No Filipinos, as blatant as that.

Just like the old sign that the Filipino National Historical Society displays, the one from the 1920s that reads, “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.”

You can take that sign and stick it on the door at St.Luke’s, right now, says the California Nurses Association, the nurses union.

And now it wants to do something about it.

At a press conference on Thursday, the union will call for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to investigate the hospital. The union will also announce its intention to file a class action grievance against Sutter and CPMC.

The union provided compelling evidence which included signed statements by former managers and current job stats, that  suggests Filipinos are being unfairly discriminated at the St. Luke’s campus.

From numbers provided by CPMC, the numbers are revealing. Before the take-over of the hospital in 2007 the Filipino RNs at St.Luke’s were 66 percent of the nursing population.

Between 2007 and 2008, just 48 percent of new hires were Filipino.

From Feb. 2008, when the nurses union and the community organized to stop the closure of St.Luke’s, to the present, the percentage of new RN hires who were Filipino dropped dramatically to just 10 percent.

They didn’t all just give up their RN credentials and take jobs as Wal-Mart greeters.

Nato Green, the labor representative who works at St.Luke’s said it’s no coincidence. “I believe this reflects Sutter’s decision to use race to divide workers and stop collective bargaining activity,” Green told me. “ Going from 66 percent to 10 percent (of new hires) is a fairly remarkable coincidence.”

It all comes after the union forced Sutter to keep St.Luke’s open. The nurses union expected some push back, but not this.

“CPMC and Sutter have chosen to retaliate by carrying out a punitive, illegal and immoral campaign of discrimination,” said Zenei Cortz, the California Nurses Association president.  “There is no excuse for racial or ethnic discrimination. A hospital should be a center of therapeutic healing for patients, not a model for bigotry.”

The union also produced affidavits signed under penalty of perjury.  Ronald Rivera, a former nurse manager, who worked there from April 2006 to April 2010 when he resigned on good terms, provided his testimony.

“One day I spoke with Diana Karner (VP of nursing) on the phone about hiring new RNs,” he attested.  “Diana said to me that we probably should not hire any more foreign graduate nurses. She explained that patients complain because “it is hard  to understand them and be understood by them.”

Another signed affidavit came from Ronald Villanueva, who actually was sitting in and overheard the conversation between Karner and Rivera. “I was shocked and I wondered if she knew I was a foreign graduate nurse,” he wrote.

A third declaration came from from Chris Hanks, who was the Director of Critical Care from 2008 to 2009 and reported directly to Karner. Hanks was alarmed when told point blank “you are not to hire any Filipino nurses.”  Hanks challenged Karner at their weekly meetings, until he was Karner told him, “The Filipinos are always related , or know each other, and that’s not good. You’re not to hire them.”

Karner the VP of nursing didn’t return my telephone call.

Kevin McCormack, of CPMC’s media relations said she was out of the office and unavailable. What did he think of a ban on hiring Filipino nurses? “That would be illegal,” he said. “You can’t ban hiring specific groups.”

He called it “ridiculous” and implied it was a stunt by C N A to fan the ongoing labor dispute with CPMC.

“We have a long history of hiring Filipino nurses on all our campuses, including St.Luke’s, and we are still hiring them,” McCormack read from CPMC’s official statement. “We have many RNs at our St. Luke’s campus who are Filipino and know how extraordinary they are. To say we are imposing quotas on them is outrageous.”

It is outrageous, but the numbers don’t lie.

The Filipino nursing staff at St.Luke’s is shrinking and it is such a precipitous drop that it can’t just be by accident or happenstance.

It’s honoring me.

On Wed., Aug. 4, I’m being honored among 150 others as an Asian American pioneer in  U.S. journalism. (Yes, Tritia Toyota and Connie Chung are on the list too. But so ae lots of others who were founders and original members of AAJA).

How’d that happen?

It’s just a citation for being old and one of the first Asian Americans to consider journalism instead of medicine, the law, restaurant ownership, or investment banking  for a career. 

At this point in time, I’d have to say, choosing journalism may not have been the best choice.

 But it was my choice. And I’m gratified that someone noticed that I was the first Asian American male and first Filipino American to host a national news program when I was senior host of “All Things Considered” in 1989.

I hope that doesn’t become the headline in my obituary someday.  It’s not over yet. (I can’t even withdraw from my IRA without a 10 percent penalty).

I’m still a pioneer who hasn’t quite reached the promised land.

My Cousin

For her privacy and to protect the innocent, let’s call her Paula.

She was a real gem.

