Located within the Sutro Library on Winston Drive is the Labor Archives and Research Center, (LARC) a lesser-known wealth of historical materials, photos and exhibits, evolving as information is confirmed and collected--archiving the rich labor heritage in the Bay Area. The LARC 22nd Annual Anniversary Celebration Program was held on February 29, 2008, at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 34.

LARC director Catherine Powell organized and coordinated the program, which included music by Filipino jazz band, Little Brown Brothers, announcement of SF State LARC essay contest winners, and an introduction by professor of Ethnic Studies, Dan Gonzales.

“It’s getting out the word to the community and we use this as a fundraising opportunity for the Labor Archives because we need to raise probably about $30,000 a year to help pay for our part-time staff and to pay for our special boxes that we put our material in, things like that,” Powell said.

The main event was the presentation of “We Must Eat Dust: Filipino Migratory Labor and Labor Organizing on the West Coast and Alaska, 1920s-1970s” by keynote speaker Dawn Mabalon, Ph.D., SF State assistant professor in the department of history.

Mabalon presented her contributions to the LARC by sharing a slideshow of photos as she explained the significance of Filipino labor in the history of agricultural industry.

“In the early 1930’s, Filipinos were becoming the dominant labor force in the Alaskan salmon canneries.” Mabalon said. “Chinese workers were first, Japanese workers came after and Filipinos, by the early 1930’s became incredibly numerous and they were able to organize into a union, the Cannery Workers Union. It’s really important for Filipino Americans to understand the key role that we play in the United Farm Workers.”

Coming from a family of farm-workers, Mabalon is a part of the first generation in her family to have never had to work in the fields. A solid connection lies in Stockton’s roots and its connection to labor history. Mabalon is co-founder and board member of the Little Manila Foundation, a foundation focused on the preservation of land in Stockton.

“We started the Little Manila Foundation when we realized that the city was going to start tearing down even more of the Little Manila area,” Mabalon said. “The city and the state had already torn down two blocks of Little Manila by the time I was born, in the early seventies.”

Mabalon’s personal experiences and education of Asian American Studies in college sparked a deep interest in Filipino labor history. “Growing up in Stockton, I saw some old-timers still hanging around in the old restaurants and old card rooms and poolhalls, but only a few. I didn’t realize that there was this whole huge community there. One of them is the Mariposa Hotel, which is the headquarters of the 1948 Strike in which a number of labor leaders were involved, like Philip Veracruz and Larry Itliong, who would go on to lead the Delano grape strike and co-found the UFW with Cesar Chavez.”

Intermissions were filled with food and drinks provided by union catering and music by Little Brown Brothers. Band members Ben Luis and Carlos Zialcita are both attended SF State and are from the Stockton area. Their awareness and active involvement helped bring cohesiveness to the annual LARC program.

The SF State LARC was formed in 1985, “a joint effort between the labor community and the academic historians since there was a recognition that the local labor record history was being lost,” Powell said. “If we didn’t create a home for it, potentially in a few years, those records would just disappear and that history would be gone.”

Since its formation, the LARC has been hosting its annual events and exhibits focusing “on all issues both the good and bad or the more complicated,” Powell said. “The things we’ve looked at are who are the people of color in unions, where they’ve had to fight for equality both within unions or for working rights in general and definitely the agricultural labor is very strong in that still fighting for rights and protections.”

Mabalon recently published a book with Arcadia Publishing titled Images of America: Filipinos in Stockton early 2008. The book is a detailed in its introduction and the chapters mark a visual map into Stockton’s labor organizing history through developments as generations of Filipinos came and went.

For more information on the LARC and The Little Manila Foundation:
http://www.library.sfsu.edu/about/depts/larc.php
http://www.littlemanila.net/index.php