“What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people – the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many – coming together to shape their country’s course? What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals? “We the People…in order to form a more perfect union. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” These are not just words. They are a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny.”
President Barack Obama, March 7, 2015.
Clarity. Loud Call. Trumpet. Clarion. American Leader. Pinay. When Lillian Galedo calls a community into action, clarion is her middle name.
Much like President Barack Obama’s description, these shapers of America came not from high stations of life, but they would shape our country into a course of inclusion, prosperity and great freedoms. Lillian’s voice resonates with the young ones to the older ones through her examples of consistency, of sustained selflessness, and progress towards the common good. In Dr. Dawn Mabalon’s book, “Little Manila is in the Heart,” 18 pages identify Lillian as a part of the Americanization and ethnic identity movement, Filipino/a American movement, transcending community divisions, the groundbreaking of Stockton’s Filipino Center and an integral part of a University of California, Davis research project on the Filipino community.
Added to that is a high regard for her leadership of Filipino Advocates for Justice (formerly Filipinos for Affirmative Action) since 1980. Her brand of unique leadership is that of an American Pinay, whose personalities are “family, hospitality and openness to cultures.”
The Pacific Crest Trail reportedly “ascends more than 50 major mountain passes and skirts the shores of innumerable bodies of water. Diversity is the hallmark … on its route, temperatures can top 100° F in the deserts and drop below freezing in the mountains.”
Lillian is our modern day’s PCT’s trail angel, embracing diversity and helping fellow life travelers along the way, crossing many pathways and ascending summits.
Dr. James Sobredo, a long distance hiker, who completed 621 miles of Camino de Santiago in Spain and Portugal, and an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at California State University in Sacramento, has this to say: “I admire Lillian Galledo’s dedication. She has been advocating for social justice since the 1970s and has been unflinchingly steady in her social justice work. Lillian has managed to evolve into a pragmatic community leader who has figured out a way to ensure the survival of her Filipino-American organization, even after nearly a decade of budget cuts to social service funding. Many organizations have closed during this difficult budget crisis, especially during the Deep Recession, but Lillian and the Filipino American social justice organizations [she leads] have managed to survive and indeed thrive throughout the decades.”
Ascending her 1st summit of academic research proficiency and efficacy
“I saw my father, Inocencio, a farmworker born in Bohol in 1898 who migrated to the US at age 24, leave the house at 530am and come home at 530pm, covered in dirt. Us kids’ job was to remove his boots and give him his pipe. He then had dinner, watched television for a while and went to bed early. Sometime he would ask us to walk on his back. He would get up the next morning and do it over again. He also worked on Saturdays.”
Her father planted, irrigated and harvested crops like asparagus, lettuce, grapes and sweet potatoes. As extended farmhands, the family helped in harvesting sweet potatoes. Here, she learned the values of teamwork, hard work and discipline, even while in grammar school.
The 1950s was “a generation within our community’s history that emphasized being American”, Lillian Galedo recalled (Mabalon, p.306), “You were now American so you will act like an American.” Our little neighborhood was very diverse, “where we were one of only two Filipino families who had a Filipino mom and dad, the rest were hybrid families, Filipino/white, Filipino/Mexican, Filipino/black.” She was neither taught Tagalog nor Cebuano, as her parents believed, “You are American, you learn English, You will not become a farmworker.”
Raised by her mother to be a God-fearing Catholic, she went to Catechism classes like a good girl — as a child, even fantasizing about becoming a nun — and was generally unaware of the contradictions in the outside world.
Her mother, Sotera, taught her discipline and self-restraint, not to desire things one cannot have, and how “not to aspire to huge expectations.” Her mom declined to sign Lillian’s EOP (a student affirmative action program) papers, as she could not believe all of Lillian’s tuition fees and expenses would be paid for in college. Thanks to her older sister, Herminia’s example Lillian was inspired to reach for her dreams, and entered UC Davis.
At UC Davis, she saw a new way of life, distinctly different from living in unincorporated South Stockton, near the San Joaquin River, which divides the delta from Sacramento on the north and Stockton to the south. Segregationist municipal policies led to no infrastructure in Stockton, where they were not connected to the city sewage system and had no sidewalks. Segregation was a characteristic of the whole city. South Stockton and East Stockton were almost all people of color, while North and West Stockton were predominantly white.
Much like the Pacific Crest Trail, she became exposed to pathways, and later in college, to anti-war activists.
Tackling the 2nd summit of Americanization and ethnic identity
Around the pivotal period of the late 60s, she read the Warren Report’s findings about urban unrest following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, the march from Selma to Montgomery and the killings of the four students inside a church in Alabama, while the war in Vietnam was raging.
In college, she heard student activists like Jean Quan, who would later became Mayor of Oakland, educate students about the Vietnam war.As a work study student for Professor Fujimoto, she got a glimpse of the world through the New York Times, which he assigned her to clip from every week. Professor Isao Fujimoto, who himself had rural roots, pushed UC Davis to have community-relevant ethnic studies.
