The City of San Jose is adding a new park called Delano Manongs Park, honoring the Delano Manong farm workers, key players in the founding of the United Farm workers and the Delano Grape strike. According to this City of San Jose presentation, the park will include a children’s playground, a gathering plaza, an open sporting lawn,
benches and seating, and landmark signage. The park location at the corner of Gimelli Way and Beechnut Drive – not far from where I live and close to where I would buy pandesal.
I am happy to see these Filipino pioneers honored in this way. It is also great to see more park space open up – I think that the pandemic has shown how important it is to have parks and open pace around us. For more information on the Delano Manongs, you can see an older post of mine on the subject which refers to this documentary The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW. The Delano grape strike is also talked about in the Asian American documentary that was shown on PBS.
