KIWA

The holiday season is in full swing — and so is COVID-19 season. If you received the original COVID-19 vaccine (before fall 2023), the updated COVID-19 vaccine builds a new immune response to variants currently circulating. Learn answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the updated vaccine in these slides.

On this day, December 4, 1969, the US government assassinated 21-year-old Fred Hampton, the Deputy Chairman of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party, while he was asleep in bed as part of a national campaign of repression against the Black liberation movement.

Born in Chicago and raised in a nearby suburb, Hampton began organizing for social change at a young age, leading high school walkouts against racism and serving as an NAACP Youth Council President. His experiences drew him to the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program, and he joined in 1968.

Hampton's skillful organizing quickly made the Chicago Black Panthers one of the most successful chapters nationally. He engineered a nonaggression pact between the city's street gangs to forge an anti-racist, class-conscious alliance between workers across the city called the "Rainbow Coalition."

Hampton was instrumental in the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program and organized frequent rallies and political education classes. His gifted oratory skills reached working people across the country who resonated with “all power to the people."

After the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Hampton's electrifying speeches and his capacity to inspire solidarity across racial lines terrified the political establishment. The FBI intensely surveilled and infiltrated the Chicago chapter of the BPP.

The murder of Fred Hampton along with fellow Black Panther Mark Clark was the culmination of a campaign of raids and arrests that sought to dismantle the chapter. With a blueprint provided by an informant, the FBI, the police, and the attorney's office murdered Hampton in his own apartment.

Hampton's assassination is a reminder not only of the naked oppression that is doled out to those who dare to struggle against exploitation in this country but also of the power of multiracial solidarity in catalyzing resistance against the rule of the exploiters.

On this day, December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. John Brown was an abolitionist who formed an army of Black and white people dedicated to ending slavery by any means necessary. After defeating slave state forces in Kansas, he led a failed raid at Harpers Ferry, where he was tried and executed shortly after.

In the earliest known depiction of John Brown - taken by Black photographer Augustus Washington - he affirms his pledge to destroy slavery by raising his right hand and holding the flag of the Subterranean Pass Way, which he envisioned would liberate slaves through the Appalachians.

His raid at Harpers Ferry is commonly interpreted as the opening of the Civil War and the eventual abolition of slavery. To this day John Brown’s uncompromising stance that no one could be free in a society based on slavery resonates among all those who stand against oppression.

Meet the people taking on those who steal workers’ wages – and winning!

Worker centers and the courageous people who have spoken out for justice have won millions in lost wages, and they are just getting started. Learn more about these incredible people, including KIWA's Executive Director Alexandra Suh, at WageTheftStories.org.

Wage theft impacts workers, their families, employers who abide by the rules, and our economy as a whole. More workers are standing together to identify wage violations and win back their wages. That’s good news, but it’s still hard to recover lost wages and the process can take a long time. Economists who study wage theft say the problem is much bigger than $2 billion a year, because many workers never file a claim.

Worker centers like KIWA partner with workers so they can stand up for their legal rights. For example, 22 carwash workers who experienced wage theft while working at Classic Car Wash in Long Beach, California recently recovered $229,000.

Learn more at WageTheftStories.org |

From 1968 to 1977, the Filipino and Chinese tenants of San Francisco’s low-income I-Hotel were joined by students and workers to wage a fierce resistance movement against corporate developers. The storied organizing efforts to protect the I-Hotel, from court battles to picket lines make it an important chapter in both the Asian-American and tenants’ rights movements.

The I-Hotel struggle was a struggle against both institutionalized racism and for decent housing for the working class, particularly retired workers sidelined by the system. The I-Hotel Struggle is relevant now when decent housing has become increasingly out of reach across California and millions face the threat of eviction.

Today we honor the struggle of working women against gender-based violence, and condemn the continued impunity enjoyed by perpetrators and the stigmatization of victims. We stand in solidarity with women who are struggling against patriarchy and all other forms of oppression.

63 years ago today, the revolutionary Mirabal sisters Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa were brutally murdered by the US-backed Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. In 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to honor the Mirabal sisters on November 25.

We call on the US government to ratify and implement International Labor Organization Convention 190 on ending violence and harassment in the workplace to address the root causes of gender-based violence.

On this day, November 24, 1966, the working class lost a great voice- Honduran writer and activist Ramón Amaya Amador, who spent his early years as a union organizer among his fellow plantation workers before founding workers' newspapers and writing novels about the labor history of Honduras.

