Archive for June, 2009

San Francisco’s estimated American Filipino population of nearly 50,000 (about 7 percent of the city), still gets no respect.

A new recommendation for spending $9 million of city funds for disadvantaged families has just been released.

And guess what? No Filipino non-profits that directly serve the community are included.

There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars for YMCA programs throughout the city (nearly $700,000 to the Hunters Point/BayView Y alone). There’s $650,000 for the Instituto Familiar de la Raza in the Mission. Another $500,000 for the APA Family Support Services in Chinatown. The money trickles down to other neighborhoods and groups throughout the city. But there’s not one Filipino anything in the mix.

$9 million in funds and not a penny for American Filipinos. Are our families in San Francisco doing so well?

Not according to Rudy Asercion, executive director of the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center in San Francisco. He knows what’s happening on the streets of the city. In the last year, he says his non-profit has helped numerous families hit so hard by the recession they are literally in the dark.

“When families get evicted or the electricity is cut off, they come to West Bay for help,” said Asercion. “In last 6 months alone, we’ve had families who’ve gone six or seven days without electricity. Then they come to us and the lights turn on.”

It’s not easy to let there be light. West Bay runs on a tight budget of around $200,000, mostly from small grants both corporate and private. The after-school program alone costs about $60,000 to run. But it all helps to provide a lot for Filipino families in need.

Asercion talks about success stories like Sarah Ramos, a 4.0 student from Everett (my alma mater). Sarah’s family was homeless until they came to West Bay. The organization was able to get Sarah and her family housing and food stamps. The kids were immediately placed in the after school program. In addition, West Bay helped Sarah, who has a medical issue, get treatment immediately. In the fall, she begins her first year at the city’s prestigious Lowell High School (also my alma mater).

But for every Sarah, there are others who find themselves on a different track in the South of Market. Because of immigration policies, wives and children often come first to America, leaving the husband behind. When families are apart, too often they break up.

“The husband gets a girl friend, then the wife gets a boyfriend, and the young children get confused,” said Asercion. He sees it affect the children at his after school program as it thrusts them into a predictable death spiral.

So now it’s ad all around with parents without jobs, kids without purpose, and now service organizations without funds to help these people cope.

That’s why the $9 million in city funds was considered a critical source of funding for organizations like West Bay. It was the lead applicant in a package which included smaller non-profits that serve the Filipino community (The Filipino Senior Resource Center by Mint Mall, the Family Resource Center, South of Market Employment Center and the South of Market Clinic). West Bay, being the longest standing organization of the group, took the lead. It asked for $317,000, a fairly modest amount.

But when the final recommendations were made West Bay was snubbed. No other Filipino based organizations were listed.

Asercion said without an infusion of these funds, existing programs at West Bay will be threatened.

“This will shut off a big percentage of West Bay’s operation,” Asercion said. “We’ll be constrained to our after-school program.”

But that’s a small part of what West Bay does. Failure to secure funding from the city means that those who work on other outreach projects, like social workers, including tutors and counselors, may soon join the ranks of the people they help—the struggling American Filipino families of San Francisco.

It’s hard to imagine why politicians can so easily ignore the needs of the community.Asercion says he has had an inquiry from Board of Supervisors President David Chiu about the situation. But Asercion says it’s really Mayor Gavin Newsom’s call. The panel that made the recommendations, and the committee that will approve it all, are all made up of Newsom devotees.

A final hearing before the Children and Families (First 5 San Francisco) Commission, is  set for this week.

That means there’s still time to rally.

If you can’t make the rally, Asercion says call Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office at 415-554.6141.

Urge Newsom to make sure American Filipino families in need are not ignored.

Solidarity Rally
City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, California 94102
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 5PM

Is that with simple or compound interest?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/business/30madoff.html?_r=1&hp

If Michael Jackson were to speak from the grave, he probably would have one reaction to all the obloviating going on from all corners about his sudden death: “Shut up and play the music.”

Listen to it. Dance to it. Michael isn’t gone. His legacy is there. The spirit is in the grooves, or in this digital age in the unique 1/0 patterns that merged rhythm and blues, pop and rock.

For the last 40 years, Jackson was the eccentric Pied Piper. While some continued to follow him, many got turned off by the sideshow.

But death is redemptive. Now people are remembering what it was that first compelled them to watch, listen, and pay attention.

He was a pop artist and entertainer like no other. Michael once told a reporter that the worse thing you can do when trying to dance is to think. Thinking kills. It’s the music. Listen to the music.

