[Excerpt from With Silk Wings]
PATRICIA LEE

Pat Lee is a slim and vivacious 30-year-old Chinese American with a delicately pretty face, a racy sense of humor, and a fondness for fashion. At first glance, she doesn't look like the kind of person to be carried away by police from a militant labor strike by her arms and legs. Yet that is exactly what happened one day in July 1980.

The riot squad moved in to arrest people. When some union members were thrown into the paddywagon, we rocked it, chanting, “Let them go!” Many of us sat down in the street to block the wagons. The police arrested us and dragged us into the vans. They took us to City Hall, booked us, and then released us. I went right back to the picket line, where I was greeted by cheering workers. There was such a spirit of unity and camaraderie! We had been arrested for making noise with pots and pans, spoons and hubcaps, bells, whistles, drums, congas, trumpets Ð our “orchestra” shook the Embarcadero from dawn to dusk. With so many different nationalities and languages, slogans were difficult. Many people didn't speak English well, so the noisy rhythm became our song.

For a month, 6,000 members of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees' Union Local 6, the largest labor organization in San Francisco, walked out of the city's 36 major hotels at the peak of the tourist season. Hotel maid and union shop steward Pat Lee was a picket captain during the strike.

In a room renting for $80 or $100 a night, we were being paid less than three dollars to clean the toilet, sink, and bathtub, change the bedsheets and towels, dust the furniture, empty the trash, and vacuum the carpets. To finish our quota of rooms each day, we had to work through our breaks and sometimes even our lunch. I lost 18 pounds during my first years as a maid.

During the strike, managers and supervisors had to make the beds, clean the bathrooms, and carry the luggage themselves. “We knew they wouldn't last long,” Pat laughs. “The work is just too tiring.”

Under the new contract, the room cleaners won a large pay increase, better shop steward representation, a reduction in room quotas, and extra fringe benefits. San Francisco hotel workers are now the highest paid in the country.

Their walkout was the city's first hotel strike in over 40 years. Many observers did not expect a strike in the 1980s, since the hotel workers seemed the people least likely to be involved in a labor protest. Predominantly unskilled nonwhite or immigrant workers with limited ability in English, most had families to support and had never been involved in a union before. They represented what one news reporter called “the most powerless people in America.” Without them, however, San Francisco's billion-dollar tourist industry was crippled.

The strike gave the city's hotel maids, janitors, and busboys a chance to voice their anger and frustration. “We wanted to say, 'I am somebody.' That's why our strike was called a fight for dignity and respect,” Pat says.

I like the challenge of a good fight. Most of all, I like to win. I enjoyed seeing the maids emerge as their own leaders and organize for what they wanted from the hotels. Work as a room cleaner isn't glamorous and one's talents and intelligence are not encouraged. Yet these women have tons of both. The strike was their first major experience in organizing; they did something everyone had thought was impossible.

When the hotel maids look at Pat Lee, there is unmistakable admiration in their eyes. As someone who can give expression to their dreams and desires, she is a symbol of hope to them.

I know how hotel maids feel because I was a room cleaner myself for seven years. I have felt their frustration at being treated like dirt, like some worthless dummy, while working harder than anyone should ever have to.

As a shop steward, Pat faced challenges that taught her how to fight and negotiate.

At first, I was afraid to lodge a complaint because I didn't want to lose my job. To me, the managers were well-heeled and privileged men who could brush me off like a fly. As just another nonwhite room cleaner, I felt that, right or wrong, I had no power. There were so many things I didn't know. I really didn't understand the contract or know that shop stewards were equals in negotiations with management. I would become very emotional, raving about slavery and exploitation. It's rather hilarious now to think about how I carried on. I calmed down when I realized that you couldn't fight with just emotions. You have to use reason. Otherwise, no one will listen to you. You have to know exactly what's in the contract, what laws protect us, and what you have to bargain with. It's important to understand management's position so you know what to give and what to take in negotiations. You have to learn the rules of the game and be smarter at it than your opponents.

