In US Congress, a Final Battle for Fil Vet Equity
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net
WASHINGTON DC - The Filipino Veterans Equity Bill finally got its long-awaited hearing day in the US House Veterans Affairs Committee on February 15, eve of the 61st anniversary of the day the US Congress passed the infamous Rescission Act excluding Filipino WW II veterans of the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) from receiving US military benefits.
At the committee hearing chaired by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), 15 witnesses testified in support of the equity bill that will provide approximately 20,000 surviving Filipino WW II veterans with a monthly US military disability pension.
Among those who testified at the hearing were Franco Arcebal, 83, a former Philippine guerrilla intelligence officer in WWII who serves as vice-president of the American Coalition for the Filipino Veterans (ACFV), and Alma Quitans Kern, chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), which initiated the formation of the 20-organization National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE) last December 7.
As veterans affairs committee chair, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Filner has fast-tracked the equity bill, holding the hearing just two weeks after re-filing it as HR 760 on January 31, with Republican Congressman Darrell Issa (California) among the co-sponsors.
"We're going to try to take this up in committee within a few weeks,” Rep. Filner said, “and I would like to take it on the floor (for a vote) before Bataan Day (April 9)."
At the hearing, Rep. John Boozman (R-Arkansas) raised the question of whether the US could afford to pay the full $880 maximum veterans monthly pension to poor veterans with non-service related disability who served a minimum of 90 days in the US military during a wartime period.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) supported the proposal of Rep. Lane Evans (D-Illinois) allocating a $200 monthly pension for veterans in the Philippines which he said was “reasonable” given the cost of living in the Philippines and the fiscal constraints caused by the US deficit and the growing expense of the Iraq war.
Whether the Filipino veterans should accept anything less than the maximum amount to which they are entitled has been a source of contention among the various veterans support groups in the past. All the groups agree, however, that the issue now is passage of the veterans equity bill and that the issue of the amount of the pension to be paid to the veterans should be determined later in the appropriations committees of the Congress.
In reply to a question, Philippine Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Carlos D. Sorreta said that there are only 20,000 WW II veterans still alive today from the 472,000 vets who originally served under the USAFFE. The US Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) provided a higher figure of 22,000, with about 15,000 in the Philippines and 7,000 in the US.
In his testimony, Sorreta urged the committee to pass the bill "on behalf of a nation that has stood by yours in the name of liberty and freedom in World War II, in the uncertain decades after, and in facing today's new and grave challenges."
House approval of the Equity bill will provide momentum for its Senate counterpart sponsored by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) who refilled the bill as S 57 when the 110th US Congress opened on January 4. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), the new chairman of the committee on veterans affairs, promised a senate hearing in April.
“We will get it in and we will get it passed this year,” Sen. Inouye said. Sen. Akaka also reintroduced his Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Bill which would exempt children of Filipino WW II veterans from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas. Sen. Akaka’s bill “seeks to reunite the naturalized Filipino veterans with their sons and daughters, many of whom have been on the immigration waiting lists for years.
In the 109th Congress, Akaka’s bill was included as an amendment to the Omnibus Immigration Reform Bill after it passed the Senate with a vote of 99-0 last year. The Omnibus bill was not enacted into law, however, because the House and Senate could not agree on a compromise bill.
Before the Thursday house committee hearing, members of the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, led by ret. Maj. General Antonio Taguba (author of the Abu Ghraib report), visited the House offices of veterans’ affairs committee members to thank them for their support of the equity and reunification bills and give them Valentine’s Day roses.
It has been 61 years of struggle for the Filipino WW II veterans to rescind the Rescission Act. The veterans in dwindling number hope that the equity bill will finally pass the US Congress this year.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Homeless in New York
Homeless in New York
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net February 12, 2007
New York, New York- In the fashionable Tribeca section of Manhattan is an art design studio called TAMA Gallery owned by my long-time friends, Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva. It used to be caled TAMAD after the Juan Tamad Imports business they established in Berkeley decades ago before they moved. The morning I visited them, as Lilia opened the door to greet me, a neighbor, actor Vincent D’Onofrio, passed by and warmly greeted Lilia. I was impressed.
“Well, actually,” Lilia smiled as we entered her high-end furniture gallery, “there are several other celebs who live on our street — Gywneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Edward Albee, Mariah Carey, Kevin Spacey and that’s just the ones I know about. De Niro’s Tribeca penthouse pad is around the corner, across from the famous Nobu restaurant he owns with partners.”
Later, as we left Lilia’s gallery to eat at the Cendrillon, the premier Filipino restaurant in SoHo, Lilia waved and pointed to another resident of Tribeca whom she sees on a regular basis, a man in his 30s who seemed to be putting some clothes on while seated on the curb.
“That’s Pedro,” Lilia said, “he’s a homeless Filipino.”
What? There’s a homeless Filipino in America? It sounded strange. Yes I know, given the fact that there are now 3.5 million Filipinos in America (up from the 2.4-M estimate 7 years ago in the 2000 Census - which excluded 500,000 undocumented Filipinos), it would be statistically improbable for there not to be homeless Filipinos among the millions of homeless people in America.
It’s just that in our Filipino culture, we generally take care of our own. Somehow, there is always some relative or some kababayan out there willing to take care of a Filipino in need of food and shelter. It's our social security system.
Lilia narrated that when they first opened their art gallery in 2002, this guy just showed up at their doorstep peering inside. Lilia opened the door and immediately felt the sting of a foul stench.
As Lilia recovered from the smell, the man spoke. “Are you a Filipino?” he asked. When Lilia nodded with her hand covering her nose, he said “ako rin” (me too).
Pedro told her he was from Iloilo (his mother’s side) and had immigrated to the US when he was 9 years old. He still spoke Ilongo, which Lilia could speak too as she came from nearby Bacolod. When asked, he refused to reveal where he slept or where he cleaned himself - maski di-in lang da – ‘wherever’) and said getting food is never a problem. New York’s restaurants are probably the most generous to the homeless and needy in the country so Lilia was not surprised.
Pedro wanted Lilia to be his friend. Lilia was open to it but made it a condition of their friendship that he would not ever ask her for money. He agreed.
In a later visit, Pedro asked to use Lilia’s phone to call his sister in Texas. Lilia gave him the phone and after he reached his sister, Meldy, he introduced her to Lilia.
Meldy was grateful that Pedro had found a friend, a kababayan in New York. Pedro had one other friend in the City, a Filipino nurse in the psychiatric ward of the Bellevue Hospital where he would often be admitted to after being picked up in the streets by the New York Police.
Lilia learned from Meldy that Pedro is a schizophrenic but that he was not always so. Once, she said, he was the brightest and smartest of them all, the 9 siblings who immigrated to the US with their parents in the early 80s. Pedro had been a sous chef at one of the top restaurants in Los Angeles, she said. He was in great shape physically and anything he set his mind to, he could do and do well, she added.
But Pedro’s life changed dramatically when his beloved mother died, Meldy recounted. His personality changed, he began to have hallucinations, causing him to withdraw from his family and society, retreating into an inner shell, talking to no one but himself.
Pedro’s siblings from all over the US took turns taking care of him. Then one day, while in the care of one brother, Pedro disappeared. After a frantic search, they learned that he had made his way to New York, living in and off the streets, joining the legion of homeless in the Big Apple.
Schizophrenia is a severely disabling brain disease affecting approximately 1 percent of the US population (almost 3 million in the US). The disease causes its sufferers to hear internal voices, to believe that others are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. These symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn, their speech and behavior so disorganized as to be incomprehensible or even frightening to others.
Large numbers of America’s homeless suffer from schizophrenia, unable to work and maintain normal lives. In the 50s and 60s, many of them were cared for in state mental hospitals but that all changed in the early 70s when California Gov. Ronald Reagan eliminated state funding for the mentally disabled forcing many mental hospitals to shut down and release their patients to live out on their own. Other states followed California and the homeless crisis in America was full blown.
