The Filipino Community That Organized Like Fireworks and Vanished Like Smoke
Seattle's Filipino editor calls out a pattern of flashy associations that burn bright, elect officers before the election, and leave nothing behind but speeches.
One very noticeable quality of Filipinos anywhere is their readiness and fondness of organizing. In our Filipino community in Seattle, particularly, this has been too often demonstrated.
There is nothing defective in this attitude, but when we come to understand that such organizations as come up so rapidly also go into decay even more rapidly, there must be something the matter with them. In other words, they grow up like mushrooms, flourish like a firework, and then go into oblivion as quickly as the snag of a finger. And they leave behind only written records of patriotic speeches without concrete evidences of their achievements.
Take for instance the Filipino Commerce and Labor Council, which was organized in Seattle about a year ago. The Seattle Filipino community hardly noticed it come to be. Like lightning the news spread out that there was organized a Filipino Commerce and Labor Council, with aims and objectives set forth in the most eloquent language. Officers were elected — some of them even took their offices before they were elected — stationery was ordered, inauguration dinners and speeches were held, and, as quickly as it came into being, it went out without accomplishing one of its original objectives. There were so many speeches at that time that would make one believe that all Filipinos are patriotic persons. For the last thirteen months since the organization there has not been shown achievement in line with its original aims.
Again, just very recently, another attempt to put up a Filipino association to work for the welfare of the Filipinos has been started. Three solid hours were spent in delivering speeches that mean the same thing. So far nothing has been done.
It is much better that the thing should be stopped out. Instead let every aspiring leader write his patriotic speeches, mail them to American editors for publication, go convince the editors in person, and then let these same leaders fire the example by living as they would have others do. To improve the group, begin with the individual.
“They grow up like mushrooms, flourish like a firework, and then go into oblivion as quickly as the snag of a finger.”
A century later, Seattle's Filipino community is one of the largest in the mainland US, anchored by the Chinatown-International District and groups like the Filipino Community of Seattle that survived where the paper's 'mushroom' associations did not. The editor's complaint — that organizations launch with eloquent manifestos and dissolve before delivering — is a familiar critique of any immigrant mutual-aid scene, then and now.
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