Our meeting day happens to be Connie’s birthday. Carrying a chocolate cake from Tous Les Jours Bakery, May leads me upstairs to meet Connie and Alice Ip, another core organizer of the 1982 strike. One brisk Fall afternoon, I meet May Chen in the lobby of her long-time friend and co-organizer Connie Ling’s apartment building. Photo courtesy of The Kheel Center ILGWU Collection, Cornell University ILGWU members march through Chinatown to urge the remaining shops to sign the new contract, following the rally on July 15, 1982. My initial reaction: shock- I had never seen or heard about protest being something grandmothers in my community participated in and then curiosity- what was this moment in Chinatown’s history and why had no one told me about it before? I was just beginning to be exposed to Asian American history in afterschool youth programs. I first saw the black and white photo of elderly immigrant Asian women a decade ago when I was in high school. That day, Chinese women won a historic victory in labor rights, securing wage increases and benefits for tens of thousands women workers in the city.

Within hours, dozens of garment shop owners called the union, finally agreeing to renew the workers’ contracts. In fiery speeches that were met with enthusiastic applause and cheers, women leaders exposed the plight of working women, and extolled the Chinatown community to carry on with the struggle for better wages and better working conditions. United, immigrant Chinese American women called for workers’ rights that would forever impact U.S. They donned union hats and raised picket signs to press for the renewal of their union contracts. On Mott Street, over 20,000 garment workers - almost entirely women - once marched down the center of Chinatown to Columbus Park on a warm Spring day in 1982. Beyond dim sum restaurants and new bubble tea and dessert cafes, historic sites of resistance line Chinatown’s streets.

Gearcity workers strike