Lilia recounted that one day she received a call from Meldy asking her to pass on to Pedro the news that their Uncle Joseling had died, without any children, leaving all his property in Iloilo to Pedro and his siblings. The brothers and sisters, Meldy told Lilia, had agreed they would give the property for Pedro to use. They wanted Pedro to go back to Iloilo and live in their uncle's house where he would be properly cared for by maids and live off the money the siblings would gladly provide.
Lilia was tasked with relaying this news to Pedro, but she was not quite sure how to convince Pedro to accept the gift. She would try her best as she was convinced this would be best for him.
The next day when Pedro showed up at the gallery, Lilia was all smiles and excited to tell him the good news. She told him that all his siblings were willing to give him their share of their uncle's inheritance because they all love him and care for his welfare.
“This would solve all your problems, Pedro. You wouldn’t have to worry about finding a place to sleep every night, or what to eat. You wouldn’t have to fear police officers or thugs. You could get all the medical treatment you need to get better,” Lilia explained.
Pedro listened intently, nodding his head. At the end of Lilia’s pitch, however, Pedro said “no”.
“What will I do in Iloilo? No way!” he said. The voices inside of Pedro’s head had rejected the idea of leaving the dangerous but familiar streets of New York for the safe, secure but unfamiliar life in Iloilo.
No matter what Lilia said, Pedro was determined not to allow her to change his mind. He was adamant that he would not leave the streets of New York. No way.
When you go to Tribeca (TRIangle BElow CAnal) in New York, you may not bump into DeNiro, Gwyneth, Chris, Mariah, Spacey, Albee or D’Onofrio but you may run into Pedro. You can't miss him. Say hi.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net February 12, 2007
New York, New York- In the fashionable Tribeca section of Manhattan is an art design studio called TAMA Gallery owned by my long-time friends, Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva. It used to be caled TAMAD after the Juan Tamad Imports business they established in Berkeley decades ago before they moved. The morning I visited them, as Lilia opened the door to greet me, a neighbor, actor Vincent D’Onofrio, passed by and warmly greeted Lilia. I was impressed.
“Well, actually,” Lilia smiled as we entered her high-end furniture gallery, “there are several other celebs who live on our street — Gywneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Edward Albee, Mariah Carey, Kevin Spacey and that’s just the ones I know about. De Niro’s Tribeca penthouse pad is around the corner, across from the famous Nobu restaurant he owns with partners.”
Later, as we left Lilia’s gallery to eat at the Cendrillon, the premier Filipino restaurant in SoHo, Lilia waved and pointed to another resident of Tribeca whom she sees on a regular basis, a man in his 30s who seemed to be putting some clothes on while seated on the curb.
“That’s Pedro,” Lilia said, “he’s a homeless Filipino.”
What? There’s a homeless Filipino in America? It sounded strange. Yes I know, given the fact that there are now 3.5 million Filipinos in America (up from the 2.4-M estimate 7 years ago in the 2000 Census - which excluded 500,000 undocumented Filipinos), it would be statistically improbable for there not to be homeless Filipinos among the millions of homeless people in America.
It’s just that in our Filipino culture, we generally take care of our own. Somehow, there is always some relative or some kababayan out there willing to take care of a Filipino in need of food and shelter. It's our social security system.
Lilia narrated that when they first opened their art gallery in 2002, this guy just showed up at their doorstep peering inside. Lilia opened the door and immediately felt the sting of a foul stench.
As Lilia recovered from the smell, the man spoke. “Are you a Filipino?” he asked. When Lilia nodded with her hand covering her nose, he said “ako rin” (me too).
Pedro told her he was from Iloilo (his mother’s side) and had immigrated to the US when he was 9 years old. He still spoke Ilongo, which Lilia could speak too as she came from nearby Bacolod. When asked, he refused to reveal where he slept or where he cleaned himself - maski di-in lang da – ‘wherever’) and said getting food is never a problem. New York’s restaurants are probably the most generous to the homeless and needy in the country so Lilia was not surprised.
Pedro wanted Lilia to be his friend. Lilia was open to it but made it a condition of their friendship that he would not ever ask her for money. He agreed.
In a later visit, Pedro asked to use Lilia’s phone to call his sister in Texas. Lilia gave him the phone and after he reached his sister, Meldy, he introduced her to Lilia.
Meldy was grateful that Pedro had found a friend, a kababayan in New York. Pedro had one other friend in the City, a Filipino nurse in the psychiatric ward of the Bellevue Hospital where he would often be admitted to after being picked up in the streets by the New York Police.
Lilia learned from Meldy that Pedro is a schizophrenic but that he was not always so. Once, she said, he was the brightest and smartest of them all, the 9 siblings who immigrated to the US with their parents in the early 80s. Pedro had been a sous chef at one of the top restaurants in Los Angeles, she said. He was in great shape physically and anything he set his mind to, he could do and do well, she added.
But Pedro’s life changed dramatically when his beloved mother died, Meldy recounted. His personality changed, he began to have hallucinations, causing him to withdraw from his family and society, retreating into an inner shell, talking to no one but himself.
Pedro’s siblings from all over the US took turns taking care of him. Then one day, while in the care of one brother, Pedro disappeared. After a frantic search, they learned that he had made his way to New York, living in and off the streets, joining the legion of homeless in the Big Apple.
Schizophrenia is a severely disabling brain disease affecting approximately 1 percent of the US population (almost 3 million in the US). The disease causes its sufferers to hear internal voices, to believe that others are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. These symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn, their speech and behavior so disorganized as to be incomprehensible or even frightening to others.
Large numbers of America’s homeless suffer from schizophrenia, unable to work and maintain normal lives. In the 50s and 60s, many of them were cared for in state mental hospitals but that all changed in the early 70s when California Gov. Ronald Reagan eliminated state funding for the mentally disabled forcing many mental hospitals to shut down and release their patients to live out on their own. Other states followed California and the homeless crisis in America was full blown.
Lilia recounted that one day she received a call from Meldy asking her to pass on to Pedro the news that their Uncle Joseling had died, without any children, leaving all his property in Iloilo to Pedro and his siblings. The brothers and sisters, Meldy told Lilia, had agreed they would give the property for Pedro to use. They wanted Pedro to go back to Iloilo and live in their uncle's house where he would be properly cared for by maids and live off the money the siblings would gladly provide.
Lilia was tasked with relaying this news to Pedro, but she was not quite sure how to convince Pedro to accept the gift. She would try her best as she was convinced this would be best for him.
The next day when Pedro showed up at the gallery, Lilia was all smiles and excited to tell him the good news. She told him that all his siblings were willing to give him their share of their uncle's inheritance because they all love him and care for his welfare.
“This would solve all your problems, Pedro. You wouldn’t have to worry about finding a place to sleep every night, or what to eat. You wouldn’t have to fear police officers or thugs. You could get all the medical treatment you need to get better,” Lilia explained.
Pedro listened intently, nodding his head. At the end of Lilia’s pitch, however, Pedro said “no”.
“What will I do in Iloilo? No way!” he said. The voices inside of Pedro’s head had rejected the idea of leaving the dangerous but familiar streets of New York for the safe, secure but unfamiliar life in Iloilo.
No matter what Lilia said, Pedro was determined not to allow her to change his mind. He was adamant that he would not leave the streets of New York. No way.
When you go to Tribeca (TRIangle BElow CAnal) in New York, you may not bump into DeNiro, Gwyneth, Chris, Mariah, Spacey, Albee or D’Onofrio but you may run into Pedro. You can't miss him. Say hi.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Star
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Star
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net February 06, 2007
There were ooohs and aaahs everywhere San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom spoke during his one week Sister City visit to Manila last December, where he captivated his audience with his intelligence, Hollywood good looks and personal charisma.
Filipinos there confidently predicted that Mayor Newsom would one day be elected president of the U.S. after succeeding Dianne Feinstein as US senator or Arnold Schwarzenegger as California governor. They readily compared him to John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who possessed, they said, the same qualities they saw in Gavin Newsom.
Unlike Kennedy and Clinton, who were married when they had affairs (with Marilyn Monroe and Monica Lewinsky, respectively), the 39-year old Gavin appeared to be squeaky clean. As an eligible bachelor, he could go out with anyone he pleased and there would be no sex scandal involved.
