Asian Americans

Working the fields, you worked in the fields from when you were a child. There were no labor laws that prevent parents bringing their children to work. It gives them one less thing to worry about if your children are out there working with you. Lot of Filipino men wanted me to become the person they could not become. They're telling me, "we'll save money for you to go to college". A lot of these old men had that dream of having us young kids out of the field. Not to go through what they did for the last 20, 30 years. (gentle music) We want to have medical benefits. When one of our guys falls down and he gets hurt someone's gotta cover his benefits. We don't have a health plan, when these guys get old, we wanna have a pension plan. (gentle music) Larry Itliong was president of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, known as AWOK. Summer of 65 he began to talk about organizing, improving the working conditions, increasing the salaries. We feel that we farm workers should have an organization of our own. One of the things that most people forget is that it was the Filipinos in September 1965, who started a grape strike. Not the Mexicans.