Heroes In Our Windows: Looking at the Making of a Mural in the South of Market
By Scott Gonzales Cooper
“Hey! This is right here is beautiful!” a man on the sidewalk said, stopping so that him and his family could admire the work. What used to be a pale facade above the Bayanihan center on the corner of 6th and Mission, is now being transformed into a bold and vibrant mural. In the past, the center may have been easy to walk by without noticing, but this mural is soon to be an important reminder to the community of everything the center represents.
The Bayanihan Center is a Filipino Community Center located in the South of Market or SOMA, a neighborhood which has been home to generations of Filipino Immigrants since the early 1900s. This center, a project of the Filipino-American Development Foundation, hosts a variety of programs promoting youth work, mental health, services for seniors and adults with disabilities, community gatherings, and is home to a Filipino Book store (Arkipelago books). The Filipino community in SOMA take pride in their neighborhood. The South of Market has all the familiar assets of a traditional Filipino town, with a church, school, the Mint Mall, community services provided by West Bay, Bindlestiff studios and at one point even a Jollibee. One can think of the Bayanihan center as SOMA’s town center, or in Tagalog kabayanan.
The word Bayanihan in Filipino is the practice and spirit of working together. This word comes from the word Bayan, which in Tagalog can mean household or community. The word Bayani (Bayan plus “I”) refers to the protector of the community or what we might call a hero. This is why when the mural team decided to create the theme “Heroes in Our Windows” painting heroes of the neighborhood above the center was consistent with the concept of Bayanihan. The heroes and sheroes that have been placed on the mural, have all in their own ways fought for and shaped the South of Market community. With the murals progress already gaining people's admiration as they walk down the sidewalk, this paper will look at why the Heroes in Our Windows mural is important not only to the Bayanihan center but to the SOMA neighborhood as a cultural district.
Making the Mural
Something we may take for granted as we pass by this mural is the organization and labor needed to produce it. The creation of the Bayanihan Center mural has occurred over three months not including the time spent coming up with the idea and plan. Each Saturday, workshops led by artists Mel Vera Cruz, England Hidalgo and Lian Ladia have been held, pushing towards the completion of the mural. These workshops have been extremely collaborative with a diverse range of participants in attendance including artists, citizens, leaders from youth, families, parents, seniors, teachers, friends, and organizers. Complete with food and drinks at each workshop, we started by learning about the mural’s theme.
The theme we learned was called Heroes in Our Windows, and the goal of this theme was to proudly display the history of the Filipino community in the South of Market. In these first sessions, we began learning about this history and some of the important people and events that defined the neighborhood. While learning about this history Mel Vera Cruz, shared various Filipino murals that already exist in the SOMA, such as the seven story “Lipi Ni Lapu Lapu” mural and the “Tuloy Po Kayo” mural at Bessie Carmichael. These were works of art that stare the changing neighborhood in the face and were part of the inspiration for the mural we were to begin working on. We learned about the reasons Filipinos settled in the South of Market in the first place, the displacement they have since faced, and those who have fought to keep these working-class immigrant communities alive. With this education fresh in our minds we began discussing the folks we would like to honor on the mural.
Participants at the workshop debated on whether we should highlight just SOMA heroes, or include a broader spectrum of Filipino Americans, or even Filipino national heroes like Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. Together it was decided, with the local SOMA participants standing firm in their stance, that it should be the local neighborhood heroes and sheroes honored in this space. After all, local neighborhood participants questioned, “If not here then where?” We then worked to compile the names of various heroes who made substantial contributions to the SOMA neighborhood. The list ranged from activists, laborers, poets, athletes, veterans and artists. The names were made into a poll along with a description of what they meant to the community. This poll was sent out in an email by the South of Market Action Committee for community members to vote on. The names with the top eight most “high priority” votes were to be featured in the mural.
Eight large faces of local heroes would be painted across the facade with colorful traditional Filipino inspired patterns and national symbols woven around them. Some of the necessary tasks included masking and priming the windows, mapping out and measuring the facade using blue masking tape as guides to get the size of the heroes correct, getting extra paint jars and color references to mix and match color, applying base colors on the facade, and cutting out stencils on board for the patterns and faces.
