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11.5 Filipino American Beverly Kordziel Recalls Her Involvement in the International Hotel Struggle.
Beverly Kordziel, “To Be a Part of the People: The International Hotel Collective,” Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, eds., Steve Louie and Glenn K. Omatsu (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2001), pp. 241–247.
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To Be a Part of the People:
- The International Hotel Collective
- Beverly Kordziel
- The Third World Strike at Berkeley and the I-Hotel
I grew up in San Francisco, the child of a Polish-American sailor and a native Filipino woman. As a young child, people would ask, “what are you?” I would either reply that I was Filipino, or I would say that I was Polish. Next would inevitably follow Polish or Filipino jokes, or a long explanation on my part about how my parents had met. I remember wondering, “why can’t they just accept me, the way they would anyone from a single-race family?” I would then go on to explain how my father had been stationed in the Philippines during World War II, and that is where he met and married my mother.
In the spring of 1968, three young women from my high school, including me, entered UC Berkeley as freshmen. One was African-American, one was Hispanic, and I had decided by then that I was Asian. We spent our first year like most other freshmen—studying and having fun.
Our second year was when our real life-long education began. The three of us became involved in the Third World Strike. Our ties to our own and to the other groups were both political, as well as personal. We had high school friends and friends-of-friends in each of the three groups. It was a time of much trust and unity, in which we called each other brother and sister, and worked together toward the same goal—a Third World college and more accountability from the University to our communities. After meeting as a large group, African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans each formed their own group.
The decision was made to educate as many people as possible about our concerns and to boycott classes while walking picket lines daily. It was commonplace for the police to break up our demonstrations with tear gas. We became used to burning eyes and labored, tortured breathing, caused by the tear gas.
Our second year was when our real life-long education began. … It was a time of much trust and unity, in which we called each other brother and sister, and worked together toward the same goal—a Third World college and more accountability from the University to our communities.
The first concession from the University to striking students was a class that allowed us to do fieldwork in our own communities while attending class, taking midterms and finals. Early on in the class, most of us had crossed the boundary from student researcher to community activist.
The International Hotel Struggle
During this time, the tenants were fighting their eviction from the International Hotel in San Francisco. I remember going to a meeting about the hotel, and there were only about five or six people who showed up. They talked about a picket line at the hotel owner’s office in the San Francisco Financial District, so I went. There was only a few of us there, and some of the people who were watching the demonstration were pretty mean. They made comments like, “If every pretty Filipino woman took one of the tenants home, they wouldn’t be homeless.” After we told people back on campus in the Asian American Studies classes about that, the next picket line was about 30–40 people! As we began to understand how adamant the tenants were about not wanting to move from the Manilatown area, we began to organize and picket along with them more. I also interviewed some of the International Hotel tenants about their lives in America and, particularly, in Manilatown.
Filipino-American, Japanese-American, and Chinese-American students picketed together to save the International Hotel. The fight to save the hotel was a fight to save peoples’ homes, about 60 units of low-cost housing, and to save Manilatown. The tenants were fighting to stay in the building because they had nowhere else to go within the Chinatown area.
The hotel was located at 848 Kearny Street, between Jackson and Washington Streets. The rent was $48.00 a month for a single room, and $70.00 a month for a double. Chinatown and what remained of Manilatown in San Francisco was right outside the front door, with easy access to restaurants and grocery stores. The recreation room downstairs consisted of a pool table, television, and many chairs where people would gather to visit, or to watch films. Tenant meetings were also held here. The first floor, which was located above the recreation room, had a community kitchen, communal bathrooms in each wing, several rooms that were rented, and the manager’s office. The second floor was composed mainly of rooms with the communal bathroom on each wing of the building.
A single room was just big enough for a single bed, a sink, a dresser, and a closet. The tenants deserved a larger, better heated, and cleaner residence to live out their lives, but there was a tremendous shortage of low-cost housing in the Chinatown area, so nothing was available to them. The landlord and owner at the time, Walter Shorenstein, promised the tenants a low-cost place to live. But it was in the Tenderloin area, an area known for crime, and too far away from Chinatown and its easy shopping and inexpensive dining. The news had many reports of attacks against the elderly in the Tenderloin, so tenants felt unsafe about moving there. They did not move from Chinatown-Manilatown.
