Covering Stockton, a reporter’s must
Iloilo SisterCity Park in Stockton City,
California with Rose Marie Dime and
Gigi Quillinan.
Probably the most exciting political news coverage that any journalist can cover in this decade is the US Presidential elections that saw Democrat Barack Hussein Obama topple Republican John McCain in a political exercise that has redefined a nation.
I and my two fellow anchormen from Aksyon Radyo Iloilo (Joel Tormon and Alvin Dennis Arabang) gave our Ilonggo audience a blow-by-blow account of the November 4, 2008 historic event -- a landmark for a local radio station as we were the first to report right from the US.
When all the election dust has died down and we had the time to discover America through the many Filipino communities that accommodated us, I found out that among the many places highly noted for its strong Filipino presence, it is Stockton City in California that stands out.
Broadcaster Jay Balnig of Aksyon Radyo
Iloilo interviews Stockton City deputy
city manager, Christine Tien, as Stockton
Sister Cities Association President Rose
Marie Dime, looks on. Balnig was in
California to cover the historic Nov. 4,
2008 US presidential elections.
The Stockton Sister Cities Association (SSCA), a 350-member multi-ethnic association in America’s fifth largest agricultural county, pleasantly surprised me with a park called "Iloilo Sister City Park".
Bringing me to the 2.23-hectare park was SSCA President Rose Marie Dime, an Ilongga who migrated to the US in 1969 and is responsible for many of the association’s cultural exchanges with Iloilo City, one of its seven sister cities.
The association’s six other sister cities are the following: Shizuoka-Shimizu, Japan; Empalme, Mexico; Foshan, China; Parma, Italy; Battambang, Cambodia; and Asaba, Nigeria.
I say that any journalist who goes to America should make it a point to visit Stockton because this place is historically the "Filipino heart of America" -- home to the largest community of Filipinos outside the Philippines who are descendants of sugar plantation workers who have made it big beyond the farms of California.
Even if Little Manila centered on Lafayette and El Dorado Streets near Chinatown and Nihonmachi were demolished in the 1950s and 1990s to give way to Stockton’s redevelopment, some historic buildings have remained and were preserved by the great grandchildren of those hardworking Filipino plantation workers.
Mrs. Dime says the Iloilo Sister City Park is an act of goodwill in honor of Iloilo as Stockton’s sister city. .
This Nov. 1 to 13, 2009, the Stockton Sister Cities Association will be celebrating its 50th anniversary and one of the highlights of the affair is the formal opening of the Iloilo Sister City Park – indeed a momentous event in the light of the history behind the forming of the "Filipino heart of America."