Well, not quite. Last week, Gavin made front page news all over the country when his best friend and campaign manager, Alex Tourk, resigned after confronting the mayor about his affair with Tourk’s wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, while she worked in his office.
Gavin admitted to the short-lived affair, which occurred a year and a half ago, and apologized to Alex Tourk and to the people of San Francisco for his failure of judgment. His apologies notwithstanding, the Mayor quickly became the butt of jokes as comedians like Jay Leno, announced that what really surprised the people of San Francisco was that Gavin’s affair was with a woman.
Gavin's fans in Manila may be disappointed with the sudden fall of Mayor Newsom’s star but it’s standard fare out there to intrude into the private sex lives of their celebrities and politicians. Still, it was a shock to see CNN interrupt its regular programming to announce "BREAKING NEWS," not of the war in Iraq, but of Newsom's affair. "If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals,” English author and novelist G.K. Chesterton once observed, “it is the modern strengthening of minor morals."
I would like to share a few of my personal encounters with Gavin Newsom. I first spoke with him sometime in March of 2003, when he was still a San Francisco Supervisor. He called me about an article I had written in the Philippine News, and which also appeared in Asian Week and The San Francisco
Sentinel.
The column, “Would this have happened to Gavin Newsom?” was about my arrest by San Francisco police officers who were called in by the Walgreens manager, who mistakenly thought my old (small Ben Franklin) $100 bill was counterfeit. I thought my arrest was racist because I believed then, as I still do now, that had it been Gavin Newsom who presented the $100 bill, the white manager would not have called the police, and the police would not have arrested him.
The fact that I was a lawyer and an elected city official did not change my appearance as a minority. Yes, the Walgreens general manager and the San Francisco Chief of Police apologized to me but it didn't change what had happened. Gavin called me to complain as to why I chose him as an example. “Do you have an ax to grind against me?” he wanted to know. I told him that no, I had nothing against him. He was just the most suitably identifiable white official I could think of to make my point.
“Well, it’s ironic, Rodel,” Gavin said, “because what happened to you happened to me.” “No kidding?” I replied. Gavin explained that one day, he went to his bank to deposit cash from his Russian Hill restaurant, Balboa Café. As the teller counted the money, she noticed a peculiar $100 bill which she examined then applied the counterfeit detector pen to. It turned black which meant that the bill was counterfeit unlike my Walgreens experience when the mark turned yellow, which meant it was good, but still didn’t stop Walgreens or the SFPD from arresting me.
“So what happened?” I asked. “Well,” Gavin replied, “she just returned the bill to me and warned me to be careful next time.”
“Gavin,” I said, “if that had been me, she would have called the police. What happened to me didn’t happen to you.” "Oh." he said.
In retrospect, I can see now that Gavin was reaching out to me, empathizing with me in his own way. But it was also clear to me that his white upper class upbringing limited his ability to understand what minorities and lower income people experience on a regular basis.
He Gavin was elected mayor later that year in 2003. After assuming office in 2004, Gavin made local history by appointing San Francisco’s first woman police chief (Heather Fong) and first woman fire chief (Joanne Hayes-White). He then cemented his place in history when he proclaimed same-sex marriage was legal in San Francisco, allowing more than 4,000 couples to be legally wed before the courts stopped him from continuing the practice.
Gavin became a pariah to many Democrats who blamed him for handing George Bush a major wedge issue to use for reelection in 2004. The extent of this rejection was revealed in a recent interview where Gavin complained that presidential candidate Barack Obama refuses to pose in a picture with him despite the two fundraisers he has done for Obama.
A year ago Gavin called to invite me to join him that Friday in his visit to Bessie Carmichael Elementary School in the South of Market district. I readily accepted the invitation to the one school in the City where the majority of students, the teachers and the principal are Filipino. With Principal Jeff Burgos, Gavin and I went to each of the classrooms and engaged the students and teachers in civic discussions.
He would ask the students “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and the students would respond “doctor, lawyer, nurse, firemen, actor, dancer” etc. He would nod in approval, believing that if students set their goals early, they can work to meet those goals for themselves.
But he recently told us that he realized he was asking the wrong question. “It shouldn’t be ‘What do you want to be?’ It should be ‘What do you want to become?’ It isn’t important that you want to be a lawyer,” he explained. “What’s really important is that you want to become a socially committed environmentalist or advocate for social justice. It’s a state of consciousness, more than a state of being, that’s what really counts.”
I saw in that epiphany a maturing Mayor Newsom, someone who did not want to be just mayor, but a socially committed and conscientious mayor. Will San Francisco voters in November allow him to continue to become that kind of mayor?
Send comments to (Rodel50@aol.com)
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net February 06, 2007
There were ooohs and aaahs everywhere San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom spoke during his one week Sister City visit to Manila last December, where he captivated his audience with his intelligence, Hollywood good looks and personal charisma.
Filipinos there confidently predicted that Mayor Newsom would one day be elected president of the U.S. after succeeding Dianne Feinstein as US senator or Arnold Schwarzenegger as California governor. They readily compared him to John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who possessed, they said, the same qualities they saw in Gavin Newsom.
Unlike Kennedy and Clinton, who were married when they had affairs (with Marilyn Monroe and Monica Lewinsky, respectively), the 39-year old Gavin appeared to be squeaky clean. As an eligible bachelor, he could go out with anyone he pleased and there would be no sex scandal involved.
Well, not quite. Last week, Gavin made front page news all over the country when his best friend and campaign manager, Alex Tourk, resigned after confronting the mayor about his affair with Tourk’s wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, while she worked in his office.
Gavin admitted to the short-lived affair, which occurred a year and a half ago, and apologized to Alex Tourk and to the people of San Francisco for his failure of judgment. His apologies notwithstanding, the Mayor quickly became the butt of jokes as comedians like Jay Leno, announced that what really surprised the people of San Francisco was that Gavin’s affair was with a woman.
Gavin's fans in Manila may be disappointed with the sudden fall of Mayor Newsom’s star but it’s standard fare out there to intrude into the private sex lives of their celebrities and politicians. Still, it was a shock to see CNN interrupt its regular programming to announce "BREAKING NEWS," not of the war in Iraq, but of Newsom's affair. "If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals,” English author and novelist G.K. Chesterton once observed, “it is the modern strengthening of minor morals."
I would like to share a few of my personal encounters with Gavin Newsom. I first spoke with him sometime in March of 2003, when he was still a San Francisco Supervisor. He called me about an article I had written in the Philippine News, and which also appeared in Asian Week and The San Francisco
Sentinel.
The column, “Would this have happened to Gavin Newsom?” was about my arrest by San Francisco police officers who were called in by the Walgreens manager, who mistakenly thought my old (small Ben Franklin) $100 bill was counterfeit. I thought my arrest was racist because I believed then, as I still do now, that had it been Gavin Newsom who presented the $100 bill, the white manager would not have called the police, and the police would not have arrested him.
The fact that I was a lawyer and an elected city official did not change my appearance as a minority. Yes, the Walgreens general manager and the San Francisco Chief of Police apologized to me but it didn't change what had happened. Gavin called me to complain as to why I chose him as an example. “Do you have an ax to grind against me?” he wanted to know. I told him that no, I had nothing against him. He was just the most suitably identifiable white official I could think of to make my point.
“Well, it’s ironic, Rodel,” Gavin said, “because what happened to you happened to me.” “No kidding?” I replied. Gavin explained that one day, he went to his bank to deposit cash from his Russian Hill restaurant, Balboa Café. As the teller counted the money, she noticed a peculiar $100 bill which she examined then applied the counterfeit detector pen to. It turned black which meant that the bill was counterfeit unlike my Walgreens experience when the mark turned yellow, which meant it was good, but still didn’t stop Walgreens or the SFPD from arresting me.
“So what happened?” I asked. “Well,” Gavin replied, “she just returned the bill to me and warned me to be careful next time.”
“Gavin,” I said, “if that had been me, she would have called the police. What happened to me didn’t happen to you.” "Oh." he said.