In the last 40 years, Jackson’s music changed American society, broke race barriers, brought people together.

Now it’s the soundtrack of the global mourning for the King of Pop.

At least, the governor of South Carolina didn’t say he was trying to build his Latino base.

But really, what is the big deal about Mark Sanford having sex? Don’t we know that politicians will have sex, wherever they can get it. And don’t we know that the good politicians can survive even the most sordid affairs. (Hello, Mr. Bill…)

What gets me is how Sanford just disappeared. I’m sure he could have found a Motel 6 down there around North Myrtle Beach.

So basically South Carolina must dump their governor not for the affair, but for botching the affair.

For a politician, indiscretion is a mortal sin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26sanford.html?_r=1&hp

Sunday is Father’s Day, which in my mind really honors anyone who plays that role despite gender–or sexual preference—or even if you’re not the father. Are you there? Do you play catch when you’d rather be sleeping? Tag, your it. Happy Father’s Day to you!

I’m pretty traditional when it comes to fatherhood, except for when I celebrate it.

For me it’s always June 14^th which this year arrived a week before the “official” Father’s Day. It’s the day I recall my  most memorable day with my dad.

We went to see the Giants play baseball.

My dad loved baseball. He was also from the Philippines, from Ilocos.  “Like Marcos” he was proud to say, when people were still proud to have some connection with the dictator. My dad spoke with an Ilocano accent which I know so well, I can turn on and off like Jim Nabors doing Gomer Pyle.  My dad sounded just like Marcos, but without the power. He spoke English too. But I spoke it better. It made our relationship a quiet one. The only time we really connected was when watching baseball.

My dad was many innings older than me—50 years worth. I remember when he taught me how to play ball. We’d go to Golden Gate Park’s Panhandle—an appropriate name for a fry cook and his son to play catch.

He wasn’t great. But when he couldn’t make a basket catch like Willie Mays, he’d take us to Candlestick and see No.24.

Baseball always gave us a context. “What’s the score?” one of us would always ask. One of us would always know. We followed the score. But of course, there were seasons when not even baseball could save us. Before I was out of middle school, my father had retired, and I was going to father-son events alone. He was old. By the time I was twelve-years-old, I was an ageist.

We kept drifting apart, our lives patterned as a baseball diamond. He was the first base line, I was the third base line, a field apart connected only at home.

But then I went to college on the East Coast. Though I majored in alienation, I took a few courses where I learned a little about the hardship and racism endured by Filipino immigrants in the 1920s. I learned about the anti-miscegenation laws.

I never understood why my father, after coming to America in1927, lived a bachelor’s life until the 1950’s. I thought it was by choice, or lack of social skills. I never saw it as a function of the kind of wastefulness that comes out racism. History taught me that, and through it, I found a clear path to my father. Perhaps a little late, but it set up our ninth inning perfectly.

On the Wednesday before Father’s Day 1978, we did a day game, my treat. We were a striking pair. I was wearing a jacket and tie so we could get a businessman’s discount. He was in a Giants cap and running shoes, and acting like a rascal—cutting in line, running about, me in tow. Seats cost a buck-fifty to sit in left field back then. But the little guy wanted to sit closer. So we sneaked down past the guard and wound up in prime third-base territory.

During the game, we enjoyed our passion quietly. Fancying myself a broadcaster, I did play-by –play in my head. Every now and then, I would turn to Dad for a little color. He was involved with the drama himself, in between bites of his homemade adobo sandwich—vinegary pork bits on white bread, tastier than a ball park frank.

The Giants celebrated our outing with a fine performance. They fought back to take the lead from the Phillies. And then it was up to Vida Blue to mow them down in the bottom of the night. Blue, no longer in his prime and written off as an old man in his 30s, stuck out both Greg Luzinski and Mike Schmidt, the heart of the order, to end the game.

We stood and cheered together in wild appreciation, which led to our only real conversation of the day. Would the Giants get through June and go all the way? My dad was willing to take a psychic flyer on that one. “They will  go all the way now,” he said.

As it was, the Giants didn’t. But my dad did. Two hours later, back home, after he was the future and the highlights on the local news, my father died on that Wednesday before Father’s Day.

Hardening of the arteries, the doctor said. But deep in my heart, I knew it was Pennant Fever.

The origins of this essay date back to 1989 when I was at NPR. Not National Philippines Radio, National Public Radio in Washington. Every year I reprise some of it as my Father’s Day salute. This year, I shared the story with my young son for the first time as we sat in left field at AT&T Park.

The Giants won. And everyone was safe at home.