American
historic sites and ethnic neighborhoods, and many of the remaining
Filipino American communities and historic sites are in danger of
being lost; and
WHEREAS, Preserving our Filipino communities throughout California
and the United States is critical to the preservation of Filipino
culture, history, traditions, and heritage and to the preservation of
our state and national history as well as our state and national
future; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate
thereof concurring, That the Legislature recognizes the month of
October 2013 as Filipino American History Month and the 426th
anniversary of the first presence of Filipinos in the continental
United States; and be it further
Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of
this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.
