Our Mission
The Chinese Progressive Association is a grassroots membership-based organization that empowers the Chinese community in the San Francisco Bay Area and promotes justice and equality for all people. CPA’s campaigns and programs improve the living and working conditions of low-income immigrants and give ordinary community members a stronger voice in the decision-making processes that affect them. CPA supports other disenfranchised communities fighting for human rights and self-determination. CPA works for world peace and sustainability and promotes U.S. China people’s friendship.
Our History
1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Bold Beginnings – the Seventies
The 1960s and 1970s marked an era of burgeoning social justice movements. Born out of these struggles, CPA was founded on the belief that true change and progress are possible if people in the community are given the skills and knowledge to shape their own destinies. The proclamation at our founding on December 26, 1972 read, “There is an ancient maxim: one seeks change when one has nothing, and when one seeks change, everything can be solved.”
In its first year, CPA united community residents in a march through Chinatown to the Vallejo Street police station to protest the unlawful and brutal arrest of news vender Harry Wong, a CPA founding member, for selling literature from China. Later that same year, CPA held the first public celebration of Liberation Day (October 1) in the United States. Throughout the decade, CPA built alliances with other organizations to promote the normalization of relations between mainland China and the United States, a goal that was finally realized in 1979.
Working with Asian American lawyers, we also established the first free bilingual legal clinic in Chinatown. We helped longtime immigrants qualify for legal status, opposed unfair deportation, and worked with individuals in a class action suit to reopen their cases. In 1974, CPA organized a community public hearing with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the first hearing of this type.
CPA also helped workers organize pickets to protest unjust firings at the Nam Yuen and Asia Garden restaurants; in both instances, the workers were reinstated. In 1974, CPA participated along with other community organizations when over 100 Chinese garment workers went out on strike for the right to unionize their plant. The Jung Sai strike lasted for over nine months until management ultimately decided to close the plant instead. However, the workers succeeded in winning back-pay settlements and were allowed to request job placement from the garment union.
The I-Hotel
CPA’s first office was in the basement of the historic International Hotel, the site of a landmark battle for community control, the right to low-cost housing for Pilipino and Chinese tenants, and the vital need for grassroots organizations and community owned businesses. CPA helped to develop a broad strategy that united Pilipino and Chinese tenants as well as build coalitions with many citywide housing groups and community empowerment organizations. Although tenants were evicted in August 1977, the I-Hotel reopened in August 2005 as a low-income housing development after more than thirty years of struggle over urban renewal, gentrification, and the displacement of low-income peoples.
Building an Organization
In the 1970s, CPA created a unique approach to community building in a social justice framework. We developed multiple services to address the many needs of people in Chinatown and to enable them to organize themselves that they may advocate for their rights. CPA’s community programs and events also helped build unity among the Chinese American community, bringing longtime immigrants as well as fifth generation descendents into our membership. The solid foundation that CPA built would be crucial to maintaining organized during the next ten years.