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LaborFest 2015: 50th Grape Strike Anniversary | SF

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Saturday, July 18, 2015 - 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm | Cost: FREE*
*Donations are requested for this event.

Manilatown Center | 868 Kearny St., San Francisco, CA

Event Details

San Francisco 2021 LaborFest (July 1-31)

LaborFest is an annual festival celebrating the history and culture of working people through film, art, lectures, tours, and exhibits all over the Bay Area from July 1-31, 2021

LaborFest opens its 28th annual festival with a month of timely events inspired by local and international labor activists and labor history. The program schedule includes both international and local films and videos, a labor history walk and bike tour, lectures, forums, readings, theatrical and musical performances. Most events are free of charge but donations by the public will be accepted.

LaborFest is the premier labor cultural arts and film festival in the United States.  LaborFest recognizes the role of working people in the building of America and making it work even in this time of COVID-19.  The festival is self-funded with contributions from unions and other organizations that support and celebrate the contributions of working people.

LaborFest 2021
July 1-31, 2021

In Person Events Schedule

7/1 Thursday 7:00pm: Theatre play: “Hold These Truths”
Location: San Francisco Playhouse
Tickets $15-$100

7/3 Saturday 12pm: Labor History Bike Tour by Chris Carlsson
Meet at 518 Valencia, near 16th Street, in San Francisco, at 12noon
Donation requested

7/4 Sunday 10:00am: San Bruno Mountain Walk with David Schooley
Meet at 10:00 AM at the San Bruno Mountain Watch office (44 Visitacion Avenue, Suite 206, in Brisbane)
FREE

7/5 Monday 12:00pm: 1934 SF General Strike Walk and presentation with Gifford Hartman
Meet at the south column at Harry Bridges Plaza (across from the Ferry Building) in San Francisco
FREE

7/10 Saturday 2:00pm: Book reading: Mobilizing in OUR OWN NAME with Clarence Thomas
Location: ILWU 10 hall – 400 N. Point St., SF Henry Schmidt room
FREE

7/17 Saturday 10:00am: WPA Harvey Smith Berkeley Walk
Meet at the Main Berkeley Post Office – corner of Milvia & Alston
FREE

7/18 Sunday 7:00pm: Revolutionary Poets: Building Socialism, Fighting Fascism
Location: Specs Bar, 12 William Saroyan Place, San Francisco, CA
FREE

7/23 Friday 4:00pm: Concert “BlackRock, Stop Union Busting”
Location: 400 Howard St. at 1st Street
FREE

7/24 Saturday 12pm: Tom Mooney and Preparatory Day Bombing Walk
Meet at One Market Street in San Francisco
FREE

7/25 Sunday 10:00am: Labor Politics and Architecture of San Francisco – Walk with Brad Wiedmaier
Meet at ILWU Sculpture at Mission & Steuart in San Francisco
FREE

7/30 Friday 6:00pm: Eleventh Annual San Francisco Living Wage Coalition Awards Dinner
Location: San Jalisco Restaurant, 901 South Van Ness Avenue at 20th Street in San Francisco
$35 per ticket in advance or a group rate of $250 for eight tickets in advance

7/31 Saturday 12:00pm: Oakland General Strike Walk with Gifford Hartman
Meet at the fountain in Latham Square, at the intersection where Telegraph and Broadway converge, across from the Rotunda Building (Oakland City Center/12th St. BART)
FREE

7/31 Saturday 6pm: Labor Maritime History Boat Tour
3-hour boat tour of the Bay from Pier 41
$60

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the historic Grape Strike. The strike was launched on September 8, 1965, in the Filipino Community Hall by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), AFL-CIO, in the small farming town of Delano in the California Central Valley. This strike followed an earlier AWOC strike in the Coachella Valley. Both strikes were led by a Filipino labor leadership composed of Larry Itliong, Benjamin Gines, Pete Velasco, and Philip Vera Cruz, veterans of the decades-long struggle to bring collective-bargaining rights to this country’s agricultural sector.

The strikes highlighted the ongoing fight for basic workers rights, including minimum wage, overtime pay, sick time and recognition of their union. The strike was expanded when AWOC leadership urged the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) and its president, Cesar Chavez, to merge forces by joining its picket-line. The merger of these two-2 major organizations subsequently became the United Farmworkers, AFL-CIO. The ‘65 strike and subsequent grape boycott received support from workers’ organization both in the U.S. and around the world. This strike came to be the largest agricultural workers strike since the 1930’s and brought about a mass mobilization focused not only on conditions on the job, but the living conditions of those workers who toil to put food on our nation’s table.

Our program will summarize the victories of the 1965 Grape Strike and its aftermath. In the end, the initial Filipino leadership was all but gone marking the decline of the UFW as a militant, fighting union for all agricultural workers. We will then focus on the reasons and causes for the eventual decline of the UFW and its impact on this country’s agricultural workforce.

Today, the vast majority of agricultural workers face the very same issues that they did in 1965, including the lack of union protection and representation. Moreover, the courts and politicians in California have swung to the Right, becoming the mouthpiece of corporate Agribusiness. Our forum will examine what is needed to rebuild the labor struggle within our agricultural sector.

Panel Speakers include; Al Rojas, an original founder of the UFW; Mary Jane Galviso, Farmer, Ilokano Farms & Flipina agricultural worker; Howard Keylor, former ILWU Local 10 member, who was personally involved and acquainted with many of the Filipino labor leadership.

Film One Generation’s Time: The Legacy of Silme Domingo & Gene Viernes will be shown again. (Check the detail on 7/17 schedule of this film)

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.


Cost: FREE*
*Donations are requested for this event.
Categories: **Annual Event**, Lectures & Workshops
Address: 868 Kearny St., San Francisco, CA