Mara Ibarra: Leading the Migrant Movement as a Migrant Mother
Mara Ibarra is a fearless activist with the Philippine National Democratic Movement and with immigrant groups across the United States. As a migrant mother, she has led national and international efforts through her position as an advisor to the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON.) She is rooted in San José organizing as a founder of the Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants and the Silicon Valley Workers Project. Mara discusses her experiences leading the historic Justice for Airport Screeners campaign, and how motherhood and migration have affected her activism.
Describe your first exposure to activism.
I got involved during my student years when I was studying at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Prior to that, my mother was a political prisoner. I was exposed to community organizing as young as maybe ten. We would go to mobilizations, and we would go to some workers’ meetings because my mom used to be a workers rights’ organizer. That’s when I got exposed but I didn’t get to really be involved until I went to college. It was fun. It was exciting. The organizing was really alive. I worked with my classmates, the student council, and other student groups on campus.
Were your other family members involved with community organizing?
They were a part of other student organizations, but it was a different part of my life where my mom was organizing and my siblings were involved. However, they can’t get involved [now] because they have families now so it’s different when you’re young and you’re a student.
How would you compare activism in the United States with organizing in the Philippines?
In the Philippines, [Filipinos] are directly affected. I’m not saying we’re not directly affected here but it’s so intense or worse [back in the Philippines.] Over here, it’s a little bit challenging because they [Filipinos] left the Philippines because they want a better life. They’re very focused on fulfilling the American Dream. That’s one of the challenges of organizing here.
What was one of the first campaigns you led in the US?
At the time, it was the Justice for Airport Screeners campaign. I came in 2002 and 9/11 happened a year before. The intensification of the War on Terror was present at the time. When they [the US] passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, they required airport screeners to become US citizens because they basically scapegoated immigrants for the bombing of the twin towers. Because of that, they saw that most of the airport screeners in the airport, especially international airports, were immigrants.
I did not know about the law and what the organizing looked like here. When I had the opportunity to talk to the workers who are going to be impacted by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, I immediately got involved because I knew that was something that I could do. I could not just educate the workers about their rights but also help them build an organization that could protect them.
The workers had to go through an elimination process. It was basically an examination test to [see] if you can do your job as an airport screener but the examination that they took really had nothing to do with the job. It’s about English proficiency. Even the test was conducted on a computer base. You go into a room and you put headphones on and you use a computer to answer the test for a short period of time. Imagine that was the time that computers were just starting to be more high tech and even then, it was just a floppy disk. They [the workers] didn’t really have experience using computers for the test so a majority of them failed. The test was really designed to get rid of the workers. So, we [NAFCON] were trying to fight for them to be retained. That was our campaign.
We were doing a lot of computer trainings because you were told you needed a computer. We were helping a lot of them to become US citizens. We even negotiated with the US Congress to expedite the process of them becoming US Citizens but one challenge that most of them faced was their family petitions because they didn’t want to become US citizens. It was faster to petition your families for permanent residency [without US citizenship.]
In the span of 3 months, the workers were laid off without notice and without getting their last pay checks. We filed some labor violations because of that. There was also a transition from the old airport screeners to the new airport screeners. The new airport screeners needed to be federal employees. The airports said they could not tell the workers when that [transition] would happen because of security breaches, but it was very painful to see people going to work and then told that they don’t have a job anymore. A lot of them had multiple family members working at the airport. This was also the time when the employers increased their pay but they didn’t know why they got an increase. They later on found that they federalized job and then, increased the pay. But they were never told. So they bought houses, they bought cars. After that, everyone was laid off. They sold their houses. They sold their cars because of that so the impact of this disruption to their families was very hard.
