Bay Area
It’s Filipino American History Month a Note from an Asian American Israeli
As a pacifist, I find that the news from the Middle East is depressing. The death tolls will rise higher before any talks can begin between the sides. So, I pray for people I know there, an estimated 35,000 Filipinos in Israel, a small part of the 2-3 million Filipinos in the Middle East. But one friend is unique. A Filipino American born in the U.S., he married the Israeli sweetheart of his youth and moved to Israel nearly a decade ago. He is essentially an Asian American Filipino Israeli.
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OPINION
By Emil Guillermo
It’s my birthday this week. I am 118.
No lie.
Prior to this week, I figured age was just a number, and stopped counting.
But now I’m into counting each and every year. With honor.
It hit me as I prepared for talks commemorating October as Filipino American History Month.
My father would have been 118 this year. And only now have I realized that his life has been my life; History is my story.
He was born in the Philippines under the American flag in 1905.
That’s seven years after the U.S. bought the country from Spain after the Spanish American War in 1898. The Treaty of Paris sealed the deal 125 years ago. The U.S. paid $20 million mostly for the Catholic artifacts. Note, that’s less than the Golden State Warriors pay some of their star players.
Through the treaty, my father became more than a Filipino. He was a colonized American national, and able to come to America without papers.
He was legally undocumented.
But when my father came to California in 1928, he was not lucky enough to immediately start a family. Not in 1928, ’38, ’48, but in the ’50s.
What happened? Was he a bumbler in loud, unappealing clothes? Or was he just caught in Filipino American history, a racist one where Filipinos were plugged up, stopped up, dammed up.
Or maybe just damned.
Men like my father were brought in to replace excluded Chinese and Japanese labor, which made the male-to-female ratio among Filipinos around 14-1. You couldn’t find a Filipino wife. Anti-miscegenation laws were also in play. Filipinos were shot or lynched just for looking at a white woman. That often caused riots where angry whites protested the “peaceful penetration” of Filipinos.
My father was only able to start a family well after World War II when Filipino women were allowed to come more easily to America. But my father didn’t take part in the segregated U.S. Army. His health and age prevented him from enlisting. But that meant he couldn’t get the biggest boost into the American middle class and generational wealth—the GI Bill.
We never owned a home, never owned a car, and lived paycheck to paycheck.
If you didn’t serve in the military, you relived the ’20s, the ’30s, and the ’40s in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.
But he did meet my mother. Though not a traditional Filipina “war bride,” she had survived the Japanese occupation of Manila. She hid under sewing machines at a seamstress shop to avoid being forced to become a Filipina ‘comfort’ woman to Japanese soldiers.
She was saved by a Spanish citizen who took her under her wing and brought her to San Francisco.
When she met my father in the early 1950s, it was well after the war. But then, the delayed second generation of Filipino Americans began.
As part of the second generation, I was born in the U.S. But I was always treated like the first, my father’s generation.
Filipino American history has always controlled my life. Even when I break glass ceilings, I am wounded by the shards.
During Filipino American History Month, it only makes sense to honor my father. My story begins with his on the day he was born under the American flag in the Philippines. A colonized American national who was too often treated as less than in America.
So today, this week, is my birthday. I am 118. I will always gladly explain how. It’s in the history of our treatment in America.
A Note from An Asian American Israeli
As a pacifist, I find that the news from the Middle East is depressing. The death tolls will rise higher before any talks can begin between the sides.
So, I pray for people I know there, an estimated 35,000 Filipinos in Israel, a small part of the 2-3 million Filipinos in the Middle East.
But one friend is unique. A Filipino American born in the U.S., he married the Israeli sweetheart of his youth and moved to Israel nearly a decade ago.
He is essentially an Asian American Filipino Israeli.
When Israel was attacked, I contacted him to make sure he and his family were fine.
“We are fine, away from the southern conflict areas,” he wrote to me. “A major intelligence and operational failure by the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]. The watchmen were sleeping. Israel’s 9/11.”
I was relieved to hear he was safe.
“There should have been a trigger with troops rushing in if there was a breach of the high-tech security fence. A quick reaction force. Failure of intel component,” he continued.
But he knew on Sunday something bigger and more deadly was brewing.
“The West Bank is ringed with troops. The northern border is on high alert. And Hezbollah leader Hassan Nazrullah learned his lesson in 2006,” he said. “A big ground war is coming. Two months tops on the fighting. But it is going to be bloody.”
I asked him if he was leaving for safety.
He said he’d canceled a planned trip to the U.S. and was sure he would volunteer for security duties once things were organized.
But he sounded clear and determined as you’d expect an Asian American Filipino Israeli.
“We aren’t leaving.”
He said it with a fearless defiance, full of pride and the willingness to endure whatever it takes in the fight for the right to exist.
It’s the reason the deaths will keep rising, until someone says enough. And then talks will begin.
