STREET SHEET

On August 27, Bill Sorro, one of San Francisco’s most influential, beloved, and passionate activists, passed away. Though the loss of such a unique and devoted man has sent ripples of sorrow throughout the community, the story of his life continues to inspire everyone he has known and everyone who has come to know him, even if only through his memory.

When asked to write this tribute, I was a little wary because I had never met Bill Sorro. However, the opportunity has proven to be an immense gift: While perusing the pictures, artifacts, and stories exhibited at the Manilatown Heritage Foundation to honor Bill’s life, I couldn’t help but be amazed by the group of youth working there, a group which included a crowd of young actors laughing together while practicing for a performance about Bill that would be put on later that day. The entire atmosphere was one of warmth, life, and an intent dedication to preserve the legacy and story of an elder, a manong, a figurehead and role model.

This principle of honoring and respecting one’s elders, or manongs, is a principle that shaped Bill’s life as well because he saw them as teachers that offer inspiration through their lives and stories. One of these teachers was his own mother, who battled against evictions in the Fillmore district during Bill’s childhood. “If there was an eviction in the neighborhood,” said Bill, “my mother and other families would go there and do what they could to prevent the sheriff from taking the furniture. This had a very sharp influence on my life, helping to frame and shape some of my own beliefs and passions [that] I feel for social justice.” This strong sense of both social justice and respect for elders helped fuel his efforts to save the International Hotel, an effort which, according to fellow activist Estella Habal, “was a major force in creating a powerful tenants’ movement that for three decades has played a critical role in the city’s history,” and which was only one of Bill’s many dedicated efforts around San Francisco.

In the 1920s, the International Hotel (IH) became a residence which mostly housed Filipino men who had immigrated to San Francisco and who struggled against discriminatory laws that narrowed their opportunities to find work and prohibited them from owning land. Because of a decline in the 1960s, the owner of IH decided to make it into a parking lot and sent eviction notices to all tenants, an act which caused an uproar in the now elderly community. After seeing a picket line protesting these evictions, Bill Sorro could not stop thinking about the injustice of this displacement: “I knew I had to help and that was all I could think of.” He moved into the International Hotel in his late twenties to aid in the struggle.

Bill Sorro banded together with the tenants that had formed the United Filipino Association and fought the evictions and struggled after a “mysterious” fire to finally win a new lease agreement that required them to bring the building back to code themselves within a year. Their passion and genuine love for people drew the community and students from around the Bay Area together to successfully complete the large project. However, they not only brought the building up to code, they turned the International Hotel into a vibrant community with arts and services programs. According to Emil deGuzman, a fellow activist and friend of Bill’s, “We took a slum and turned it around.”

In 1976, a company from overseas bought the International Hotel, and in January of 1977 the capitalistic world that consistently traded human life and dignity for money—the world against which Bill spent his life successfully fighting—finally managed to brutally evict the steadfast tenants. However, this eviction did not occur without a legendary struggle that brought over 5,000 people to unite in a human barrier to protect the tenants of the International Hotel. After the police initially backed down, it took a SWAT team armed with billyclubs and sledgehammers to break through and—without an ounce of respect or humanity—physically drag the elders out of the hotel. However, after thirty years and a concerted effort on the part of Bill and his fellow activists, the old site of the International Hotel has now become a site for affordable housing and the celebration of the history and heritage of the I-Hotel and San Francisco’s Filipino community.

Though this is the most famous story about the local activism of Bill Sorro, it is one of hundreds or even thousands of similar stories of the love and solidarity of this wonderful man who strove continuously to protect and uplift oppressed members of society, not only in the Filipino community, but in every struggling community in San Francisco. He participated in labor and trade unions, was a committed socialist, was a member of the Kalayaan Collective and the Union of Democratic Pilipinos, and helped start the Mission SRO Collaborative. Eric Quezada, who worked with Bill in the Mission District, stated in an interview that the first thing that struck him about Bill was that he was “someone who actually put his feelings of justice into action and his ideological perspectives into action on a day to day basis, not just in his activism, but in how he treated other people around him.”

“From the days of the IH to the days of the Mission SRO Collaborative, an innovative program which Bill helped to start and which continues to this day, Bill has taken to heart the politics and the struggle for real liberation of folks who are forced to live in sort of the best stock of affordable housing that’s available to people, whether they are families that are forced to live in SROs, whether they are elder Filipino men who lived in IH to African Americans to people with substance abuse, mental health issues, folks who the rest of society discards and doesn’t want to look at. I think that’s the folks that Bill feels most comfortable with,” stated Eric later in the interview.

Throughout his life, Bill created a family in San Francisco that extended from his own immediate family, his wife Giuliana, and his six children, and their love and generosity. According to Quezada, every member of the Sorro family shares the open-hearted warmth of Bill, especially through their aid in the Mission District. “It’s a wonderful thing that the Sorros and Bill have given to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have come through to dinner here”—a place to call home.

It is apparent through every tribute written about Bill and every interview conducted with those who knew him that he was a man who deeply and genuinely loved all people and whose activism stemmed from that very rare and noble quality. He is a role model to all San Francisco activists—so much so that the Mission SRO Collaborative uses his life and work to orient new trainees before they begin their jobs.

I find it extremely fitting and inspiring that now Bill himself has become a manong, not only to his family and the Filipino community, but also to an entire generation of young activists who are continuing the long struggle for equal rights in San Francisco and who have been and or who will be touched forever by the profound impact of the life and work of this remarkable man.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 12:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.