BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN -- “We have to always ask ourselves: What legacies did our elders leave behind for us and what legacies are we going to leave behind for the next generation?” said Mabalon, a History professor at San Francisco State University and author of Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California.
The third-generation Filipina American points out that a significant untapped part of such legacies can be drawn from the role farmworkers played in the Delano area and San Joaquin Valley.
“That the world was changed by what farm workers of all backgrounds did in Delano when they went on strike in 1965 and built the United Farm Workers to spark the farmworkers movement, and that we need to learn this history, learn from the victories and the mistakes those leaders made, because their work to make a better world continues with us,” Mabalon said.