Eight Heroes/Sheroes
The final tally of the Eight Heroes/Sheroes that honored on the mural included, Dr, Mario Broha, Violeta "Bulletx" Marasigan, Major Demetrio M. Cariño, Bill Sorro, Al Robles, Dawn Mabalon, Victoria Manalo Draves and Carlos Villa. The story of these community members and their accomplishments reflects the story of the South of Market itself.
Dr. Mario Broja was a family doctor who laid the groundwork for the development of everyone's Filipino Community Center in SOMA Pilipinas. In 1976 he purchased the Delta Hotel in hopes of seeing it become a space for future generations of Filipino Americans to learn about the history of the struggles of the Filipino immigrants as well as learn about Filipino culture, traditions, and heritage.
The Delta Hotel later became the Bayanihan house and Bayanihan Community Center we know today. Dr. Broja was the founder of the Filipino American Development Foundation (FADF) and Filipino American Business and Professional Association (PHILPABA).
The Filipino American Development Foundation or FADF was a non profit organization formed in 1997. Its aim was to strengthen the social, physical and economic well being of the Filipino American community. After the fire that damaged the Delta hotel in 1997, Dr. Broja was forced to sell the building to TODCO, a non profit affordable housing developer. This sale however was made with the condition that the building would be renamed to the Bayanihan house and that the FADF would have a lease to establish the Bayanihan Center on the ground floor. By 2001, the housing was complete and by 2005, the Bayanihan Community Center was opened.
Another one of our heroes, Violeta “Bulletx” Marasigan, was a social worker, social justice advocate and has been a mentor to many of today's leaders in the South of Market. She worked for the SOMA nonprofits Westbay and Canon Kip Senior Center and is one of the founders of the Veterans Equity Center. In her younger years she was connected to the I-Hotel struggle in the 1970’s and later an advocate of the return of the Filipino Education Center.
The Veterans Equity Center, today the Bayanihan Equity Center, is an important part of the South of Markets history. It was created to serve the needs of Filipino WWII veterans who came to the US under the Immigration and Naturalization Reform Act of 1990. This act gave these veterans eligibility for naturalization, however it did not qualify them for regular veterans benefits and left many dependant on SSI.
Most Filipino veterans who arrived in the South of Market lived in the Delta Hotel, where they could live together and save money to send back home to the Philippines. With the tragic fire of 1997 many of these Veterans were displaced which prompted community members, such as Violeta “Bulletx” Marasigan in 1998, to help form the Veterans Equity Task Force to advocate and provide services for these veterans.
Major Demetrio M. Cariño, AFP Ret. is another hero represented in the mural and was an important part of this community of veterans. An inspiring speaker, and organizer, M. Cariño was truly a community treasure. In 1998, Major Cariño along with service providers, members of the community and other Filipino World War II Veterans started the Veterans Equity Center Task Force helping to voice their concerns and needs in the community.
Bill Soro was another cofounder of the Veterans Equity Center. An important housing activist in San Francisco he helped to ignite the housing movement in the late 1960s . He played a major role in the International Hotel Struggle, and The Mint Mall Organizing Group which later connects to SOMCAN. Through his involvement with organizations like the Mission Housing Development Corporation, TODCO and Manilatown Heritage Foundation, Bill worked with S.R.O tenants and homeless folks in the Mission, South of Market and other neighborhoods.
Al Robles was a Poet and community activist. He too was an important actor in the political fight against the demolition of the International Hotel on Kearny Street. He was a prominent member of the Asian American writers' collective Kearny Street Workshop. His poetry and community work honored the Filipino elders (Manongs) of the International Hotel while encouraging the next generation of students, artists and writers in the South of Market.
Dawn Mabalon was a professor of history at San Francisco State University and advisor of the early group of SOMA Pilipinas. As a professor of history she encouraged generations of students to become interested in the struggles and achievements of FIlipino Americans. Dawn was affiliated with the Gran Oriente and Bindlestiff Studios and is an important link to the historical asset of SOMA Pilipinas. Her doctoral dissertation “Life in Little Manila Filipinas/os in Stockton, California, 1971-172, published in 2003 is an essential historical narrative of the migration of Filipinos in the US.