In retrospect, I can see now that Gavin was reaching out to me, empathizing with me in his own way. But it was also clear to me that his white upper class upbringing limited his ability to understand what minorities and lower income people experience on a regular basis.
He Gavin was elected mayor later that year in 2003. After assuming office in 2004, Gavin made local history by appointing San Francisco’s first woman police chief (Heather Fong) and first woman fire chief (Joanne Hayes-White). He then cemented his place in history when he proclaimed same-sex marriage was legal in San Francisco, allowing more than 4,000 couples to be legally wed before the courts stopped him from continuing the practice.
Gavin became a pariah to many Democrats who blamed him for handing George Bush a major wedge issue to use for reelection in 2004. The extent of this rejection was revealed in a recent interview where Gavin complained that presidential candidate Barack Obama refuses to pose in a picture with him despite the two fundraisers he has done for Obama.
A year ago Gavin called to invite me to join him that Friday in his visit to Bessie Carmichael Elementary School in the South of Market district. I readily accepted the invitation to the one school in the City where the majority of students, the teachers and the principal are Filipino. With Principal Jeff Burgos, Gavin and I went to each of the classrooms and engaged the students and teachers in civic discussions.
He would ask the students “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and the students would respond “doctor, lawyer, nurse, firemen, actor, dancer” etc. He would nod in approval, believing that if students set their goals early, they can work to meet those goals for themselves.
But he recently told us that he realized he was asking the wrong question. “It shouldn’t be ‘What do you want to be?’ It should be ‘What do you want to become?’ It isn’t important that you want to be a lawyer,” he explained. “What’s really important is that you want to become a socially committed environmentalist or advocate for social justice. It’s a state of consciousness, more than a state of being, that’s what really counts.”
I saw in that epiphany a maturing Mayor Newsom, someone who did not want to be just mayor, but a socially committed and conscientious mayor. Will San Francisco voters in November allow him to continue to become that kind of mayor?
Send comments to (Rodel50@aol.com)
Philip Vera Cruz: Visionary Labor Leader
Philip Vera Cruz: Visionary Labor Leader
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 30, 2007
When the 3.5 million of us Filipinos in America, following the lead of all other immigrant groups before and after us, begin to advocate for US parks, streets and schools to be named after our trailblazing pioneers, serious consideration should be given to the name of Philip Vera Cruz, a Pinoy farm worker leader of extraordinary vision and leadership.
A new generation of Filipinos may now get the opportunity to know Philip with the recent publication of Sid Amores Valledor’s “The Original Writings of Philip Vera Cruz” (available on Amazon.com), which was described by Dr. Jovina Navarro from San Jose State University as: an “insightful look into a philosophical and international mind, (whose) experiences influenced his political perspective, which guided his actions.”
Another book, “Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement” by Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva, was initially published by the UCLA Labor Center in 1992 and again in 1995, owing to the high demand for it. In 2000, the University of Washington Press in
Seattle published the third edition of the book (also available through Amazon.com) with a new introduction.
Philip, who died in 1994, was a close personal friend over the years and was ninong (sponsor) at my wedding in 1979. I first met him in 1971 while attending an anti-war rally at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I heard this distinctly Filipino voice speaking over the loudspeakers to an estimated 400,000 people who had gathered to protest the Vietnam War.
I inched my way to the stage to get a glimpse of the man behind the voice. By the time I got to the stage, however, he was no longer speaking but it was still easy to find him as he was the only Filipino backstage. I introduced myself to him and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. We communicated for the next year as he traveled all over the US and Europe encouraging people to boycott grapes and support the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), where he was the 2nd Vice-President under Cesar Chavez and 1st Vice President Dolores Huerta.
When I taught the History of Filipinos in America class at San Francisco State University (SFSU) from1972 to 1978, I often brought my students to Delano to do volunteer work at the Agbayani Village there. Even today, many of my former students at SF State, like Union City Vice-Mayor Jim Navarro, count their visit to Delano as the highlight of their college experience.
Abayani Village, named after Filipino farm worker Paolo Agbayani, who died from a stroke in 1967 while manning a UFW picket line, was Philip's project as he wanted his union to build a retirement village for farm workers. In Delano, they interacted with the manongs (elder brother, an honorific) while doing construction work at the Village. After breakfast on Sundays, we would visit the actual camps where the manongs lived, many of them since the 1930s).
Manong Philip would be our tour guide, giving the students a history of the farm worker experience. In one visit in 1974, I brought along my friends, Craig and Lilia Scharlin, to join my students in Delano and to meet Philip. They were so impressed with Philip during that visit that they decided to do his oral history. Craig and Lilia spent the next decade interviewing him on tape, transcribing the tapes and organizing the narrative to produce their book, “Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement”.
In one chapter of this book, Philip provides an account of his conflict with Cesar Chavez over Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos. This occurred in August of 1977 when Marcos extended an invitation to Chavez to visit the Philippines. The invitation was coursed through a pro-Marcos former UFW leader, Andy Imutan, who carried it to Cesar and lobbied him to visit to the Philippines.
At a UFW Board meeting where the Marcos invitation was brought up, Cesar turned to Philip, who recounts the exchange in his book:
“Well, Philip, what do you think?” and I said, “No, I don’t approve of it. I don’t like the form of government Marcos has created because it’s very oppressive. It’s a dictatorship. There are thousands of political prisoners; people are arrested without charges or benefit of trial.”…I could see that after Chris and I spoke, Cesar wasn’t in the mood to listen anymore. I know how he gets. It doesn’t do any good if I kept talking so I just shut up. Then Cesar said, “Well, all right” and he moved right on to the next order of business and that’s all that was said about that issue. He didn’t want to decide then because he could see that his position was weak.”
After another Board meeting, however, Cesar had the votes he needed to secure support for his Philippine visit (Philip cast the only dissenting vote). In Manila, Cesar appeared with Marcos in photo-ops and was quoted as saying that Marcos’ martial law appeared to be helping the people.
Philip wrote: “What Cesar did there in the Philippines is the saddest day in the history of the farmworkers movement in this country. It was a disgrace. Cesar was toasting Marcos with all those phony labor leaders appointed by Marcos at the presidential palace while, at the same time, on the other side of Manila, the real union leaders were in jail.”
When he returned to California, Cesar invited Marcos’ labor minister, Blas Ople, to speak at the UFW national convention in August of 1977. After Ople told the UFW delegates that the Filipino people support Marcos, Philip rose to challenge that assertion but was prevented from doing so by Cesar Chavez.
Philip asked him why he wasn't allowed to speak: >em> “Cesar said to me, “No, because you’re going to insult him (Ople).” That’s exactly what Cesar said to me then. So what could I do?...You can see what a sad state of affairs Cesar had come to when he was officially gagging a union officer who had been with the union since its inception while allowing a representative of a right-wing foreign government a free voice to speak to the union rank and file.”
In the union elections that followed, Cesar Chavez was reelected union president by acclamation. Dolores Huerta, 1st Vice-President, was similarly re-elected. But Philip Vera Cruz, the UFW 2nd Vice-President from the inception of the Union, was not even nominated. Instead, another Chicano (Mexican
American), Eliseo Medina, was nominated and elected to replace Philip, thus removing the last Filipino to hold a leadership post in a union that came into being because of the Delano Strike of 1965 initiated by the Filipino farm workers.
As an outgoing national officer, Philip was given an opportunity to address the convention, for the last time, and he used it to criticize Cesar Chavez for becoming “reactionary.” “I cannot understand why a resolution was passed to condemn the dictatorship of Nicaragua and, at the same convention, to praise the dictatorship of the Philippines...It cannot be hot and cold at the same time," he said.
In the final chapter of his book, Philip wrote: “Since I left the union, it’s kind of funny or ironic, but I feel liberated. I feel that now I have more freedom…I could say what I felt in my heart and nobody could censure me.”
At Philip's funeral in 1994, many old-time Chicano UFW officials came to pay their respects to a man they highly respected. "He was right and Cesar was wrong", many of them acknowledged.
