On the evening of Sunday, January 16, 1977, seven thousand people chanted these words as they stood around the International Hotel (I-Hotel) with linked arms to protest the forced eviction of the hotel’s elderly tenants. For nine years, hotel residents, allies, and community members had participated in community organizing to stop the eviction and demolition of the I-Hotel—one of the last remnants of the once-thriving Manilatown in San Francisco, and home to the elderly, working-class, and immigrant tenants who had built a tightly-knit community. Community organizing mobilizes everyday local people to come together, identify the issues that most affect their communities, and create solutions that create positive change. In this module, we will discuss the gentrification efforts made towards the I-Hotel, and how its residents and community members resisted eviction and gentrification.

The fight to save the I-Hotel was a fight to defend affordable housing as a human right, preserve Manilatown, and defend the rights and futures of the city’s poor and immigrant communities. Inspired by the residents who first resisted eviction, organizers worked closely with hotel tenants and, through community organizing, mobilized thousands of supporters across the city to defend the I-Hotel and its tenants. Together, they created a powerful network of people who took action and stood in solidarity with the tenants. The citywide effort to save the I-Hotel would become the longest and largest anti-eviction campaign in the history of San Francisco and one of the most important struggles in Asian American movement history.