Paula was just a few years  younger than me, born in 1958. She was smart. She was beautiful. She was a great dancer, and an even better singer. She sang, well, like an angel.

 We grew up in San Francisco. We even went to Lowell High School at the same time.

And until I heard the news this week, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Paula, or even what she looked like. 

It was all a blank until I went to the wake and saw her portrait. Unmistakably a cousin, in her eyes and face I saw the whole family.

At the wake, I saw another relative, an aunt.  When she recognized me, I dipped my head to air-kiss her hello. Then she pulled back and said, “Say hi to your mom.”

A nice sentiment, sure. But my mother died more than 10 years ago.

By her statement, my aunt in her 80s was going before my eyes. But her forgetfulness was a forgivable, natural thing. The rest of us willfully forget. Life gets in the way, we move away, our lives in different places and connections naturally wane.

That’s the way it was with Paula and I. We might see each other at funerals.

And now she staged her own. 

She had lost a job in January. Her mother died a year ago. She had a bout of depression, and decided her meds weren’t worth it. Nor was anything else.

Did she have options? The family? What if it was like the way it was, and our families lived within blocks apart in San Francisco. And we all saw each other, and knew that it was a family full of love that could provide support. Could that have helped? 

My other cousins at the wake had the same feeling. Were where we when one of us needed us?

Busy, leading our own complicated lives for sure.  But maybe it could have been different if we had  more family gatherings other than our funerals.

 Manang Juaning

The other funeral  last week was for my Manang Juaning, 85,  an Alzheimer’s sufferer. Her son, Ben Medina  and other family members were at the nursing home  for her last breath.

Her life is like the history of Philippine immigration.

Her father, Lolo Telesforo  was the cousin of my father.  That’s why he stayed with my family  in our extra room all those years. He first petitioned for his grand-daughter Esther, who moved in with us and was like a big sister. Then came Ben, her brother. And he moved in too.

They needed their own place when the other five siblings (beautiful sisters all) arrived, along with the leader Manang Juaning. From that base came 15 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great grandchildren.

The wake was a flood of generations—five in all, from Juanita to great-great grandchildren Robert Dorr Jr. and Jayden Dorr.

Not only did I not keep up with relatives I actually lived with, I had practically skipped 3 generations of young relatives.  Many of them were already in their late 20s. 

“We haven’t seen you in a while, uncle,” one said to me. They knew of me as the “Uncle on TV,” or more aptly, Uncle in absentia.  But I knew relatively little of them except we had blood and history in common.

You can prevent from becoming the “modern” Filipino family.

Stay close. Don’t just text or e-mail. See and talk to each other, often. Use the word love as noun or verb,  frequently.

And don’t make funerals the family reunion.

FoxOpinion (it is more opinion than news, isn’t it?)  and blogger Breitbart should be ashamed of their tactics.

But the Obama adminstration suffered from a little post-racial knee-jerking, too.

First, assume the truth from FoxOpinion  is always dicey. More so from a conservative blogger. So why  couldn’t someone at the FDA verify the facts with Shirley Sherrod?

 Sure,we want to get to racial nirvana, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of the truth?

This embarrassment is more on USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack  than Obama, really. Vilsack should know better, but  so should the pres.

I’ve always called Obama the big “race avoider. He doesn’t want to deal with race as an everyday agenda item unless he’s dragged into it and issues are made of his pastor, Skip Gates, Shirley Sherrod.

Obama wants to take us to the next level by  forgetting about race. His is the passive approach. The less he deals with race minutae, the more people see the big picture:  There’s a black man in the White House. Racism? Get over it.

That’s how he wants to drag us to the promised land. But people on both sides don’t want to budge.

The racists are vested as are the race-based. 

Ann Coulter/Jesse Jackson are self-cancelling.

Post-racial thinking?  Race politics in America won’t change until we’re all on the same page.

In America, of course, you can be part of some organized religion, whatever you choose, or not.  You can believe in God, gods, or just in yourself.   

“USA, USA, USA.”

But mostly we believe in your right to say,  “No, thank you.”

You can even drop the “thank you,” and be as vigorous in your dissent, alone or all together, however you wish.

When you’re an American that’s what we understand to be true and what we fight to protect.

We have faith in this freedom. It’s called patriotism. 

Patriotism isn’t a blind allegiance to folks in Washington, and the policies of the elected.  

To be a patriot is to be one who knows that freedom is beyond debate. The Founding Fathers may be dead, but the founding principles are still alive.