There are thousands of parks, streets and schools in the United States named after Cesar Chavez. There is not one named after Philip Vera Cruz.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 30, 2007
When the 3.5 million of us Filipinos in America, following the lead of all other immigrant groups before and after us, begin to advocate for US parks, streets and schools to be named after our trailblazing pioneers, serious consideration should be given to the name of Philip Vera Cruz, a Pinoy farm worker leader of extraordinary vision and leadership.
A new generation of Filipinos may now get the opportunity to know Philip with the recent publication of Sid Amores Valledor’s “The Original Writings of Philip Vera Cruz” (available on Amazon.com), which was described by Dr. Jovina Navarro from San Jose State University as: an “insightful look into a philosophical and international mind, (whose) experiences influenced his political perspective, which guided his actions.”
Another book, “Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement” by Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva, was initially published by the UCLA Labor Center in 1992 and again in 1995, owing to the high demand for it. In 2000, the University of Washington Press in
Seattle published the third edition of the book (also available through Amazon.com) with a new introduction.
Philip, who died in 1994, was a close personal friend over the years and was ninong (sponsor) at my wedding in 1979. I first met him in 1971 while attending an anti-war rally at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I heard this distinctly Filipino voice speaking over the loudspeakers to an estimated 400,000 people who had gathered to protest the Vietnam War.
I inched my way to the stage to get a glimpse of the man behind the voice. By the time I got to the stage, however, he was no longer speaking but it was still easy to find him as he was the only Filipino backstage. I introduced myself to him and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. We communicated for the next year as he traveled all over the US and Europe encouraging people to boycott grapes and support the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), where he was the 2nd Vice-President under Cesar Chavez and 1st Vice President Dolores Huerta.
When I taught the History of Filipinos in America class at San Francisco State University (SFSU) from1972 to 1978, I often brought my students to Delano to do volunteer work at the Agbayani Village there. Even today, many of my former students at SF State, like Union City Vice-Mayor Jim Navarro, count their visit to Delano as the highlight of their college experience.
Abayani Village, named after Filipino farm worker Paolo Agbayani, who died from a stroke in 1967 while manning a UFW picket line, was Philip's project as he wanted his union to build a retirement village for farm workers. In Delano, they interacted with the manongs (elder brother, an honorific) while doing construction work at the Village. After breakfast on Sundays, we would visit the actual camps where the manongs lived, many of them since the 1930s).
Manong Philip would be our tour guide, giving the students a history of the farm worker experience. In one visit in 1974, I brought along my friends, Craig and Lilia Scharlin, to join my students in Delano and to meet Philip. They were so impressed with Philip during that visit that they decided to do his oral history. Craig and Lilia spent the next decade interviewing him on tape, transcribing the tapes and organizing the narrative to produce their book, “Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement”.
In one chapter of this book, Philip provides an account of his conflict with Cesar Chavez over Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos. This occurred in August of 1977 when Marcos extended an invitation to Chavez to visit the Philippines. The invitation was coursed through a pro-Marcos former UFW leader, Andy Imutan, who carried it to Cesar and lobbied him to visit to the Philippines.
At a UFW Board meeting where the Marcos invitation was brought up, Cesar turned to Philip, who recounts the exchange in his book:
“Well, Philip, what do you think?” and I said, “No, I don’t approve of it. I don’t like the form of government Marcos has created because it’s very oppressive. It’s a dictatorship. There are thousands of political prisoners; people are arrested without charges or benefit of trial.”…I could see that after Chris and I spoke, Cesar wasn’t in the mood to listen anymore. I know how he gets. It doesn’t do any good if I kept talking so I just shut up. Then Cesar said, “Well, all right” and he moved right on to the next order of business and that’s all that was said about that issue. He didn’t want to decide then because he could see that his position was weak.”
After another Board meeting, however, Cesar had the votes he needed to secure support for his Philippine visit (Philip cast the only dissenting vote). In Manila, Cesar appeared with Marcos in photo-ops and was quoted as saying that Marcos’ martial law appeared to be helping the people.
Philip wrote: “What Cesar did there in the Philippines is the saddest day in the history of the farmworkers movement in this country. It was a disgrace. Cesar was toasting Marcos with all those phony labor leaders appointed by Marcos at the presidential palace while, at the same time, on the other side of Manila, the real union leaders were in jail.”
When he returned to California, Cesar invited Marcos’ labor minister, Blas Ople, to speak at the UFW national convention in August of 1977. After Ople told the UFW delegates that the Filipino people support Marcos, Philip rose to challenge that assertion but was prevented from doing so by Cesar Chavez.
Philip asked him why he wasn't allowed to speak: >em> “Cesar said to me, “No, because you’re going to insult him (Ople).” That’s exactly what Cesar said to me then. So what could I do?...You can see what a sad state of affairs Cesar had come to when he was officially gagging a union officer who had been with the union since its inception while allowing a representative of a right-wing foreign government a free voice to speak to the union rank and file.”
In the union elections that followed, Cesar Chavez was reelected union president by acclamation. Dolores Huerta, 1st Vice-President, was similarly re-elected. But Philip Vera Cruz, the UFW 2nd Vice-President from the inception of the Union, was not even nominated. Instead, another Chicano (Mexican
American), Eliseo Medina, was nominated and elected to replace Philip, thus removing the last Filipino to hold a leadership post in a union that came into being because of the Delano Strike of 1965 initiated by the Filipino farm workers.
As an outgoing national officer, Philip was given an opportunity to address the convention, for the last time, and he used it to criticize Cesar Chavez for becoming “reactionary.” “I cannot understand why a resolution was passed to condemn the dictatorship of Nicaragua and, at the same convention, to praise the dictatorship of the Philippines...It cannot be hot and cold at the same time," he said.
In the final chapter of his book, Philip wrote: “Since I left the union, it’s kind of funny or ironic, but I feel liberated. I feel that now I have more freedom…I could say what I felt in my heart and nobody could censure me.”
At Philip's funeral in 1994, many old-time Chicano UFW officials came to pay their respects to a man they highly respected. "He was right and Cesar was wrong", many of them acknowledged.
There are thousands of parks, streets and schools in the United States named after Cesar Chavez. There is not one named after Philip Vera Cruz.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Bigotry's Logic
Bigotry’s Logic
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 23, 2007
Whenever a Filipino in the US commits or is accused of a crime, fear and trembling rattle the cages of insecure members of our Filipino American community who worry that somehow mainstream Americans will view all Filipinos in a negative light because of it. Even if they were not involved in the crime a Filipino suspect committed or is accused of committing, they nonetheless feel a sense of collective guilt because the alleged perpetrator of the offense is Filipino.
Even secure members of our community fear tarring from the same brush. A decade ago, from April to July 1997, a Filipino American named Andrew Phillip Cunanan went on a cross-country killing spree, taking the lives of five people, including the famous fashion designer Gianni Versace. To find this Filipino killer, the FBI interviewed as many Cunanans as they could locate to see if they were related to Andrew and if they knew where he was hiding. For a time it seemed all Cunanans were suspect. And many Americans viewed all Filipinos as potential serial killers.
It's akin to going to a party where all the guests are white and the one other Filipino in that party, whom you’ve never met, breaks a vase (or kills the host). There is the fear that since you and the vase breaker are the only two Filipinos in the party, the other guests will naturally assume that you were somehow involved as a cohort.
Last week, a popular Filipino Catholic priest in the commonwealth of Louisa, Virginia was charged with embezzling $600,000 from two rural parishes. The charge came as a total shock to the people of Louisa whose District Attorney, Don Short, had known the Filipino priest for a decade.
"It has come as a great shock to folks in the community, and I include myself in that," Short said. "It's someone I've known in the community for 10 years or more as the Catholic priest. He is held in a high level of esteem—he had a following, people liked him."
What will the Americans in that parish, in that county, in that state, in the US think of Filipinos now? Will we be tarred with the same brush because we share a common cultural and ethnic heritage with the accused priest?
What makes this case of particular interest to me, personally, is the name of the accused priest: Fr. Rodney L. Rodis. Within days of the news of his arrest, I received dozens of e-mails and phone calls asking me if I am related to the priest. I responded that I do not know him nor had even heard of him until the news of his arrest. But because Rodis is not a common surname, it is quite possible we share a common ancestor somewhere up the line.
