International Hotel: The Struggle for Housing Justice

As we approach International Workers Day, we're highlighting the historic fight for the International Hotel (I-Hotel).

In 1977, all residents of the hotel were violently evicted after the building was purchased by a multinational corporation. However the tenants, who were predominantly poor migrant Filipino and Chinese workers, organized and led a powerful fight against the eviction and helped to spark the modern housing rights movement that continues to have a lasting impact today.

The I-Hotel was a single-room occupancy hotel located in what was known as Manilatown in San Francisco.

Explicitly racist "urban renewal" policies targeted predominantly communities of color under the guise of removing "blighted" ares of the city. In reality, these efforts reflected a collusion between government and private financial interests, using state power to create vast profit opportunities at the expense of working people.

Filipino migrant workers were the majority of the hotel's tenants. Forced to migrate due to US and Japanese imperialist plunder of their homelands, they faced further labor exploitation in the US.

But where there is oppression, there is resistance!

In response, tenants organized for their right to housing, building a broad-based mass movement with community organizations across the city that brought together thousands of activists to confront the police on the day of eviction.

Come to the WSTA general meeting to hear directly from I-Hotel activists and learn how their struggle continues today amid modern forms of urban renewal like upzoning and YIMBYism.

Doors open at 6:15pm; Program begins at 6:45pm