Victoria Manalo Draves was a competitive diver and olympic athlete born in the South of Market. She was the first woman as well as the first Asian American to be awarded gold medals for both the ten meter platform and three meter springboard during the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. In the 1960s during the second wave of Filipino immigrants to America, Draves was an advocate for the Filipino Education Center in the South of Market.
Carlos Villa was an artist, educator and organizer responsible for the convenor of the Filipino Arts Exposition which later became Pistahan. As a faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute and a prominent community member he has been an inspiration to numerous Filipino-American artists, curators and educators in the Bay Area. His work often explored the meaning of multiculturalism and cultural diversity.
Art, Gentrification, & SOMA Pilipinas
During one of our early mural sessions, after working on cutting faces and patterns out into stencils, all of us volunteers were given an educational discussion by the South of Market Action Committee or SOMCAN. With many of the chosen heroes/sheroes being prominent housing advocates we began a discussion on gentrification and art. The talk was fascinating and I was surprised by the radical lens which was used. The speaker made it clear that both settler colonialism and the ways in which white supremacy have formed our society, need to be discussed when thinking about present-day gentrification. Indigenous and Black folks were never granted equal access and rights, and it was, in fact, their subjugation that allowed the settlers to prosper. So, it should be understood that the very foundation of our cities allows for gentrification to occur.
The South of Market is a neighborhood that is unfortunately familiar with the process of gentrification. Today in the South of Market we find a vast array of luxury hotels, condos, and tech companies. It has however, been home to working class Filipinos and other migrants for nearly 100 years. The Gran Oriente hotel for example is an historic site that a group of 40 Filipino men pooled $6,000 to buy in the 1920s. Up until as recently as 1990, census reported that up to 30% of SOMA population was Filipino American. This is a number that has steeply fallen in the last 20 years, especially since the turn of the century, with Filipinos making up roughly only 7% of today's population. Filipinos in San Francisco are no stranger to displacement with previous ethnic enclaves like Manila Town on Kearny and Jackson, and the Filmore no longer home to strong Filipino communities. The historic fights for tenants and small businesses in these neighborhoods against the forces urban renewal are close to the hearts of many Bay Area Filipinos. On Aug. 4, 1977, for example riot police helped evict the final 55 low-income residents of the largely Filipino International Hotel after an almost decade-long struggle. This signaled the death of Manilatown, along Kearny Street which had been home to 10,000 people at its peak.
Just like the creation of this mural, Filipino organizing in the South Of Market has always been a collective action. With the Veterans Equity Center fighting for the welfare of veterans, the Filipino Education Center forming Galing-Bata to provide bi-lingual after school programming for Filipino youth, and various organizers fighting for tenants rights, the common thread in SOMA is that we belong to the same neighbourhood and that we should support each other. In 2016 SOMA Pilipinas was officially recognized by the City of San Francisco as SF’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District, under the leadership of the Filipino-American Development Foundation, and in 2017 by the State of California as 1 of 14 Cultural Districts by the California Arts Council. Heros in Our Windows along with future art installations to be created such as plaques, sculptures and crosswalk art, will serve as part of the development of public art designed to place make and heighten the visibility of SOMA Pilipinas as a cultural district.
As the speaker from SOMCAN asked us, as artists, how can we help fight to reassert the face of the neighborhood? By painting the faces of local heroes, vibrant and proud, “Heroes in Our Windows” can help to preserve the culture and history of the neighborhood and display the struggle that was necessary to create our place and community in this city. For those who are familiar with, admire, or have worked alongside the heroes painted on the mural, hopefully seeing them can be a reminder of one's own belonging in the community. For those unaware of the faces, the mural hopefully also presents an opportunity to learn about the important work of these folks who have come before and inspire the next generations. So, not only is the mural a reflection of this past struggle, but the collective power, used in order to create the mural, also serves to remind us of the spirit of bayanihan and the future we know is possible.