Amador fled the political persecution of the Honduran military dictatorship to Guatemala in 1944, where he was active in a variety of progressive Central American publications and published his most famous novel, “Prisión verde” about the struggle of banana plantation workers.

After the CIA-backed coup of the democratic Árbenz government, Amador sought asylum in Argentina before moving back to Honduras in 1957. As a famous Latin American leftist intellectual, he was constantly persecuted in Honduras and spent the rest of his life in Czechoslovakia.

Amador’s literary workers were declared a national cultural treasure 25 years after his untimely death in a plane crash, and his works are widely read in Honduras and beyond. We honor his commitment to writing about and portraying the lives of ordinary workers and their historic task of transforming society.

On this day, November 19, 1915, Joe Hill was executed. He was a Swedish immigrant who worked as a songwriter and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), composing stirring labor anthems such as “There is Power in a Union.”

Hill joined the IWW as a worker in the docks of San Pedro and quickly became popular through his songs, which took on the melodies of religious hymns but had lyrics that addressed worker struggles.

Hill was accused of the 1914 murder of a Salt Lake City grocer and former policeman, and although none of the witnesses were able to ID him as the murderer, he was sentenced to death anyway. The IWW argued that he had been framed. Following an unsuccessful international campaign for clemency, he was executed in November 1915.

An estimated 30,000 people attended Hill's funeral. Hill’s ashes were sent to every IWW chapter. His legacy has been memorialized in many songs, poems, writings, and movies as a legendary organizer and fighter for the working class.

This year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit is taking place in San Francisco, bringing the world’s top leaders and CEOs together to coordinate and build consensus on how to most effectively push "free, fair, and open trade" policies across the Asia-Pacific.

Putting profit over people, APEC pays lip service to progressive social goals while intensifying exploitation. APEC is a tool to maintain the hegemony of dominant countries like the US and Japan through trade and investment liberalization, deregulation, and privatization.

The regional cooperation schemes put forth by APEC justify the tighter integration and collaboration of Asia-Pacific countries through corporate global production/supply chains, undercutting independent development, and depriving workers of their basic rights.

As inequality rises and monopolies only become more powerful, APEC’s detrimental effect on workers from the US to the Philippines provides an important opportunity for international solidarity between workers of all backgrounds to build a world run by and for those who make society run.

Immigrant workers are deeply impacted by free trade schemes like the ones pushed by APEC and can serve as important leaders in the struggle against them, as these schemes continue to compel labor migration for the sake of corporate profit-making.

Today, we celebrate the life of Jeon Tae-il, a South Korean labor activist who self-immolated 53 years ago today in front of the garment factories at the infamous Peace Market in Seoul to protest against the conditions of textile workers there. Jeon Tae-il was only 22 when he made this ultimate sacrifice for workers’ rights, galvanizing the South Korean labor movement and inspiring countless struggles.

Workers from Jeju to Seoul have mobilized this year to honor the 53rd anniversary of Jeon Tae-il's martyrdom, inheriting his spirit to call for the resignation of the Yoon Seok-yeol regime and condemn its attacks on labor, people's livelihoods, democracy, and peace.

Jeon Tae-il’s last words- “Workers are not machines!” “Guarantee the Three Basic Labor Rights!” “Do not let my death be in vain!”- still ring true to this day. The South Korean workers’ movement continues to struggle for basic rights and protections for all workers just like we do in Koreatown. The struggle is international- and we carry Jeon Tae-il’s legacy with us wherever we go.

At the largest gathering of Korean businesses in the world, with participants from 60 different countries, at the very first time the conference was held outside of Korea — KIWA was there to echo the call of workers fighting for better working conditions against Hannam Chain founder Dr. Kee Whan Ha.

Frank Shyong covered the picket line for the LA Times California section. He's right — this fight is about more than one workplace. We are part of a historic moment in US labor history, fighting for respect and dignity from companies who massively profited from worker's labor during the pandemic. From janitors, hospital workers, hotel workers, baristas, writers, actors, and beyond, we're fighting for the right to collectively bargain; No easy feat, as the US's rate of union membership hit the lowest rate on record last year — 10.1%. This fight is about protecting our future as workers and tenants of Koreatown, Los Angeles, and the US.

COWAY USA workers speak out about their working conditions, why and how they started a union campaign with the California Restaurant and Retail Workers’ Union (CRRWU), and their dreams for the future — starting with winning their upcoming union election.