That’s too late. For me, it’s enough already.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a micro-talk show on www.amok.com
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of February 19 – 25, 2025
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of February 19 – 25, 2025
Activism
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Lateefah Simon to Speak at Elihu Harris Lecture Series
The popular lecture series is co-produced by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Peralta Community College District. Jeffries’ appearance marks the 32nd lecture of the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which has provided thousands of individuals with accessible, free, high-quality information.
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By Scott Horton
United States House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-8) will be a speaker at the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series on Friday, Feb. 21.
The event will be held at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, 10 Tenth Street in Oakland, at 7 p.m.
The popular lecture series is co-produced by the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Peralta Community College District. Jeffries’ appearance marks the 32nd lecture of the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which has provided thousands of individuals with accessible, free, high-quality information.
The overarching goal of the lecture series is to provide speakers from diverse backgrounds a platform to offer their answers to Dr. King’s urgent question, which is also the title of Jeffries’ latest book: “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?”
In addition to Jeffries, Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) will also speak.
“Certainly, now is a time for humanity, in general, and Americans in particular to honestly and genuinely answer Dr. King’s question,” said Dr. Roy D. Wilson, Executive Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and Executive Producer of the lecture series.
“Dr. King teaches that time is neutral but not static. Like the water in a river, it arrives and then quickly moves on,” continued Wilson. “We must urgently create conditions for listening to many different answers to this vital question, and generate the development of unity of action among all those who struggle for a stronger democracy.”
In his book, Jeffries shares his experience of being unanimously elected by his colleagues as the first African American in history to ever hold the position of House Minority Leader.
In January 2023 in Washington, Jeffries made his first official speech as House Minority Leader. He affirmed Democratic values one letter of the alphabet at a time. His words and how he framed them as the alphabet caught the attention of Americans, and the speech was later turned into a book, The ABCs of Democracy, bringing Congressman Jeffries rousing speech to vivid, colorful life, including illustrations by Shaniya Carrington. The speech and book are inspiring and urgent as a timeless reminder of what it means to be a country with equal opportunities for all. Jeffries paints a road map for a brighter American future and warns of the perils of taking a different path.
Before his colleagues unanimously elected him Minority Leader in 2022, Jeffries previously served as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and as an Impeachment Manager during the first Senate trial of the 45th President of the United States.
Jeffries was born in Brooklyn Hospital, raised in Crown Heights, grew up in the Cornerstone Baptist Church and he is a product of New York City’s public school system, graduating from Midwood High School. Jefferies went on to Binghamton University (BA), Georgetown University (master’s in public policy) and New York University (JD).
He served in the New York State Assembly from 2007 to 2012.
Admission is free for the Feb. 21 Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series featuring Congressman Jeffries. Please reserve seats by calling the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center at (510) 434-3988.
Signed copies of his book will be available for purchase at the event.
Alameda County
After Years of Working Remotely, Oakland Requires All City Employees to Return to Office by April 7
City Administrator Jestin Johnson recently told city unions that he is ending Oakland’s telecommuting program. The new policy will require employees to come to work at least four days a week. These new regulations go into effect on Feb. 18 for non-union department heads, assistant and deputy directors, managers, and supervisors. All other employees must be back at work by April 7.
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By Post Staff
The City Oakland is requiring all employees to return to the office, thereby ending the telecommuting policy established during the pandemic that has left some City Hall departments understaffed.
City Administrator Jestin Johnson recently told city unions that he is ending Oakland’s telecommuting program. The new policy will require employees to come to work at least four days a week.
These new regulations go into effect on Feb. 18 for non-union department heads, assistant and deputy directors, managers, and supervisors. All other employees must be back at work by April 7.
The administration may still grant the right to work remotely on a case-by-case basis.
In his memo to city unions, Johnson said former President Joe Biden had declared an end to the pandemic in September 2022, and that since then, “We have collectively moved into newer, safer health conditions.”
Johnson said “multiple departments” already have all their staff back in the office or workplace.
The City’s COVID-era policy, enacted in September 2021, was designed to reduce the spread of the debilitating and potentially fatal virus.
Many cities and companies across the country are now ending their pandemic-related remote work policies. Locally, mayoral candidate Loren Taylor in a press conference made the policy a central issue in his campaign for mayor.
City Hall reopened for in-person meetings two years ago, and the city’s decision to end remote work occurred before Taylor’s press conference.
At an endorsement meeting last Saturday of the John George Democratic Club, mayoral candidate Barbara Lee said she agreed that city workers should return to the job.
At the same time, she said, the city should allow employees time to readjust their lives, which were disrupted by the pandemic, and should recognize individual needs, taking care to maintain staff morale.
The John George club endorsed Lee for Mayor and Charlene Wang for City Council representative for District 2. The club also voted to take no position on the sales tax measure that will be on the April 15 ballot.
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