With a Ford Foundation grant, that Prof. Isao Fujimoto helped to secure, students like Lillian, as community researchers tasked to go to their home communities to document their histories. Lillian found herself going back to study the Stockton Filipino community.
Widely known for her social justice advocacies and youth leadership development programs that trains high school students to become engaged in electoral politics, her awards span two decades plus: Asian Business League’s Community Service Award, The Wallace Gerbode Fellowship, Filipinas Magazine’s Community Service and Leadership Award, Californians for Affirmative Action, East Bay Californians Affirmative Action, Berkeley’s Committee on the Status of Women, The Eureka Communities Fellowship, UC Davis’s Alumni Service Award, Filipina Women’s Network’s 100 Most Influential Women, Kenneth Hoh Award for Excellence in Family Bridges, Upward Bound’s Commitment to Social and Economic Equity Award, Philippine News’ Filipino American Pioneer Justice Advocate Award, Multi-Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame’s Women in Service Award, Asian Law Caucus’ Yuri Kochiyama’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2013 and Office of Assemblyman Bill Quirk’s Distinguished Women of the Year, Social Justice Honoree for 2014.
Cynthia Bonta, herself a community leader who heads a non-profit, has this to say: “While I was building my nonprofit organization in Sacramento, Lillian was building FAA and empowering the Filipino American community in the East Bay and the SF-Bay Area to make their voices heard on issues that affected their civil rights in the areas of education, immigration, employment, housing, etc. In 2007, Philippine National Day Association (PNDA), vested her with the Title of Lakandiwa, awarded to an outstanding Filipino American leader. The Lakandiwa translates to the highest regard, whose life achievements are to be emulated; and who is held up, as a role model to the young. The Lakandiwa has a deep understanding of man, arising from knowledge of one’s own history and culture. From such enlightenment comes compassion and service to others.”
The Pacific Crest Trail reportedly “ascends more than 50 major mountain passes and skirts the shores of innumerable bodies of water. Diversity is the hallmark … on its route, temperatures can top 100° F in the deserts and drop below freezing in the mountains. Lillian Galedo is our modern day trail angel of the PCT, embracing diversity and helping fellow life travelers along the way.
The first part of this two-part series appeared in the Asian Journal’s March 14, 2015 issue where we tackled her story from her roots in being raised by a farmworker father and a full-time mother to her time in college at UC Davis.
In college, “I walked into the room, and it was a room full of Asians and it was so empowering to see I could’ve just broken down and cried, “ Galedo remembered. (Dr. Dawn Mabalon “Little Manila is in the Heart,” 309).
Transcending a third summit: From community development to progressive social change.
With a Bachelor’s Degree in Child Development, Lillian went to Stockton where she got a job as an eligibility worker for the County welfare department. After two years, she moved back to UC Davis, where she finished up her paper on “Roadblocks to Community Development in Stockton.” This paper gained critical significance.
During a meeting with County Supervisors, community members offered evidence of the need for the Filipino Center. “Lillian Galedo and Laurena Cabañero, Stockton-based UC Davis researchers made a dramatic presentation in which they showed how the planned Crosstown Freeway would obliterate what had been left of Little Manila after West End redevelopment demolitions. According to Galedo and Cabañero, half of all Filipina/o businesses in Stockton would be destroyed and hundreds of Filipino single men would be displaced. Few had realized the devastation the freeway would bring to the last blocks of Little Manila, “ Dr. Dawn Mabalon described. (Mabalon, 321).
Lillian learned from Jose Bernardo, a community leader, whose charisma was built on humility, and one who bridged the gap between the first generation, those who struggled and learned to preserve their language and culture and the post-1965 immigrants who waged a campaign to fund a housing project for low-income senior citizens and commercial space.
El Dorado and Center streets were the main drag of Stockton, where Filipino Town was located. This was the center where “most happenings” occurred, a place where farmworkers would go to after a days work. In nearby Chinatown, they could buy crunchy pork bellies in paper cones, or eat at restaurants and shop for their basic needs. But, it also the hangout for the homeless, who slept by the riverbanks.
From the mainstream’s perspective, it was a blighted area, but to the farmworkers and their families, it was a place of community, of hospitality, including a place where farmworkers could buy quality work boots and hats.
Little Manila ended up being destroyed, as Stockton’s development plans called for a Crosstown freeway, “cutting a wide swath through Stockton, leaving only two blocks of Little Manila.” (Mabalon, 297).
Lillian no longer has recollection of Washington St., including the house where she grew up in, as it was torn down by redevelopment. But the campaign for a Filipino Center taught her how to build consensus amongst divided members of the community, including how to speak truth to those in power. Lillian crossed more summits.