Watch the interview here: https://youtu.be/VKdH10Zarp0

COWAY USA workers speak out about their working conditions, why and how they started a union campaign with the California Restaurant and Retail Workers’ Union (CRRWU), and their dreams for the future — starting with winning their upcoming union election.

Watch the interview here: https://youtu.be/VKdH10Zarp0

On this day, November 8, 1987, Prop 187- which promised to criminalize undocumented immigrants and exclude them from critical services- was passed after a racist campaign that targeted the Latino and Asian communities. The mass movement against it united immigrants of all backgrounds.

Prop 187 targeted the most vulnerable in immigrant communities and would’ve denied the right to education to 100,000 students in LA alone. On the ballot during a national recession, politicians scapegoated immigrants for the hardships that workers faced instead of their neoliberal governance.

Resistance against Prop 187 took the form of marches, non-compliance from labor, and a powerful student movement that coalesced around the struggle to unite diverse youth against the war on immigrants and provided opportunities for further politicization and organization.

Prop 187 was overturned and immigrant rights in California look dramatically different than they did 3 decades ago. Today, we remember it as one of KIWA's first struggles for immigrant justice and uphold it as a reminder that the struggle for genuine immigration reform continues.

Join us tomorrow to learn how we can protect tenants from harassment, and create a future where all of us can afford a home for good!

On this day, November 3, 1979, 5 organizers trying to unionize the textile factories around Greensboro, NC across racial lines were killed in a protest against white supremacists recruiting at these same plants. Their struggle against racist terror for worker solidarity remains just as relevant today.

The organizers gave up comfortable middle-class jobs to enter the factories and be one with the workers they attempted to unionize, immersing themselves not only in the struggle against exploitation but also against racism, fighting issues such as biased competency testing and police brutality.

Centuries of racially discriminatory practices that severely impacted wages, education, housing, healthcare, and political representation formed the basis of inequality that compelled the organizers to stake their lives for the cause. We continue the struggle today.

On this day, October 28, 1879, Luisa Capetillo, an honored leader of Puerto Rican workers’ struggles at the beginning of the 20th Century was born. Condemning exploitation and organizing both on the island and in the mainland US, Capetillo also fought for the rights of all women.

Capetillo first organized a farm workers' strike in 1905 and became a reporter for the Federación Libre de Trabajadores (FLT) in 1910, traveling throughout Puerto Rico educating and organizing women. Her hometown, Arecibo, became the most unionized area of the country.

In 1910, Capetillo became a reporter for the American Federation of Labor, educating and organizing across Puerto Rico. In 1912 she traveled to New York City to organize Cuban and Puerto Rican to***co workers. She later went on to do the same in Florida and abroad in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

In her 1912 essay “Visions,” Capetillo wrote that she had always “believed that everybody had the right to be clean and clothed, to wear shoes.” Her internationalist vision is reflected in her famous statement that "Tyranny, like freedom, has no homeland, nor do exploiters or workers."

In 1919, Luisa Capetillo became the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear pants in public. She was sent to jail for what was then considered a crime. Capetillo is remembered by history as an outspoken advocate for women’s freedom and workers’ rights in Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean and Latin America.

On this day, October 25, 1913, Larry Itliong was born. His brave leadership during the Delano Grape Strike secured fair compensation and a union contract for Filipino and Mexican farmworkers.

The struggle of Filipino farmworkers sparked the Delano Grape Strike in 1965. The Mexican National Farmworkers Association united with the primarily Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) against their unfair treatment, forming the United Farm Workers (UFW).

Larry Itliong’s legacy lives through the generations of organizers who have followed his example of unyielding solidarity and commitment to union organizing in the face of violent repression and seemingly insurmountable exploitation. The struggle of farmworkers continues in California and around the world.

Excited to share our report on working conditions in Ktown restaurants. We loved partnering with Saba Waheed of the UCLA Labor Center and Prof AJ Kim of SDSU

📢 Published today: Read the latest report from the UCLA Labor Center and KIWA , “Overcooked & Underserved: The Challenges of Koreatown’s Restaurant Workers,” to learn about the labor and housing conditions impacting immigrant workers in KTown.

Full report: bit.ly/OU-KRW

📢 Published today: Read the latest report from the UCLA Labor Center () and KIWA, “Overcooked & Underserved: The Challenges of Koreatown’s Restaurant Workers,” to learn about the labor and housing conditions impacting immigrant workers in Koreatown.

