Emil De Guzman Book Talk: “Red Sky, Recollections of the International Hotel”

Event Date: October 25, 2025 11AM-1PM

First as a student activist in 1968, then I-Hotel Tenant Association member, and then distinguished community leader, De Guzman shares his recollections of the fight to save the International Hotel on the last remaining block of San Francisco’s Manilatown from 1968-1977 and its rebuilding 36 years later.

In 1968, 150 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants from the Manilatown district of San Francisco began a nine-year long, anti-eviction campaign against Financial District encroachment. Widespread student and community grass-roots support imprinted this event as a milestone in Asian-American and housing advocacy history. The campaign culminated in the deployment of over 400 riot police, mounted patrols, anti-sniper units and fire ladder trucks in a 3:00am eviction raid on August 4, 1977.

A 3,000 person human barricade was brutally cleared away by authorities before tenants were physically removed from the premises. The almost 10 year struggle to save the International Hotel from 1968-1977 became a rallying cry of the newly developing Asian American Movement of the 1960s/70s. 36 years later, due to the organizing efforts of tenants and community organizations, the new I-Hotel opened its doors on August 26, 2005, providing 104 units of low-income housing. The new I-Hotel exists today as a secure, reasonably priced and well-maintained building that serves the needs of low-income elderly tenants.

Come hear Emil De Guzman discuss his new book, “Red Sky: Recollections of the International Hotel,” a memoir of his decades long involvement and leadership in the fight to save the International.

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