A patriot is there to make sure it stays that way. Who are these “patriots”?  They aren’t all from a  particular gender, ethnicity, or income group. Nor are they the rabid folk who call conservative talk shows and waste good tea. Indeed, immigrants tend to be the best patriots, fighters and rebels to the core. Many are here because they believed and fought for the same things we believed in, only in their own homelands. Ask the Southeast Asian who fought with the U.S. in the Vietnam War.  Ask a Filipino veteran of WWII.  They are no less American than the descendents of the Mayflower.

And here we are all together this Sunday,  celebrating our freedoms without question.

That’s what we Americans believe in, religiously.

Of course, the U.S. didn’t. But it’s acceptable underdog-speak. Reminiscent of the famous headline “Harvard beats Yale, 29-29,”  when the improbable tie must be acknowledged with something more than an “attaboy.”  

But I was with Alexi Lalas, the former MLS star, who was unwilling to be diplomatic and on the pregame on ABC forecasted a 2-1 victory.

Why not?

The U.S. can play now.  It’s not like the day of Kyle Rote Jr. and the old NASL.  U.S. players play with the top English clubs now.  Our independence from soccer inferiority  has already been declared.  

So U.S. ”beats” England didn’t come to mind immediately. In fact, the U.S. was lucky the Brit keeper had Teflon mits. Good for pols, bad for goaltenders.  The goal was like a gift from the soccer gods, as if some invisible foot (like Adam Smith’s hand?) nudged the ball to the net, an equalizer by providence.

But that’s it for karmic justice.

 On the day the U.S. faced its colonizer, the U.S. has some other significant imperial baggage of its own.

On June 12, 1898, the Philippines proclaimed its independence from Spain after the Spanish-American War’s battle of Manila Bay.

But the proclamation wasn’t recognized by Spain or the U.S.  

The Spanish took advantage of the communications  lag and before the announcement had ceded the Philippines to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris 1898.  The U.S. had its own imperial designs and made Philippines its first colony. That was all news to the victorious Filipinos and General Emil Aguinaldo.  And with that, the U.S. -Philippine war was begun, and hundreds of thousands of lives, both American and Filipino,were lost.

So you can see how all these years later,  on this day, karma could only carry the U.S. so far.

But now that we’ve tied the Brits, maybe we can all feel better about bankrupting BP and destroying the English pension system!

USA, USA, USA!!!

A tie.

Who wears ties anymore?

Ties are good for the kids’ rec and travelling teams, which I used to coach. It caters to the “winning isn’t everything” school of parenting.  But in the World Cup, where soccer zealotry is pumped to extreme levels, a tie is so unsatisfying.  Winning is everything, dadgummit. (A soccer phrase from the Netherlands, I believe).

Still, if you’re a soccer fan, you delighted in little things like when a Mexican wing passed the ball into an empty space behind a South African defender, then outran the defender to the ball. Essentially, Aguilar the Mexican forward passed it to himself. That was like a “wow” move. Too bad his cross to the goal wasn’t converted. 

But the game isn’t about scoring. It’s about the journey, and the displays of brilliant ball handling along the way.

Here’s how to watch the matches: Pray they keep the camera wide enough so you can see as much of the  field as possible. The close ups are good for the sweat. But the way to appreciate the game is to look away from the ball. Don’t follow the ball, follow the empty spaces, and then look to see how the players without the ball suddenly appear to meet a pass into space.

In basketball, a good  guard and a center can play pick and roll all day. In soccer, you can see series of “give and gos” all the way down field. When the passes are direct and literal you won’t see the magic. But when players exploit space and send the ball into the open to a teammate in full run, then you see the beauty and the fluidity of the game. That’s when the magic happens. Like when the South Africans scored the first goal of the cup, the ball was sent into space when Siphwe Tshabalala, #8, found it on a dead run to strike it into the net. 

Text-book use of exploiting speed and space.  Joe Montana to Jerry Rice on a post pattern. Same thing.

Now that’s when when you should blow those darn horns.

Poizner won zero counties in California with his hard-ass, polarizing  anti-immigrant ads. In a state where the minorities are the majority that takes some real political smarts.

The winning approach is softer and female. But no less vicious and deluded.  It’s the GOP’s sex change, if you will. Why not? Steve Poizner in a dress couldn’t attract a winning margin with the LGBT vote.   

The new archetype is in Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina.  Meg and Carly: The angry white female. It’s the revenge of the dumped CEOs. The GOP’s new look.  An enraged white guy like TomMcClintock is so yesterday, to borrow the phrase “Carly” used to dump on Babs’ retro hair-do the other day. Meanwhile, pull up a chair and hear what “Carly” thinks of your look.

Get used to such exchanges. Welcome to Cattyville 2010.

