By Emma Kalonda & Elizabeth Ruiz
Courier Staff Reporters
Alvarado Middle School will officially be changing its name to Itliong-Vera Cruz Middle School this Friday.
House 3 counselor, Joe Angeles, was involved with the movement to change the name, and recently sat down with us to talk about it.
According to Angeles this name change has been in discussion since 1992. Although it’s been around for years, it was only really considered an option in January 2013, and was later adopted in April 2013. The name wasn’t always going to Alvarado–it was in discussion for several different schools, Decoto High School, for example.
Being a member of the New Haven Filipino Society of Education, Angeles played an important role in the name change. We asked him about how this all started and he told us some information that a lot of people may not have known about.
The new name come from the historic Filipino-American labor leaders Philip Vera Cruz and Larry Itliong. They both worked with Cesar Chavez and many other farm workers, helping establish the United Farm Workers Union in 1965. They led a grape boycott in order to bring attention to the unfair wages farm workers were receiving.
One really huge breakthrough was when the Filipino Workers union contacted Cesar Chavez’s union to join them, making their unions bigger so it they could bring more attention in. This plan was very successful, and brought a lot of different benefits.
After this happened the two men, Philip Vera Cruz and Larry Itliong, came together with Caesar and established the UFW which is now the biggest United Farm workers in California.
Their contributions are often forgotten even though they’re important. This is why Alvarado changing its name to honor them is a big deal. It also makes the school the first in the nation to be named after Filipinos.
