On June 30, 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed bill AB 7 making October 25 in California Larry Itliong day. Who is Larry Itliong? He was one of the key Filipino contributors, along with Phillip Vera Cruz (shown on the left, Itliong is on the right) to the founding of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. While Caesar Chavez has his own California holiday, Larry Itliong’s role has been considered as neglected in retellings of the UFW’s story. Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American elected to the California State Legislature, was the principal author of this bill. The documentary The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heros of the UFW covers the story of Larry Itliong and other Asian Americans in the Farm Worker Labor Movement.
(photo credit: Timothy Biley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)
