Rosario Reyes, widow of Wilfredo Navares, stands in front of the Larry Itliong Resource Center in Poplar, where the couple received food and support during his illness.

The assistant director under Cesar Chavez when the United Farm Workers (UFW) was created, Larry organized and led protests for equal pay and dignified living conditions for farm and cannery workers throughout the West Coast and Alaska from the 1930s to when the UFW was created in 1966.

This is the story we want and need to tell, in all its brilliant beauty, about Larry and the Filipinos who fought for dignity in the fields and united for the first time with the Mexican community in Delano, California.

This is historic and will take the artistry of the creative team but the collective power of stakeholders including the Filipino American and Mexican American communities at-large in San Francisco and beyond. To date, Filipino American artists from the Bay Area to Broadway have joined with us in telling this important story.

“We have to be a community to support each other and be transformative in out lives together,” said one of the interns, and another said, “Never be ashamed of where you come from.”

POPLAR – What began as a vision and a dream has become a reality for the small community of Poplar. On Saturday, they held a grand opening of Central Valley Empowerment Alliance’s Youth Leadership Center which has been named “Lupe’s Promise.”