I was uncomfortable with having to dissociate myself from him because it already assumed that he was guilty of what he was charged with and that I wanted to have no connection to him. But he may be innocent and I may be related to him.
Over the years, I have learned that the Rodis clan originated in Indang, Cavite. However, because my grandfather (Arsenio Rodis) grew up in Cebu, where he met and married my grandmother (Asuncion Velez). All the Rodises I have ever known were from Cebu.
About 10 years ago, my mother in San Francisco received a phone call from a Greek sailor who was in town for a visit. He told my mother that he checked out the white pages to see if he had any relatives in town and saw one name that matched his. He wanted to know if we were related.
My mother identified herself as a Filipino and the Greek sailor apologized for taking up her time but did tell her that Rodis was a common surname in Greece. My mother’s account of this call led me to speculate that perhaps some Greek sailor in the 1700s jumped ship in Sangley Point, in Cavite, and decided to live permanently in the Philippines, marrying a local woman and having kids. Perhaps this Fr. Rodney L. Rodis and I share the same Greek sailor as the common ancestor.
About two months ago, a Walnut Creek Superior Court judge asked me about my surname, opining that it sounded Greek to him. When I told that I’m Filipino, he said that I must be a Filipino Greek, a Fil-Greek, a Freak. He laughed at his wit.
Over the weekend, I was awakened by a phone call from a columnist from another newspaper who inquired if I was related to Fr. Rodney L. Rodis. He said a muckraker from Los Angeles was spreading the rumor on the Internet that Fr. Rodis was my brother and that this incident was proof positive that all Rodises are crooks.
I thanked the columnist for checking on his facts first, something that the guy from L.A. has obviously never been accused of doing. The logic that if one Rodis is a crook, then all Rodises are crooks extends to all Filipinos (“if one Filipino is a crook, then all Filipinos are crooks”) and to all Catholic priests, most especially Filipino Catholic priests.
Bigotry has its own logic.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 23, 2007
Whenever a Filipino in the US commits or is accused of a crime, fear and trembling rattle the cages of insecure members of our Filipino American community who worry that somehow mainstream Americans will view all Filipinos in a negative light because of it. Even if they were not involved in the crime a Filipino suspect committed or is accused of committing, they nonetheless feel a sense of collective guilt because the alleged perpetrator of the offense is Filipino.
Even secure members of our community fear tarring from the same brush. A decade ago, from April to July 1997, a Filipino American named Andrew Phillip Cunanan went on a cross-country killing spree, taking the lives of five people, including the famous fashion designer Gianni Versace. To find this Filipino killer, the FBI interviewed as many Cunanans as they could locate to see if they were related to Andrew and if they knew where he was hiding. For a time it seemed all Cunanans were suspect. And many Americans viewed all Filipinos as potential serial killers.
It's akin to going to a party where all the guests are white and the one other Filipino in that party, whom you’ve never met, breaks a vase (or kills the host). There is the fear that since you and the vase breaker are the only two Filipinos in the party, the other guests will naturally assume that you were somehow involved as a cohort.
Last week, a popular Filipino Catholic priest in the commonwealth of Louisa, Virginia was charged with embezzling $600,000 from two rural parishes. The charge came as a total shock to the people of Louisa whose District Attorney, Don Short, had known the Filipino priest for a decade.
"It has come as a great shock to folks in the community, and I include myself in that," Short said. "It's someone I've known in the community for 10 years or more as the Catholic priest. He is held in a high level of esteem—he had a following, people liked him."
What will the Americans in that parish, in that county, in that state, in the US think of Filipinos now? Will we be tarred with the same brush because we share a common cultural and ethnic heritage with the accused priest?
What makes this case of particular interest to me, personally, is the name of the accused priest: Fr. Rodney L. Rodis. Within days of the news of his arrest, I received dozens of e-mails and phone calls asking me if I am related to the priest. I responded that I do not know him nor had even heard of him until the news of his arrest. But because Rodis is not a common surname, it is quite possible we share a common ancestor somewhere up the line.
I was uncomfortable with having to dissociate myself from him because it already assumed that he was guilty of what he was charged with and that I wanted to have no connection to him. But he may be innocent and I may be related to him.
Over the years, I have learned that the Rodis clan originated in Indang, Cavite. However, because my grandfather (Arsenio Rodis) grew up in Cebu, where he met and married my grandmother (Asuncion Velez). All the Rodises I have ever known were from Cebu.
About 10 years ago, my mother in San Francisco received a phone call from a Greek sailor who was in town for a visit. He told my mother that he checked out the white pages to see if he had any relatives in town and saw one name that matched his. He wanted to know if we were related.
My mother identified herself as a Filipino and the Greek sailor apologized for taking up her time but did tell her that Rodis was a common surname in Greece. My mother’s account of this call led me to speculate that perhaps some Greek sailor in the 1700s jumped ship in Sangley Point, in Cavite, and decided to live permanently in the Philippines, marrying a local woman and having kids. Perhaps this Fr. Rodney L. Rodis and I share the same Greek sailor as the common ancestor.
About two months ago, a Walnut Creek Superior Court judge asked me about my surname, opining that it sounded Greek to him. When I told that I’m Filipino, he said that I must be a Filipino Greek, a Fil-Greek, a Freak. He laughed at his wit.
Over the weekend, I was awakened by a phone call from a columnist from another newspaper who inquired if I was related to Fr. Rodney L. Rodis. He said a muckraker from Los Angeles was spreading the rumor on the Internet that Fr. Rodis was my brother and that this incident was proof positive that all Rodises are crooks.
I thanked the columnist for checking on his facts first, something that the guy from L.A. has obviously never been accused of doing. The logic that if one Rodis is a crook, then all Rodises are crooks extends to all Filipinos (“if one Filipino is a crook, then all Filipinos are crooks”) and to all Catholic priests, most especially Filipino Catholic priests.
Bigotry has its own logic.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Fil-Am Role Models
Fil-Am Role Models
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 16, 2007
We all need role models. We need heroes to blaze trails for us, to inspire us to do more and achieve more, heroes toinstill inus the confidenceand self-assurance we needto get to where we want to go.Those whoaspire toprofessional careers look to the professionals who came before them to draw inspiration about how they dealt with adversity, how they overcame obstacles, how theyachieved success in their fields.
It must have been very difficult for then 22-year old Eleanor Oducayen when she entered the prestigious Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California in Berkeley in 1969. There were no other Pinays in her class; in fact,they had never seen one at Boalt Hall. In point of fact, before Eleanor, there had never ever been a Pinay at any law school in California, or perhaps in all of the United States. Eleanor had no Pinay role models to look up to in the profession she aspired to enter. She was it.
When she graduated fromBoalt and passed the bar in 1972,Eleanorwashired as a Deputy Attorney General in the California Attorney General’s Office in Sacramento, the first Filipino to hold that post.Of the32 Deputy AGs in her office, 30 were males, and almost all of them were Caucasian but being the first orbeing the only wasnothing to new to Eleanor.In short order, sheascended the ranks and was appointed Administrative Law Judge to handle unemployment insurance cases. She rose to become Chief Judge in her department.Both were firsts for her as well.
In 1981, when there was enough of a critical mass of Filipino attorneys in Northern California, Eleanor and a dozen of us organized the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California (FBANC). Although virtually all of us were men, there was no question that the one most qualified to lead us to become a professional organization was Eleanor who was unanimously elected presidentof FBANC.
After 35 years of working for the state of California, Eleanor quietly retired last week and was set to celebrate her retirement with her husband and her kids, all grown up, by going out to dinner all they way in San Francisco from their home in Oakland. On the way, they stopped by a friend’s retirement party in Oakland’s Chinatown.
It was not a friend’s retirement party, as it turned out, it was hers. A genuine surprise to Eleanor who saw all her family members, her fellow judges and old colleagues from the Attorney General’s office, some of whom flew in from Los Angeles, her FBANC and community friends all had been waiting at the Silver Dragon to shower her with warmth and affection in a testimonial roast.
