I can’t wait to drink a Tantalizing Turkish on Larry Itliong Way.
Right now, an effort is underway to rename Paseo de San Antonio in downtown San Jose after Larry Itliong, the legendary Filipino American labor organizer whose role is often overlooked in the history of the modern labor movement.
I was first schooled on Itliong ten years ago, at what was then called the J-Town Film Fest, while watching a 30-minute documentary, Delano Manongs. Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers instigated the legendary Delano Grape Strike of 1965, an event that essentially led to the creation of the United Farm Workers (UFW). The strike went down in history as a Chicano movement under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, but the role Filipinos played in the adventure often gets forgotten. The cigar-toting Itliong, who had only seven fingers, assembled a group of 1,500 Filipinos to strike against the Delano grape growers, unleashing a collaboration between Filipinos, Chicanos and other ethnic workers that survived for decades to come, proving that the struggle for justice was never accomplished or won alone.
Now Larry Itliong will hopefully get his own street.
Paseo de San Antonio is a central pedestrian corridor that connects San Jose State with Plaza de Cesar Chavez. It used to be an actual street, San Antonio, the same San Antonio that continues on the other side of the university, first eastward through the leafy confines of Naglee Park, and then all the way to the East Side.
According to the project committee—which includes the son of Cesar Chavez, the daughter of Larry Itliong, plus former KTVU legend Lloyd LaCuesta—renaming the corridor after Itliong “brings long-overdue recognition to one of the key figures in the farmworker movement—while also honoring the spirit of multiracial, cross-generational solidarity that defines San Jose’s identity.”
Amen. I would only add that San Jose is an international city and it will only get more international as every year goes by.
Aside from physically connecting SJSU with the Man of Fire artwork created in honor of Dr. Ernesto Galarza, a pioneer of bilingual education who laid the groundwork for the labor movement, renaming the street would also symbolically connect the university with downtown in a much more creative fashion, a concept now finally getting the traction it deserves. After decades of grandiose downtown failures, the politicians now finally seem to realize that nothing good will ever come of the neighborhood unless the campus is directly involved.
Speaking of grandiosity, the pedestrian corridor in question has a long history of creation and destruction, which is why I love the Larry Itliong idea even more.
Back in the ’70s, the city destroyed the whole street just because they could, spending millions in public money tearing up three blocks to construct an outdoor plaza that included walkways, a fountain and various gathering spaces. It was a colossal disappointment—street people regularly bathed in the fountain, whenever it wasn’t filled with garbage and leaves—so 12 to 15 years later, the city tore out everything all over again, while subsidizing more than $15 million for developers who built the Colonnades and the Paseo Plaza condominiums as cheaply as they could.
And guess what? The current generation of developers are now scheming to make a fortune by reimagining the First and Second Street corners all over again for a third time. Or maybe it’s the fourth time. I’ve already lost count. It’s all a blur of historic proportions.
Since Larry Itliong accomplished more than most San Jose politicians or developers were ever able to do, renaming the street is a splendid idea. I hope it happens.
As I write this column over an amazing double espresso at La Lune Sucree on Paseo de San Antonio, I am surrounded by SJSU students, city employees and downtown impresarios. The young energy is contagious. Next door, the line of colorful twenty-somethings in yoga pants waiting at Philz Coffee is a mile long. Two brand-new restaurants—Meimei Dumpling and Sumi Sushi—sit directly across the Paseo, with even more in the pipeline.
At Philz, I know the Aromatic Arabic. I know the Tantalizing Turkish. Both are delectable. They would be a thousand times better on Larry Itliong Way.
