We Won't Move: A Living Archive | Episode 2
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Episode Notes
Activist, educator, and scholar Dr. Estella Habal joins Michelle, Dara, and Kazumi to talk about the fight to save San Francisco's International Hotel in 1977, which for more than two decades had been the home of Asian-American laborers and a hub for organizers and artists. Estella shares about being a student organizer in the movement, the process of writing her book afterward (San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement, Temple University Press), and how authentic care—for ourselves and for our communities—is necessary to intergenerational movement building.
This Week’s Guest
Activist and scholar, Dr. Estella Habal, Professor Emerita, at San Jose State University, taught courses in Asian American history from 1999-2014. She was a member of the KDP (Katiupunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino), a Filipino revolutionary organization which fought against the Philippine President Marcos dictatorship and for democratic rights in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s. She also fought to stop the eviction of its tenants in 1977, and told the story in a book, San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement (Temple 2007). In the 1990s, she helped to resurrect low income housing at the new International Hotel and open up the International Hotel Manilatown Center in 2005.