SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued a proclamation declaring October 25, 2017, as “Larry Itliong Day” in the State of California.
The text of the proclamation is below:
PROCLAMATION
Larry Itliong was born on October 25, 1913, in San Nicolas, Pangasinan, at that time a province under the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands. He grew up in severe poverty and arrived on the United States mainland in 1929, at the age of 15, to begin a life of migrant labor in the fields, fisheries and canneries of the West Coast. Soon after his arrival, Itliong became involved in organizing his fellow workers, emerging as a leader among the politically active laborers who would come to be known in the Filipino-American community as “manongs”: the elders.
Itliong was a key figure in the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, a watershed moment for the farmworkers’ movement. While many associate this movement with César Chávez and the Mexican-American community, Itliong and the manongs were also among its earliest pioneers. The United Farm Workers of America was formed during the Delano strike from the merger of Itliong’s Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers’ Association, led by Chávez and Dolores Huerta.
Today, on this 104th anniversary of his birth, it is fitting that we honor the great contribution of Larry Itliong and the manongs to the causes of farmworkers’ rights and social justice in our state and nation.
NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim October 25, 2017, as “Larry Itliong Day.”
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 25th day of October 2017.
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EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Governor of California
ATTEST:
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ALEX PADILLA
Secretary of State