By the time it’s over, Jerry Brown will seem like the only adult in the room.

If Justin Bieber were there, then we’d have a crowd. And then the state’s future  would be dictated by the tastes of 12-year olds—which might be an improvement.  They know what it’s like to live on an allowance.

Still, just 23.4 percent voted in San Francisco.  Los Angeles County was lower yet at 19.6. Maybe if we could jump up those numbers by allowing voting while texting AND driving the state’s numbers would go up. Voting by IPhone? There’s got to be an app for that.

Who voted the most? Little Sierra County, northeast of Sacramento, population around 4,000, had a turnout of 73.3 percent! (I’m  checking if a few goats weren’t allowed to cast ballots to pad those numbers).

I imagine there’s not much to do in Sierra County but wait for an election to have an excuse to get out of the house.  Does that mean those of us in slightly less rural areas have too much to do to value democracy?

We show up when it counts, of course. Like for a general election when the presidency is at stake. But all politics is local, remember. This is the stuff that hits home. And not many showed up.

 MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

The big lesson in California is that money is still everything in politics—if you have more than $30 million. That’s roughly what Steve Poizner spent on his campaign and he didn’t win one county.  So let’s  revise the adage. You need almost $100 million to be victorious like Meg Whitman, the GOP’s first female standard bearer to run for governor of the state. She along with Carly Fiorina, who won the GOPs senate race, are the party’s new public face: The twin towers of estrogen.  You can talk about diversity if you’d like, but Democrats have had women, gays, lesbians, Asians, Latinos, blacks for years. Why praise the GOP for something it should have embraced a long time ago?

But here’s why you should be suspicious: Anytime you hear someone say they want to run “California like a business,”  run away. Fast.

That’s not what we need in this state.  Arnold’s already tried and look what he’s done.

After Tuesday, the state finds itself with two failed CEOs who have used their parachute money to enter politics (remember, they’d still be CEOs if they were really successful).They now want to do something useful with their lives besides make money.  They think because they ran a business, they can run a government.

As Arnold found out, it’s trickier than it looks, mostly because government isn’t about dollars and sense nor bottom lines and profits. It’s still about people and services that make up a community.

A CEO of a major corporation, whose trick  to raise revenue  include off-shoring, laying off older workers, and generally trimming human beings to show profit, just doesn’t have the skill set for the kind of government that fosters community.  But whose to stop the vanity of Whitman and Fiorina who have the money to put their business  skills to the test.  You want to be the guinea pig?  

Tell me how smart it is to spend nearly $100 million for a 4-year job?  Where’s the fiscal responsibility in that?

PUBLIC FINANCING and MCLEOD

The only way to get good people to run is to eliminate money as a factor. And unfortunately, Prop.15, which called for a public funding experiment failed.

 Money is the reason why American Filipino Rod McLeod’s run for Superior Court judge in San Francisco was notable.  Spending less than $2,000, he was trying to buck the trend in an office that should be above money. His opponents , however, spent about $100,000 each.

McLeod took the high road and finished third.

It counts. But what does it mean with just a 23% turnout?

In 2005, I left the mainland to join the Honloulu Advertiser for a brief fling.

I didn’t realize that just as I was realizing my dream of being an “ink stained wretch” that newspapers were nosediving faster than my retro-career was ascending.

When I got there, the Advertiser boasted about hitting revenue records. After a year, cost cutting measures were already in place.  Trust me, the “Tiser didn’t go broke transporting my little Toyota from the Mainland. The spending cuts should have been the tip-off.

But newspaper people, despite all the negatives you see  in the news, are really professional optimists.

No need for a correction now, the paper was sold for half of what the old owners bought it for. And some of my old colleagues are scratching their heads trying to figure out where they fit in the new one paper town. The Star-Bulletin, the small paper, ate the big paper, the ‘Tiser. The new paper may have indigestion. I hope it survives.

I’ll also miss the Advertiser because it was the first paper to which I gladly silenced my voice, my byline, my perspective, to write under the masthead, which at that time sported hibiscus.

I”ve learned my lesson.

Little known fact. I used the flower in an editorial once as in “stopped to smell the hibiscus.” I thought it clever until my dutiful then-editor, the great Hawaii political analyst Jerry Burris told me “Hibiscus don’t smell. Plumeria do.”  Hence, I stopped to smell the plumeria.

I would have liked to have smelled it a bit longer there. But I returned to California in 2007, happy for the experience of seeing the dark side of paradise as a journalist, but realizing that the media was changing faster than we all thought.  

In my next Twitter, I’ll try to squeeze in the next Watergate.