Seeking to further her knowledge about Filipino American history, particularly how it is portrayed in school textbooks, Lillian joined a workshop at the 1975 Filipino People’s Far West Convention held in Stockton, where she met Cynthia Bonta, Jessica Ordona, Terry Bautista and Vince Reyes, who were Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP) members, interested in education. For two long years, they studied how Filipino history was covered in school textbooks, and reported their findings to the Calilfornia State Board of Education where publishing companies lobbied for their textbooks. The committee’s critique of textbooks offered an accurate telling of Filipino American history, which included a century of community building, footnotes and references, and contributions made by Filipinos, much like the history of Stockton, memorialized in a textbook, meticulously and factually sourced from archival research, written by Dr. Dawn Mabalon.
Fourth summit: At the helm of a non-profit and civic engagement
In 1980, she was hired by Filipinos for Affirmative Action (FAA) — what Filipino Advocates for Justice (FAJ) was formerly known as — as the program coordinator. She came in as one of the last employees hired under the CETA program to do outreach while Jessica Ordona was executive director. A year and a half later, Lillian became the interim director. Under her 35-year leadership, she stabilized funding and grew the organization from a budget of $30,000 to $550,000 and expanded youth development programs from Oakland to Union City, Hayward, and Alameda.
She refreshed the community analysis by looking at the census, which showed that more than 60 percent of the community are foreign born. In the mid-1980s FAA helped parents in Union City respond to high rates of Filipinos suspension and expulsion rates. FAA helped parents bring their concerns to school board meetings winning changes in the school district’s suspension and expulsion process and the way parents were treated by the school district.
More recently FAJ has been advocating for violence prevention programming, through a coalition that includes faith-based and other community groups who went to City Council meetings to obtain violence prevention funding to divert young people away from violent activity and gangs. Today, these young leaders are involved in getting citizens to vote by phone banking, and even, precinct walking, some doing it for the first time. Over the years, Filipino voter participation has increased. In 2008, only 17 percent of the Filipinos voted; in the 2012 elections, that percentage went up to 60 percent.
In 2001, when airport screeners — 60 percent of whom were Filipino in the San Francisco Bay Area — were fired after the September 11 terrorist attacks, FAJ helped them defend their jobs. Most of them were older folks, some of whom were once engineers and other professionals. Some of those who lost those jobs became caregivers and FAJ helped to organize them into an organization called PAWIS. FAJ’s advocacy for the rights of caregivers has expanded since then, joining the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA) and helping to organize the California Domestic Workers Coalition. As 78 million baby boomers age, the caregiving industry in the US has expanded prompting some Filipinos to set up caregiving businesses. Some work their employees 24/7, fail to pay decent wages of overtime pay prompting a clamor from caregiver advocates for a statewide Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The California Domestic Workers Coalition, which also includes the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles, won legislation that authorized overtime pay for caregivers, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2013.
FAJ has also worked on helping caregivers file wage theft complaints. So far, FAJ has helped caregivers win more than $500,000 in ‘lost’ wages. In a partnership between the Asian Law Caucus and FAJ caregiver in Fresno are on deck to win $750,000 in back wages. According to Julie Su, Labor Commissioner of the State of California, “Law is the language of power. Those who speak it get the goods and those who don’t do not.”
But aside from law, organizing grassroots gets workers the goods, while the law protects their rights to those goods. The likes of Lillian Galedo are few and far between, and their clarion leadership styles will resonate for generations to come, as Geraldine Alcid recalls.
“I began working at FAJ, previously FAA in 2006, as the Programs Director. I had always been aware of Lillian Galedo as a leader in the Filipino community, but after working with her closely, I have even greater admiration and respect for her. Her tireless drive and determination to make things happen to further justice have inspired a generation of leaders in the community, whether she’s fighting for immigrant rights, low-wage workers, youth programs or the recognition of the veterans. But the invaluable lessons I take with me are found in her displays of resilience, compassion, self- care and love. Because it’s not what she does at “work” that really set Lillian apart for me. During an exceptionally busy period, Lillian found out she had cancer. For many months she endured extensive treatment. This hardly slowed her down. In that time, she still managed to oversee FAA’s name change to FAJ, launched a website, continued to serve on her multiple boards, and fundraise. There I witnessed her steady optimism and fierce spirit guide her through such an intense personal experience while never missing a beat in her dedication to her community,” Geraldine Alcid shared.
As a caring leader, Lillian volunteered to serve and lead more boards: Equal Rights Advocates, Dignity Campaign for Real Immigration Reform, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, National Network for Veterans Equity, East Bay Asian Consortium, Filipino Civil Rights Advocates, United Way, National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights and The Women’s Foundation.Clarion leadership is Lillian Galedo’s footprint, everyday, while she consciously invites folks to make America a more perfect union, not just for its longtime citizens, but for its immigrants, who are later integrated as citizen voters and community builders. Much like the Pacific Crest Trail that takes us to 50 mountains, Lillian Galedo’s life has taken us to many summits of justice building, fairness and equity for many more.
P.S.: This writer is grateful to her husband, Enrique Delacruz, Ph.D, for his invaluable support in interviewing this public figure and filling in the gaps in civil rights history pertinent to the Asian Americans.