Economic hardship and discrimination affects Filipinos. These Gen Z activists are helping<\/p>\n
Social justice groups are starting new satellite groups, outside central LA, to help Filipinos in the San Fernando Valley.<\/p>\n
Social justice activists who\u2019ve wanted to help Filipinos have traditionally gravitated toward well-known communities near downtown L.A., Carson, Cerritos and other cities. But some Gen Z Filipinos are going straight to the San Fernando Valley, a lesser known enclave where people also need help.<\/p>\n
I talked to two of them, Rica Roque and Gigi Gonzales-Palmer, at the Panorama Woodman Center, a strip mall where businesses are now mostly owned by Filipinos. Around us, bakeries and markets were selling prepared Filipino dishes and imported products from the Philippines. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Panorama City has many Filipino businesses, from supermarkets to bakeries.<\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez\/LAist<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
Roque is the secretary general of Migrante San Fernando Valley, a group that works with migrant workers and their families. The local branch opened in June this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cA huge part of the work that we do is getting to know them, getting to know their stories, their struggles, their conditions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At 27 years old, Roque is an older Gen Zer who attended De La Salle University in Manila before moving here in 2017. He\u2019s worked doing freelance photo and video for businesses and nonprofits.<\/p>\n
The Filipinos he meets in the Valley \u2014 both those who have come to the U.S. from the Philippines and those of Filipino descent \u2014 work in a range of jobs and professions, from nurses and other professionals in the healthcare industry to civil servants, as well as restaurant and retail workers. <\/p>\n
His group focuses on those experiencing hardships, which in many cases are people working in lower wage service sector jobs.<\/p>\n
He grew up in the Philippines and uses that background to reach out to workers, while Gonzales-Palmer draws on her roots in the Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the Valley. I’ve grown up most of my life here,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Gonzales-Palmer is secretary general of Anakbayan Panorama City, a national U.S. Filipino youth group with its origins in the Philippines. It opened in March.<\/p>\n
Gonzales-Palmer is 23 and earned her bachelor\u2019s degree in film and women\u2019s studies in 2021 and a master\u2019s in documentary film in 2022. She now works part time at a Filipino bakery.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rica Roque (left) and Gigi Gonzales-Palmer work for social justice groups in the San Fernando Valley.<\/p>\n
(<\/p>\n
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez\/LAist<\/p>\n
)<\/p>\n
The Valley loves the Valley<\/p>\n
Working in this area brings its own challenges, they said. Older organizations in other parts of Southern California have storefronts or other spaces for meetings and events. But because Roque and Gonzales-Palmer\u2019s groups are so new, it\u2019s hard for them to find appropriate locations for get-togethers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe often do boba shops or businesses that are kind of noisy, or parks that get dark at night and aren’t, like, the best to be around,\u201d said Gonzales-Palmer.<\/p>\n
Once they start talking to people who live in the area, however, they say they hear people express a desire to help each other out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Valley loves the Valley, people really look out for each other there,\u201d Gonzales-Palmer said.<\/p>\n
A lot of her outreach happens at Panorama High School, she said, because the school has a large population of students of Filipino descent and some of them belong to the Filipino student club on campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fight for the issues of Filipino youth and students and give a voice to the youth. Youth have a strong fighting spirit, especially Filipino youth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Youth have a strong fighting spirit, especially Filipino youth.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Gigi Gonzales-Palmer<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these youth have experienced family separation. They’ve been separated or they’re currently separated from family members away in the Philippines. They carry the burden of wanting to go to a good college and get a good job so their family doesn’t have to continue struggling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Now, however, she sees many people finish college with graduate degrees and still find it difficult to get work \u2014 including her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m struggling through a lot of these same issues that a lot of youth are struggling [with]. I have a master’s and I am still not employed,\u201d Gonzales-Palmer said. \u201cThe future looks bleak for many people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of this, helping remove roadblocks for Filipinos younger than her is personal. She works to make the high school students see themselves as belonging on a college campus and talks to them about the college admission process. Without parents or siblings who have gone to college, some students struggle to know the basics about how to enter higher education.<\/p>\n
I’m struggling through a lot of these same issues… I have a master’s and I am still not employed… the future looks bleak for many people.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Gigi Gonzales-Palmer<\/p>\n
To offer support, her group organized a trip to a national Filipino youth conference at UCLA last year to get students familiar with a college campus \u2014 and meet young Filipino activists from other parts of the country.<\/p>\n
Gonzales-Palmer said they learned \u201cthere\u2019s more ways to be a member of the community beyond just going to school and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starting from the ground up<\/p>\n
Roque said they\u2019re building communities from the ground up by helping Filipinos with things like food insecurity and basic needs \u2014 and negotiating for their rights at work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk to a lot of the workers in\u2026 North Hills\u2026 experiencing wage theft,\u201d Roque said. <\/p>\n
He gave an example of a man he talked to recently who had been working for the same food preparation company for 20 years. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe started off with, I think, $16 or $17 an hour. But he’s still receiving the same amount of salary or wage [today],\u201d Roque said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re experiencing these issues,\u201d Roque added, \u201cit’s a struggle to not lose hope and motivation to keep on fighting. I think that’s what we also do as organizers. We make people learn and think that, \u2018Oh yeah, we can change these things\u2019 not just for you, but also for other people.”<\/p>\n
Gonzales-Palmer said many students have a lot of fear around ICE and being an immigrant. <\/p>\n
“I think that’s actually pushed more students to get involved and be more political,” she said. “Earlier this year, students across the San Fernando Valley, including from Panorama High, including from the Filipino Club, participated in walkouts to show the Valley that people care about migrants and that students won’t stop and stand for the raids and the way people treat migrants.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Economic hardship and discrimination affects Filipinos. These Gen Z activists are helping Social justice groups are starting new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[43423,18369,2306,48,52,51,47,50,49,43424,7611],"class_list":{"0":"post-74514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-economic-justice","9":"tag-filipinos","10":"tag-higher-education","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-headlines","13":"tag-la-news","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","16":"tag-los-angeles-news","17":"tag-philippines","18":"tag-san-fernando-valley"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}