The SoMa Filipino Community Bids Farewell to One of Its Staunchest Advocates

It was during his second year in college that Glen Andag was first exposed to the SoMa community, volunteering during the Veterans’ Day Parade with the Veterans’ Equity Center. But it wasn’t until December 2001, during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Bayanihan House, that he would gain a deeper sense of the long-established "Pinoy" community through a performance by Galing Bata. It was a poem written by SoMa historian, MC Canlas, about the beauty of the South of Market. But in the middle, the poem was modified to bring attention to threats to the neighborhood at the time, which was during San Francisco's first Dotcom Boom. "As an idealistic college student I was hella amazed by the little kids asking people to pay attention, stomping and clapping to a chant that called for action,” explained Andag. “It was all very personal and real, because that was the first year the Filipino Education Center was threatened to be closed.”

Not yet directly involved, Glen witnessed the community fight off the school closure and come up with the solution to consolidate Bessie Carmichael School and the Filipino Education Center to save the bilingual program, create the Galing Bata afterschool program, and prevent the Filipino Education Center site from being demolished.

Glen would go on to volunteer at the Veterans’ Equity Center, cultivating a deeper understanding of land use issues in the SoMa, before starting his first job as the Community Outreach Coordinator. His role was to bring together a base of residents who would be ready activate the Bayanihan Community Center when it opened. His early projects included the first Parol festivals, a financial literacy program for interested parents, and coordinating Galing Bata volunteers.  

 While functioning as Site Coordinator for Galing Bata, Glen became more aware of the ongoing issues in SoMa as a gateway community, noting that even up until 2009, “we were serving a lot of newcomer families, connecting them with services, immigration, and housing. There were even instances when some families were picked up by ICE or INS.” 

Pursuing his Masters in Social Work in Seattle, Glen served in organizations that worked with Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant populations– both elderly monolingual Chinese and  youth of color.  Later, he would also work on drug and alcohol prevention and treatment for young people.  

Glen’s decision be closer to family in the winter of 2014 marked his return to the SoMa community as the Youth Coordinator at United Playaz and as the Coordinator of the Filipino Mental Health Initiative. Once again, he witnessed newly-arrived immigrant families moving to the neighborhood to live with relatives, but all of them faced the pressures of developer buyouts and evictions.    

Ultimately, new challenges and growth spurred Glen’s transition out of the daily fabric of SoMa and into a new job with the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families.  While his calm and steady presence will be sorely missed,  Glen remains a unique source of insight and perspective, stemming from his range of experience in the SoMa community. He notes: “We’re often faced with fighting with what we don’t want, instead of having conversations focusing on what we do want… Right now, we’d simply benefit from more bases of unity.”