The surprise party was planned by Eleanor’s husband of 35 years, Mike Nisperos, who will readily admit that his role model is his wife. After graduating from high school in Oakland in 1968, Mike enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Vietnam.When he completed his tour,finishing as a Master Sergeant, Mike returned to Oakland in 1971.There, at a party,he met Eleanor, who was graduating from law school. In terms of academic accomplishments, they seemed an odd pair at the time, but love conquers all. After a brief courtship, Mike and Eleanor married and Mike went to college on his G.I. Bill, graduating from UC Berkeley in 1975 and then, following Eleanor’s lead, going on to Boalt Hall as well, graduating in 1978.
After working in the Oakland District Attorney’s Office as a Deputy DA, Mikereturned to the US military to work inthe office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG)from 1982-88. He was then hired as a TrialAttorney in the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). In 1991,Mike was appointed “Drug Czar” of Oakland, as Director of the Mayor's Office of Drugs and Crime, where he coordinated the enforcement, prevention and education efforts directed toward the reduction of crime and drug abuse. In 2001, Mike was appointed Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California overseeing the bar’s attorney discipline system over the state’s 175,000 attorneys.
In 2006, Mike returned to Oakland and ran unsuccessfully for Superior Court Judge. After considering various options,Mike accepted anappointment asDeputy Attorney General for the Marianas Islands to serve in Saipan, where he will be joined by Eleanor. They have two kids, Marlo, a Deputy District Attorney in Sonoma County, and Mike Jr., a law student at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
A role model is one who is compassionate and who feels obligated to better society and work for the common good of the community; one who has developed powerful and effective habits of the mind and soul; one who can work through challenges and is committed to what he or she does; one who has the capacity to achieve goals and obtain self-fulfillment; who possesses high standards and values; and one who is admired for courage and strength.
By all these standards, Eleanor Oducayen Nisperos fully fits the bill of a positive role model for the Filipino American community. (And so does her husband, Mike).
We wish them well in their new adventure in Saipan and we thank them both for lighting the path for the rest of us to follow. Godspeed.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 16, 2007
We all need role models. We need heroes to blaze trails for us, to inspire us to do more and achieve more, heroes toinstill inus the confidenceand self-assurance we needto get to where we want to go.Those whoaspire toprofessional careers look to the professionals who came before them to draw inspiration about how they dealt with adversity, how they overcame obstacles, how theyachieved success in their fields.
It must have been very difficult for then 22-year old Eleanor Oducayen when she entered the prestigious Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California in Berkeley in 1969. There were no other Pinays in her class; in fact,they had never seen one at Boalt Hall. In point of fact, before Eleanor, there had never ever been a Pinay at any law school in California, or perhaps in all of the United States. Eleanor had no Pinay role models to look up to in the profession she aspired to enter. She was it.
When she graduated fromBoalt and passed the bar in 1972,Eleanorwashired as a Deputy Attorney General in the California Attorney General’s Office in Sacramento, the first Filipino to hold that post.Of the32 Deputy AGs in her office, 30 were males, and almost all of them were Caucasian but being the first orbeing the only wasnothing to new to Eleanor.In short order, sheascended the ranks and was appointed Administrative Law Judge to handle unemployment insurance cases. She rose to become Chief Judge in her department.Both were firsts for her as well.
In 1981, when there was enough of a critical mass of Filipino attorneys in Northern California, Eleanor and a dozen of us organized the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California (FBANC). Although virtually all of us were men, there was no question that the one most qualified to lead us to become a professional organization was Eleanor who was unanimously elected presidentof FBANC.
After 35 years of working for the state of California, Eleanor quietly retired last week and was set to celebrate her retirement with her husband and her kids, all grown up, by going out to dinner all they way in San Francisco from their home in Oakland. On the way, they stopped by a friend’s retirement party in Oakland’s Chinatown.
It was not a friend’s retirement party, as it turned out, it was hers. A genuine surprise to Eleanor who saw all her family members, her fellow judges and old colleagues from the Attorney General’s office, some of whom flew in from Los Angeles, her FBANC and community friends all had been waiting at the Silver Dragon to shower her with warmth and affection in a testimonial roast.
The surprise party was planned by Eleanor’s husband of 35 years, Mike Nisperos, who will readily admit that his role model is his wife. After graduating from high school in Oakland in 1968, Mike enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Vietnam.When he completed his tour,finishing as a Master Sergeant, Mike returned to Oakland in 1971.There, at a party,he met Eleanor, who was graduating from law school. In terms of academic accomplishments, they seemed an odd pair at the time, but love conquers all. After a brief courtship, Mike and Eleanor married and Mike went to college on his G.I. Bill, graduating from UC Berkeley in 1975 and then, following Eleanor’s lead, going on to Boalt Hall as well, graduating in 1978.
After working in the Oakland District Attorney’s Office as a Deputy DA, Mikereturned to the US military to work inthe office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG)from 1982-88. He was then hired as a TrialAttorney in the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). In 1991,Mike was appointed “Drug Czar” of Oakland, as Director of the Mayor's Office of Drugs and Crime, where he coordinated the enforcement, prevention and education efforts directed toward the reduction of crime and drug abuse. In 2001, Mike was appointed Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California overseeing the bar’s attorney discipline system over the state’s 175,000 attorneys.
In 2006, Mike returned to Oakland and ran unsuccessfully for Superior Court Judge. After considering various options,Mike accepted anappointment asDeputy Attorney General for the Marianas Islands to serve in Saipan, where he will be joined by Eleanor. They have two kids, Marlo, a Deputy District Attorney in Sonoma County, and Mike Jr., a law student at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
A role model is one who is compassionate and who feels obligated to better society and work for the common good of the community; one who has developed powerful and effective habits of the mind and soul; one who can work through challenges and is committed to what he or she does; one who has the capacity to achieve goals and obtain self-fulfillment; who possesses high standards and values; and one who is admired for courage and strength.
By all these standards, Eleanor Oducayen Nisperos fully fits the bill of a positive role model for the Filipino American community. (And so does her husband, Mike).
We wish them well in their new adventure in Saipan and we thank them both for lighting the path for the rest of us to follow. Godspeed.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Speaker Pelosi Supports Filipino Veterans
Speaker Pelosi Supports Filipino Veterans
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 09, 2007
NOT ONLY did Nancy Pelosi make history last week as the first female House Speaker in the US, second in line to the presidency, she also made history as the first top American elected official to come from a district with a significant Filipino constituency.
Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco district has a population that is approximately seven-percent Filipino, and is predominantly Democratic in political registration. Because of her commitment to make her staff reflect her community’s diversity, she has hired Filipino Americans, most recently, Charmaine Manansala from Vallejo, California.
Pelosi has been supportive of Filipino community issues since she was first elected to her House seat in 1987 when she signed on as a co-sponsor of Rep. Mervyn Dymally's Filipino WW II veterans naturalization bill. It was in her congressional district that the first Filipino WW II veterans were naturalized as a result of a court decision by Federal Judge Charles Renfrew in 1977. After the Filipino veterans naturalization bill was passed in 1990, Pelosi focused on the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill and has been a co-sponsor since it was first introduced in 1992.
At a House Veterans Committee hearing on the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill that was held on July 22, 1998, Rep. Pelosi introduced Filipino WW II veterans from her congressional district who had traveled to Washington DC to testify in support of the bill. She reminded the committee members that “the battle for the liberation of the Philippines was the beginning of Japan’s demise in the war… The courageous efforts of the Filipino soldiers, scouts, and guerillas were instrumental in that success.”
The Equity bill, she said, “provides that these Filipinos get the same assistance that retired US soldiers receive… If we fail to do this, I fear we send a message that the life of that of a foreigner is not as valuable as an American fighting in the same war, under the same command... I think that is a dangerous message.”
Under Dennis Hastert, Speaker Pelosi’s Republican predecessor, the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill could not even merit a hearing, a prerequisite to bringing the bill to a floor vote, as Hastert’s House Veterans Committee chair, Steve Buyer (R-Ohio), rejected all such pleas by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), the ranking Democratic member of his committee.