After that, we were not able to win our campaign by keeping them at their jobs so we helped them find [new] jobs. That’s when the caregiving industry started. I think the industry started as a result of the prices of housing at the time. Most of the houses were converted to care homes so a lot of airport screeners got trained to become caregivers. But I would say ten, at least, were able to get their jobs [back] but these were people with military backgrounds and [those] born and raised here. We also tried to file a lawsuit for racial discrimination and age discrimination but the government still said no and said it was about security. It was about terrorism. It was about the War on Terror so there wasn’t too much that we could do.
Instead, we were able to help form an organization. Some of the workers became members or officers of the Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants. They got jobs in the airport but with different positions, and they learned from the Justice for Airport Screeners campaign. They didn’t have a union [back then] and they didn’t have the power of negotiation so they got involved with [forming] a union. That was an accomplishment. We were training them to become organizers, how to facilitate meetings, how to do lobbying work, how to do advocacy work. So it basically paid off. Most of them became leaders of the union and up until to now, we still have a union at the airport.
For me, for someone that just arrived in the US, I didn’t really speak that much English. It was a very good learning experience for me to really fully grasp and understand what we mean by imperialism because when you’re in the Philippines, you study it in college and how it impacts the Philippines. Over here, this is what it looks like.
What is it like to be a migrant mother organizing these movements?
At that time, there were other organizers [in San Jose] that were able to help us set up a non-profit. It was called Filipino Community Support, or FOCUS. That was an opportunity for me as a migrant organizer, as a migrant woman and a mom, to be a mom and at the same time, organize. If I was working at a different job, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. My kids were so young back then. They were only one year old and six years old and so it was good that my partner back then was an organizer in the nonprofit that we set up. We were able to support each other in becoming parents but also how to organize at the same time. For me, it was a very fulfilling experience.
Of course, things have changed. We didn’t have funding any more but we continued to organize the workers with my volunteer time because at the time I was working at a union. While organizing at the union, I was working with Filipino workers. One important factor was that I was able to do it with the family support. My in-laws were able to help with childcare and studying.
You’ve been in San Jose for a very long time. How have you seen the city change since 2002 especially through working with the Filipino community?
Well, definitely there’s a lot. The airport screeners we worked with, some of them have moved out of state because they can’t afford to live here any more. There are so many developments in the city and the cost of living just becomes so high and there’s nothing to give back to the community. That’s one big change.
There’s a lot of care homes now, but I think even the price around healthcare is a problem [along with] social benefits and social services. When we had the non-profit, health was one of the things we were talking about. There are not a lot of Filipino nonprofits [providing] services for the Filipino community [even when] the Filipino community is the 3rd or 4th largest Asian community in the County. That’s [also because] of the history of our people, or Filipino groups who have stolen funds. We used to have a Filipino Community Center where we could get services but [these groups] misused the funds. That became a label to the Filipino community.
How do you feel like you’ve changed since your arrival to the US?
For me, it’s the wealth of experience that I gained from talking to the workers. I was always sad because I didn’t have a family over here. I always wanted to go home but through the organizing and meeting the workers, they became my family. That made me stronger. That made me deepen my commitment to organize. I know that it’s not going to change over night. There’s always going to be issues that come up but we need to be organized.
What advice would you give to Filipinx organizers in San Jose?
Integration with the people and community is key. If you want to know their issues, it’s important to deeply get to know them. Spending time with them and really teaching and training them how to be not just leaders, not just organizers, but showing them that their problems are not separate to just them. It’s a problem that all of us have to change.
And patience! Patience is always going to be hard because when you organize, you’ll be meeting different people. When you meet with different people, it provides a reflection of what kind of person you would want to be. It’s patience but it’s also passion. It’s also the kind of lifestyle you want to have. Because at the end of the day, it’s your choice if you want to build a movement that will change something for everyone or you could just live your life like you used to.
How would you like to continue to grow?
For me, it’s about how can I continue to share my experience. How I can help not just in San Jose or the Bay Area but in different states? My dream is to go back to the Philippines but I need to prepare myself, because when I go back it’s a different story, it’s a different crisis.