Full report: bit.ly/OU-KRW

Press Call: 📅 This Tuesday, Oct. 24, join and KIWA for a new report release. "Overcooked & Underserved: The Challenges of Koreatown’s Restaurant Workers" dives into the labor & housing conditions of workers in .

🔗 RSVP via Zoom at: bit.ly/PC-OU

On this day, October 22, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) was decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the final blow in a strike whose defeat at the hands of Reagan would mark a significant turning point in the US labor movement.

Air traffic controllers had the highest union density in the federal workforce through their militant rank-and-file organizing. Demanding an end to the stressful conditions that worsened after airline deregulation in 1978, they walked out after contract negotiations stalled.

Reagan's crackdown on the PATCO strike involved the firing and blacklisting of 11,000 air traffic controllers and was a major defeat for organized labor in the US, encouraging bosses across the country to dismiss collective bargaining in favor of strikebreaking and union busting.

Although union membership has declined since the PATCO strike, polls show that popular support for union organizing is the highest it’s been in decades. The resurgence of the labor movement through historic organizing drives from Boba Guys to Coway USA to Hannam Chain is fighting- and winning!

Join us early Monday morning to support Measure and fight the real-estate speculators and developers who profit from our broken housing system. MONDAY Oct 23 7:45 am at the Mosk Courthouse @110 N. Grand.

We need you to and in support of this Monday at 7:45am at the Courthouse!! (110 N Grand Ave)📣

Although ULA passed last November, wealthy corporate interests are trying to stop progress. 😒 But ULA is exactly what L.A. needs to bring more people inside while preventing people from falling into homelessness in the first place.

So advocates, do your thing!! 💙See you MONDAY morning!🙌

We are also working to defend Measure ULA against a lawsuit filed in December by two special interest groups. The Southern California Association of NonProfit Housing (SCANPH), Korean Immigrant Workers Association (KIWA), and Service Employees International United Local 2015 (SEIU Local 2015) have stepped forward as defendants with representation by Public Counsel and Irell & Manella LLP.

Let’s be clear–those who profit from evictions and huge rent hikes are funding this reckless lawsuit that threatens the future of Los Angeles and keeps us from addressing our most pressing issues–homelessness and scarce affordable housing options.

We so appreciate that The James Irvine Foundation hears workers’ voices and partners with us to lift them up.

Koreatown workers are fighting for unions. Why do essential workers still lack basic protections? Koreatown sees unionization battles at Coway, a South Korean air conditioning manufacturer; the grocery store chain Hannam Market and the Korean barbecue chain Genwa

Liberty Hill Foundation’s partnership and faith in movement-building has been vital to our survival and growth over the decades.

Increasingly, immigrant wage workers in Los Angeles are experiencing mistreatment, exploitation, disrespect, and feeling undervalued at their workplaces. Read the recent Los Angeles Times article, “Koreatown workers are fighting for unions. Why do essential workers still lack basic protections?” to learn why Liberty Hill community partner Korean Immigrant Worker’s Alliance (KIWA) is fighting alongside immigrant workers for better living wages, safe and healthy working conditions, and basic worker protections. Follow the link to read the full article: libhill.co/lat-kiwa

We had a blast riding the bus with Councilmembers Hernández and Soto-Martínez and listening to riders about their experiences.

On this day, October 12, 1933, the Los Angeles Garment Workers’ Strike began- when Mexican women workers stood up against the exploitative garment industry in Los Angeles in one of the most influential workers’ struggles in LA labor history and the post-New Deal workers’ movement.

Rose Pesotta, the militant leader of the strike set a precedent when she organized the strike to be culturally oriented towards the Mexican immigrant workers she was organizing, overcoming the previous chauvinism of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union.

Over three weeks of picketing and confrontations with scabs and the police, the workers stood side by side in solidarity for equality and against exploitation. They would win a minimum wage, a 35-hour work week, and a union in a notoriously anti-labor city.

. Despite progressive legislation, LA continues to host unacceptable sweatshop conditions in the garment industry, its largest manufacturing sector. The struggle continues for a world where garment workers are organized and win the dignity and respect they deserve

Today, we joined with other members of the alliance, comprised of unions, clergy, housing justice groups, and community organizations, to push for social housing, strengthened tenant protections, and support for city workers!

We share a vision of LA as the most tenant friendly and affordable city in the United States. We're demanding that the City of LA build & maintain 8,000 social housing units and 2,000 permanent supportive housing units with union labor. We have the resources to create - we just need to use them!