One of Speaker Pelosi’s first appointments was that of Filner as the new chair of the House Veterans Committee. Filner, the principal sponsor of the FilVets bill, has promised to hold hearings on the bill as soon as possible.
But even with a Democratic majority, passing the FilVets bill will not be easy. Rep. Pelosi acknowledged the difficulty in her testimony before the House committee in 1998: “I appreciate…the complexity of, and the resulting financial strain, on the Federal budget. As a result of the balanced budget agreement, we're required to find offsets to any additional costs with cuts in current programs. I do not believe cutting current programs to American veterans is the proper solution, of course. I do believe, however, that a solution exists and that it's vital we work together to find that solution before more of these veterans pass away and then it's too late.”
It is already too late for one of Pelosi’s constituents, Magdaleno Duenas, who died on February 27, 2005 at the age of 90. A week after his death, Pelosi paid tribute to Duenas on the floor of the House, honoring and thanking him “for his courageous military service and the sacrifices he made for our nation, as well as his lifelong struggle on behalf of Filipino veterans of World War II. His life is a symbol of the struggle for total recognition of Filipino veterans and a sad reminder of a shameful page in the history of our nation. “
“Mr. Duenas moved to San Francisco's Tenderloin district in 1993,” Pelosi said, “where he was vibrant member of our community. This diminutive, gentle man worked tirelessly to improve the experience of Filipino veterans in the Bay Area. All these years, he waited for the recognition of the US Government for the services he rendered during WWII. He was featured in two documentaries: Tears of Old, and Second Class Citizens. He died still waiting for the full equity bill to be passed by the US Congress. We will not rest until the equity bill becomes law.”
Speaker Pelosi’s support for Filipino community issues was not limited to the Filipino veterans. In November of 2004, she included $388,000 for the Filipino Cultural Center in San Francisco as part of the $388 billion spending bill that was sent by the House to President Bush. As House minority leader, Pelosi was able to tuck a long list of spending provisions for projects in her district into the bill that critics derided as a testament to “pork barrel spending.”
Among the “earmarks” that passed the Republican House was the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” which was a $223-M appropriation for an Alaskan bridge that was constructed to connect to an island of 50 people and sponsored by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, who earmarked it as "high priority."
In contrast, Rep. Pelosi earmarked $788,000 for the Student Health Center of City College of San Francisco to provide the medical equipment and furniture needed for a center that annually serves 11,000 low-income students without medical insurance.
Although Pelosi believes many earmarks "are worthy" and "can be a legitimate way for Congress to force fiscal priorities on the White House," House Speaker Pelosi has promised to enact a rule requiring sponsors of earmarks to be identified. Currently, lawmakers can remain anonymous in sponsoring an earmark.
But for now, Speaker Pelosi’s biggest challenge is compelling President Bush to accept the verdict of the American people in the November 2006 elections to phase out US military involvement in the Iraqi civil war which has already claimed the lives of more than 3,011 US soldiers and more than $500 billion in US funds ($200 million a day).
Those funds should be better used in the US for the benefit of the American people. Less than a day of the cost of the Iraq War will be sufficient to fund the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill. This is what Speaker Pelosi will surely convey to President Bush.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net January 09, 2007
NOT ONLY did Nancy Pelosi make history last week as the first female House Speaker in the US, second in line to the presidency, she also made history as the first top American elected official to come from a district with a significant Filipino constituency.
Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco district has a population that is approximately seven-percent Filipino, and is predominantly Democratic in political registration. Because of her commitment to make her staff reflect her community’s diversity, she has hired Filipino Americans, most recently, Charmaine Manansala from Vallejo, California.
Pelosi has been supportive of Filipino community issues since she was first elected to her House seat in 1987 when she signed on as a co-sponsor of Rep. Mervyn Dymally's Filipino WW II veterans naturalization bill. It was in her congressional district that the first Filipino WW II veterans were naturalized as a result of a court decision by Federal Judge Charles Renfrew in 1977. After the Filipino veterans naturalization bill was passed in 1990, Pelosi focused on the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill and has been a co-sponsor since it was first introduced in 1992.
At a House Veterans Committee hearing on the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill that was held on July 22, 1998, Rep. Pelosi introduced Filipino WW II veterans from her congressional district who had traveled to Washington DC to testify in support of the bill. She reminded the committee members that “the battle for the liberation of the Philippines was the beginning of Japan’s demise in the war… The courageous efforts of the Filipino soldiers, scouts, and guerillas were instrumental in that success.”
The Equity bill, she said, “provides that these Filipinos get the same assistance that retired US soldiers receive… If we fail to do this, I fear we send a message that the life of that of a foreigner is not as valuable as an American fighting in the same war, under the same command... I think that is a dangerous message.”
Under Dennis Hastert, Speaker Pelosi’s Republican predecessor, the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill could not even merit a hearing, a prerequisite to bringing the bill to a floor vote, as Hastert’s House Veterans Committee chair, Steve Buyer (R-Ohio), rejected all such pleas by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), the ranking Democratic member of his committee.
One of Speaker Pelosi’s first appointments was that of Filner as the new chair of the House Veterans Committee. Filner, the principal sponsor of the FilVets bill, has promised to hold hearings on the bill as soon as possible.
But even with a Democratic majority, passing the FilVets bill will not be easy. Rep. Pelosi acknowledged the difficulty in her testimony before the House committee in 1998: “I appreciate…the complexity of, and the resulting financial strain, on the Federal budget. As a result of the balanced budget agreement, we're required to find offsets to any additional costs with cuts in current programs. I do not believe cutting current programs to American veterans is the proper solution, of course. I do believe, however, that a solution exists and that it's vital we work together to find that solution before more of these veterans pass away and then it's too late.”
It is already too late for one of Pelosi’s constituents, Magdaleno Duenas, who died on February 27, 2005 at the age of 90. A week after his death, Pelosi paid tribute to Duenas on the floor of the House, honoring and thanking him “for his courageous military service and the sacrifices he made for our nation, as well as his lifelong struggle on behalf of Filipino veterans of World War II. His life is a symbol of the struggle for total recognition of Filipino veterans and a sad reminder of a shameful page in the history of our nation. “
“Mr. Duenas moved to San Francisco's Tenderloin district in 1993,” Pelosi said, “where he was vibrant member of our community. This diminutive, gentle man worked tirelessly to improve the experience of Filipino veterans in the Bay Area. All these years, he waited for the recognition of the US Government for the services he rendered during WWII. He was featured in two documentaries: Tears of Old, and Second Class Citizens. He died still waiting for the full equity bill to be passed by the US Congress. We will not rest until the equity bill becomes law.”
Speaker Pelosi’s support for Filipino community issues was not limited to the Filipino veterans. In November of 2004, she included $388,000 for the Filipino Cultural Center in San Francisco as part of the $388 billion spending bill that was sent by the House to President Bush. As House minority leader, Pelosi was able to tuck a long list of spending provisions for projects in her district into the bill that critics derided as a testament to “pork barrel spending.”
Among the “earmarks” that passed the Republican House was the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” which was a $223-M appropriation for an Alaskan bridge that was constructed to connect to an island of 50 people and sponsored by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chair of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, who earmarked it as "high priority."
In contrast, Rep. Pelosi earmarked $788,000 for the Student Health Center of City College of San Francisco to provide the medical equipment and furniture needed for a center that annually serves 11,000 low-income students without medical insurance.
Although Pelosi believes many earmarks "are worthy" and "can be a legitimate way for Congress to force fiscal priorities on the White House," House Speaker Pelosi has promised to enact a rule requiring sponsors of earmarks to be identified. Currently, lawmakers can remain anonymous in sponsoring an earmark.
But for now, Speaker Pelosi’s biggest challenge is compelling President Bush to accept the verdict of the American people in the November 2006 elections to phase out US military involvement in the Iraqi civil war which has already claimed the lives of more than 3,011 US soldiers and more than $500 billion in US funds ($200 million a day).
Those funds should be better used in the US for the benefit of the American people. Less than a day of the cost of the Iraq War will be sufficient to fund the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill. This is what Speaker Pelosi will surely convey to President Bush.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
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