Larry Itliong Day to be celebrated in Poplar
Central Valley Empowerment Alliance, Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies and the Malaya Lions Club are inviting the public, and especially the Filipino community, to attend their annual Larry Itliong Day celebration slated as a two part event from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday at the Larry Itliong Resource Center, 14665 Road 192 in Poplar; and from 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the “40 Acres” at 30168 Garces Hwy, Delano.
The event will include a social breakfast and a program with California State Treasurer Fiona Ma as the Keynote Speaker, and a march.
“The event is directed especially to our young people,” said Cynthia A. Bonta, CVEA Board of Directors. “I would like to think that Larry Itliong Day Youth will be provided and feel the ‘Manong Experience’ — the racial discrimination and inequity the manongs — elders — suffered, which will be recreated through period music and dance, letters from home, poetry, song, readings from ‘America in the Heart’ and “Larry, the Musical, Workshop 2!’”
“Bold and brave were attributes Larry Itliong embodied,” said Mari Perezruiz, Executive Director, Central Valley Empowerment Alliance, Larry Itliong Resource Center. “Today’s times requires us to have the same fortitude and deep love for community. Larry Itliong was a visionary. He saw what was possible if only the community, Filipino and Mexican farm workers, would come together in unity and solidarity.
“Larry Itliong taught me of the importance of shared responsibility and accountability — taking care of our
elders, our Manongs, who have given their all for the betterment of a future that belongs to all.”
It’s in that spirit of radical love for community, through people who have been power-led by community leaders such as Julita Agda, Jaime Pablo, Natividad Mallari, Ruth Martinez, Silvia Almanza and Gregorio Rodriguez, that the Larry Itliong Resource Center keeps its doors open, she said.
“We honor manong Larry Itliong,” Perezruiz said.
Organizing around Larry Itliong Day strengthens them as they remember his boldness in spreading dissatisfaction among powerless workers who quietly suffered through their endless daily toil, said Arturo Rodriguez, program director.
“Working hard did not bring change to their life situation of poverty. They had to demand more — fair treatment, better working conditions and higher wages,” Rodriguez said. “He wanted Filipino farmworkers to get out of their oppression from a capitalist system. And that thought was the driving force that led him to strike and to gain a contract to protect the human dignity of their farmworkers.”
It was the reason Itliong was able to lead the Delano Grape Strike to success while others before him couldn’t, Rodriguez said.
With a theme of “Dahil Sa’yo” translated to “Because of You,” the expression is the title of a favorite song Filipino farmworkers sang in the evenings after dinner at the labor camps throughout their 20s and 30s as young men and into their 60s and 70s as Manongs.
They sang it when they were homesick for home and their loved ones. They sang it to remind them their labor movement for change was to make the future better for the generations to follow, that their reason for being was ‘You,’ event organizers said.
“The young people want to believe ‘you’ meant them — the youth and the younger generation,” said Rodriguez. “We like to think it is addressing ‘us’ the present intergenerational and diverse community.”
The event begins in Poplar with breakfast from 9 to 10 a.m. At that time attendees are also invited to tour the art work and exhibits.
The following two hours is the program. Lisa Gali will emcee and the program will start with a land acknowledgment by Red Cloud Manuel from the Tule River Indian Reservation tribe. Other speakers are Morning Star Gali, a representative from Pit River Reservation, Wounded Knee, Deocampo, Ana Padilla, UC Merced Executive Director Community and Labor Center, a representative of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. The Keynote Speaker will be California State Treasurer Fiona Ma.
A march from the Larry Itliong Resource Center to the corner of Highway 190 and Road 192, where the old UFW Hiring Hall once stood, will follow the program. From there, people are invited to drive to Delano for the second half of the program.