On this day, October 10, 1933, vigilantes deputized by local authorities killed striking Mexican and Mexican American workers in Pixley, California. It had been six days since the beginning of a strike that mobilized 18,000 migrant workers across the Central Valley to demand a fair wage, union recognition, and the abolition of the contract labor system. Today, farmworkers in California continue to struggle against low wages and exploitative conditions.

On Indigenous People’s Day, we recognize and celebrate the unique traditions and experiences of Indigenous peoples across the world and in Los Angeles, the ancestral homeland of the Tongva and Chumash nations.

We uphold the historic contributions and the central importance of indigenous struggles to the struggle to abolish all exploitation and oppression. We reaffirm our commitment to undoing the historical injustices brought on by colonialism and support Native sovereignty.

We encourage our followers to check out the map on Native-Land.ca to learn more about the histories of displacement and resistance in the places they reside.

On this day, October 6, 1917, civil rights and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was born. Hamer was a prominent leader in the Black freedom movement of the 1960s, defying white supremacists and police to organize thousands of Black voters across the South.

Hamer had already begun working in the fields with her sharecropper family by the time she was 6. In 1961, a white doctor forcibly sterilized Hamer while she underwent surgery, and white supremacists attempted to assassinate her for trying to vote a year later.

Hamer was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to fight against Jim Crow. She was also the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party's established power.

Hamer was also an outspoken leader against the Vietnam War and helped organize the 1968 Poor People’s March. She pioneered the Freedom Farm Cooperative a year later, a collective farm and a pig-raising program as well as an affordable housing development/financing project.

One of Fannie Lou Hamer’s most famous quotes is “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Her fighting spirit lives on in the call to organize workers and oppressed people across the country.

¡2 de octubre no se olvida! On this day, October 2, 1968, the Mexican military and police massacred hundreds of unarmed protestors in a crackdown on the Mexican student movement ahead of the Mexico City Olympics. Today, the massacre serves as a rallying cry for those who continue the struggle against social inequality and for genuine democracy.

The Mexican student movement embodied the revolutionary consciousness of the newly educated children of workers and peasants. The students actively sought and received the solidarity of labor while chanting "We don't want Olympics, we want revolution!”

10,000 people were attending a rally when they were fired on from all sides by carefully positioned snipers and tanks which created a death trap.

The estimated 400 massacred along with the >1,000 detained and thousands injured were quickly removed before the inauguration of the Olympics 10 days later.

From Tlatelolco to the 43 Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College students who were disappeared on their way to a commemoration march in 2014, those responsible have enjoyed impunity while repressing the democratic aspirations of the people. Through student-worker unity, the struggle continues.

Happy Chuseok! Today marks the last day of the mid-autumn harvest festival celebrated by Koreans all over the world, with workers taking the opportunity to commemorate the holiday by calling for equality and an end to discrimination.

The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers' Union (KPTU) held a joint conference on the 25th in front of the President’s Office, calling for an end to the discrimination against irregular workers in South Korea’s public sector, setting up a traditional ancestral rites table dedicated to achieving equality for all workers.

Nearly half of all workers in South Korea are trapped in irregular employment, which means they get paid much less as part-time, temporary, or contract labor with little or no benefits or protections. We celebrate Chuseok by uplifting the struggle of workers everywhere against discrimination and exploitation, as without workers none of the bountiful harvests reaped by our society every year could ever be created.

On this day, September 27, 1907, Bhagat Singh was born. Devoting his life to the struggle against British imperialism and the exploitation of workers, Singh embraced a secular approach to India’s independence of uniting its diverse religious communities to build an India run by and for all its working people.

Imprisoned for his political activities, Singh became an outspoken critic of the Indian penal system, embarking on hunger strikes and engaging in agitation from behind bars. The British hanged Bhagat Singh after a mock trial in 1931. His slogan “Inquilab Zindabad!” (Long Live the Revolution) continues to ring out today.

El Dia de Independencia, El Dia de Resistencia. Poster from the Chicano Movement in San José by Malaquías Montoya. ¡Feliz día de la Independencia de México!

En el 202 aniversario de la independencia de Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, y Costa Rica, reivindicamos la lucha histórica de los pueblos de Centroamérica que eran comprometidos con la libertad.

La independencia sigue siendo una construcción colectiva, luchando por un Centroamérica soberano y libre dónde la clase obrera este unida contra el imperialismo y la explotación.

Rent assistance program of ULA begins Sept. 19