STATEMENT BY EMIL A. DE GUZMAN, PRESIDENT OF THE MANILATOWN HERITAGE FOUNDATION ON JULY 1, 2003 AT PORTSMOUTH SQUARE

My name is Emil A. De Guzman, I am the President of the Manilatown Heritage

Foundation, an organization that has it's origins with the tenants and

supporters of the International Hotel from 1968 - 1977.  I was the

President of the International Hotel Tenants Association on eviction day

August 4 1977.  No ceremony of this magnitude today would be complete

without honoring our elders, the men and women who led the fight for the

International Hotel(a 6 ft by 4 ft posterboard with the blowups of the

tenants is held up by Bill Sorro standing next to me): Felix Ayson, Joe

Diones the Manager, Luisa Dela Cruz, Claudio Domingo, So Chung , Etta Chung

, Joe Regadio , Anacleto Muniz are just a few of the handful of tenants who

step forward to articulate and stand together in defiance of the threat of

eviction.  Almost all of them are now dead.  Until the excavation began in

the hole in the ground February 2002, their names laid dormant, almost

forgotten until today.  We resurrect their names so you will know who they

were and learn the kindness and bravery embedded in their humanity to show

us how they lived.  The presence of all of you here today who were with us

in those early years is a testimony and a vindication of the tenants who

resisted an illegal eviction, pressures of infinite temperatures and the

judge's court order to vacate their home.   Even now the tenants personify

that symbol against greed for profits victimizing poor people,

homelessness, destruction of neighborhoods like what happened in

Manilatown.  We believe in the expansion and growth of low income

affordable housing, the preservation of neighborhoods for families and

working people, keeping the City diverse for all residents rather than flee

because housing is unaffordable.

Today is our Day

The Manilatown Heritage Foundation has been a partner in this long

adventure to build the new International Hotel for Senior housing.  We are

also the overseers of a new center, a dedicated space that will be

dedicated to the MHF on the ground floor of the new International Hotel.

This center will be a gallery and collection of photographs, oral

histories, an archive and repository of the International Hotel and the

Manilatown Community.  The Center will enshrine our history for generations

and  generations to follow.  We write our history because we lived it, we

experienced it and we take responsibility to explain it.  The Center will

also serve as a performing arts center where we will invite artists,

musicians, dancers, writers, actors, poets from both here and abroad to

perform for our community.  The center will serve as a community gathering

place where tenants and friends, children can be welcomed and have a safe

place to be with others.

Lastly, I want to thank our partners.  The Mayor's Citizens Advisory

Committee, the developer Chinatown Community Development Corp., the Kearny

Street Housing Corp, the Mayor's Office of Housing, the Archdiocese of San

Francisco.  No words can describe the unfathomable depth of hard work that

all of us did to get the project this far.  It is a miracle.

And especially, I want to thank the Filipino community because it was our

community that suffered the brunt of the inequality and injustices that

destroyed Minilatown.  Kearny Street is a graveyard on which stands high

rise buildings, parking lots, insurance companies and banks.  Never forget

Manilatown.  Today is a special honor to salute our community for the hope

they engendered, the patience, the nurturing and faith that come day would

arrive.  As the Nobel Peace Prize winner and American leader Dr. Martin

Luther King said, we suffered "despair when there was no light in a tunnel

of darkness, " a darkness darker than a thousand midnights.  Continuing the

struggle in an unchartered direction will lead past dark yesterdays into a

now that is the brighter tomorrow.

Mabuhay, Mabuhay, Mabuhay, Long life to Manilatown, Mabuhay"