The Fight to Save the International Hotel
KDP members were early leaders in the International Hotel(I H) fight with tenants in Manilatown Kearny Street, a district adjacent to Chinatown where Filipinos lived, worked and owned businesses. The original owners began eviction procedures in the Fall of 1968 to demolish the building. The battle to stop eviction and save the I H from destruction was to block the city’s expansion of the downtown financial district and end encroachment. After nine years of resistance, city officials and police executed a judge’s court order to evict August 4, 1977 by brutally routing thousands in a human barricade and ejecting the 55 elderly tenants on the streets without alternative housing to move.
Worldwide, the city was resoundingly condemned for the violent attack on I H tenants and supporters. The victory from the aftermath of eviction was a creation of a new $30 million International Hotel high-rise of affordable, federally subsidized housing to build on the same land. The date of the new I H opening was August 2005, 28 years after eviction.
Former KDP members formed a non-profit Manilatown Heritage Foundation (MHF) that joined in a coalition of government officials, Catholic church, community representatives to build the new I H. The MHF created the Manilatown Center that currently operates on the ground floor that enshrines the memory of the International Hotel tenants and their heroic struggle and cultural center holding community events. The location is 848 Kearny Street, the same address of the old International Hotel.