Filipino-American students, who had previously not wanted to be involved in the Third World Strike on campus, were proud to help these elderly Filipino and Chinese men save their home. In April 1969, a suspected arsonist set a fire in the northern corner of the hotel. Due to fire damage and water damage from putting it out, the hotel was condemned by the city. Had the fire burned the entire building, rather than just one wing, the owner would have collected a large fire insurance policy and tenants would have had no choice but to leave.
As students, we started fighting on two levels. The hotel was losing income each month because the rooms that had been damaged were not available for rent. Together, students and people of the community began the sooty process of cleaning and repairing the fire-damaged wing. Volunteers repaired and replaced doors. On weekends and after classes, we would go to the hotel, where some of us would scrape off wet wallpaper while others painted. During the time that the students had come to work in the hotel, the character of the hotel changed somewhat. It began to smell of disinfectant and cooking, instead of smoke and mold.
On the other level, we were mounting pickets at Shorenstein’s office building on California Street, in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. We also began working with other groups in San Francisco involved in low-cost housing issues. We began sharing support and information.
The International Hotel Tenants Association was formed and was made up of tenants and some students. The International Hotel collective was composed of students who were working at the hotel, and its younger tenants. The International Hotel collective first began their meetings in a single, unfurnished room with people sitting on the floor to talk. As our numbers expanded, we moved into a double room which students furnished with a long table and chairs. Meeting as the International Hotel collective, we would plan and organize social and political events and discuss the everyday operations of the hotel. We were really dedicated to the success of the tenant’s struggle against eviction.
There were few days during those years that did not find us trudging to the hotel with a hot char siu bow (barbecued pork bun) in our hand, purchased at a Chinatown bakery for breakfast. During summers, when we had the whole day to work at the hotel, we would shop in Chinatown. Buying fresh fruits and vegetables from the vendors, we would then take turns making lunch. When we didn’t have time to cook, we walked the half-block to eat at one of several Chinese restaurants, where we could have a rice plate or noodles for less than $2.00. This is what life was like at this time. We worked together as much as possible, cleaning out rooms, moving furniture, planning informational leaflets, and many other projects. It felt to me at the time that I lived there.
This was a noble fight with many dedicated people spending countless hours to meet, plan and keep the hotel financially afloat and to pursue the issue of low-cost housing needs for Filipino and Chinese elderly.
During the course of our work at the hotel, the women of the collective began sharing the problems and frustrations of being young women working at a predominantly men’s hotel. For the most part, we were treated like nieces of the tenants, but sometimes, we would suffer sexual advances or harassment. We would talk about it and put it into the context of the overall movement, which transcended the problems and discomfort we would sometimes experience. There was a certain weariness on the part of many of the young women working in this male environment, but we tried very hard not to let it interfere with our work.
We, as the women—or sisters of the collective—tried to talk to the young men—or brothers of the collective—about the problems we were having, but they weren’t sure how to handle it, or what to do. So we tried another approach and spoke to the manager of the hotel, an ex-longshoreman who would not take any stuff from anybody. When we let him know that a couple of the tenants were treating us disrespectfully, he took matters into his own hands and confronted them. He admonished them to leave the women alone and demanded to know how they would like someone treating their own daughters that way. The harassment stopped.
We continued as a collective to gain members and to work with other groups who supported the hotel tenants in their fight to keep their home. We had by now expanded our program to include Sunday brunches. What had started as students shopping and doing the cooking evolved to the tenants cooking the brunch. Students helped to purchase and prepare the food, but the decisions about what to cook and the actual cooking were made by a female tenant who enjoyed cooking.
The hotel was a hub where people from the Asian Movement met for those who were passing through San Francisco and needed a place to spend the night. The entire block was filled with other groups doing community work and reaching out to the people of Chinatown. It was always easy to find a group of people to go out to eat with or to visit.
After college and the necessity of beginning to work for family support, most of the original collective moved out of San Francisco and out into the work world. However, I know that the overall hotel experience goes with me everywhere I go. The fundraising and donation-procuring ability I learned, knowing the strength of a people in the face of strong opposition and the unity built from working together are the elements and the framework through which I view any activity, meeting or club function on which I might work today.