Unlike most of the kids he grew up with in San Jose, 91-year-old Robert Ragsac never looked forward to the day when school would let out in June.
"When summertime came, everybody would say, 'Oh we're going to get out of school! We're going to go out and do a lot of fun things,'" Ragsac said."My brother and I didn't like it because that meant we would have to go work in the fields."
These farmworkers — known as Manongs — played a crucial role in the early days of the farmworker movement, right alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. But that could be about to change thanks to a new generation of Filipino-American students at San Jose State University."Incredibly, there is no reference to the Filipino farmworkers anywhere on the arc even though it was the Filipino farmworkers who first went out on strike," said graduate student Kayla Taduran."It's an awesome arch. But it's a damn insult," he said.
The students are demanding the university also build a tribute to their leaders like Larry Itliong, who first organized the Delano grape strike in 1965.
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