As a shop steward, Pat represented immigrant women from around the world, mostly Filipinas, Chinese, and Latinas, but also Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, Fijians, Ethiopians, Greeks, and Poles. The management, on the other hand, was nearly all white men. “When negotiating with managers, you're dealing with human beings,” Pat says. “Some are decent people with whom you can find some room for compromise. Others, though, have big egos. Some men just can't view a minority woman as an equal. Sometimes you just have to stand your ground and teach them a lesson about discrimination.”

Two days before the strike, our general manager called a meeting of all employees to encourage us to accept the hotel's offer in negotiations. As the shop steward, I came forward and debated him point by point, very logically and in friendly manner. I know he would've preferred me to blow up and call him a tyrant. But I wouldn't act like a child; I insisted on being treated as an equal. The maids loved it and started acting just the same way themselves. The manager never forgave me for that encounter. All during the following year, he refused to recognize me as a shop steward and tried to deny me the right to represent the room cleaners who had elected me. The union business agent and I took my case to the National Labor Relations Board. The hotel management still suffered a major defeat, even though they spent $30,000 on legal fees.

In her present position as full-time business representative for the union, Pat is responsible for handling the grievance, suspension, and termination problems of about 1,000 union members. She notes that many of the labor-management problems in large chain hotels are the result of policies established in the corporate headquarters. Since the top managers do not work inside the hotels, Pat says they place more emphasis on yearly profits than on improving service to the guests by raising employee morale. And, local hotel managers often respond to pressure from above by using punishment instead of teamwork and efficiency as primary incentives for employees. A room cleaner's minor infraction, such as misplacing a key or failing to finish her last room on time, could result in suspension from work for several days and the threat of being fired.

The managers know very well that a single immigrant mother with three children can't afford to lose her job. That's where the union enters the picture. Before going to the management or to an adjustment board, I always do my homework, researching the case and studying past practices on the issue. Sometimes, the maids expect me to do everything for them. Instead, I get them involved in their own cases, encouraging them to keep records of every incident, to involve their co-workers, and to participate in talks with management. The union is, after all, what the members themselves make of it.

At her desk in the union hall, there is usually a line of people waiting to see her, and the telephone is always ringing. “It's a stressful job,” she sighs. “Sometimes I just have to forget it all and go bicycling or cross-country skiing or back to my family's home in the country to rest.”

Pat's parents are sometimes puzzled about what she is doing. They had hoped that she would become a commercial artist, marry a nice rich Chinese man, buy a house, and send money home to them so that they could talk about her proudly to their friends. “Sometimes I feel sorry, but I had to lead my own life,” she says. “It really doesn't bother me so much because they do want me to be happy, and we still love each other very much.”

Although they might not realize it, it was her parents' lives that inspired Pat's desire to champion the rights of immigrant workers.

My parents were farm laborers who later worked at a laundry and a take-out restaurant. I used to resent my father, thinking it was his fault that we were poor and had to work so hard. Later, I read a book by a Filipino migrant farmworker called America is in the Heart. It was about his experience as a menial laborer in California. I cried my way through that book, because I knew that his life was the story of my own father's life. I never want to forget the feelings of what it means to be an immigrant worker in America. I want to do what I can so that other people will not have to go through what my father went through. As human beings, they should have rights and opportunities in this country, just like everyone else. I want to help them understand this. I want to be a bridge for them to cross over, although in the end they will have to cross it themselves.

Pat has had to cross many bridges herself. Born and raised in Marysville, California, she lived in Chinatown, which she says was “a world in itself.”

I remember the Bomb Day Festival, when Mother would go to the old Bok Kai Temple to pray for our family with offerings of oranges, incense, and oil. She saved money all year so that she could make embroidered silk dresses for me and my sisters to wear at the festival.

The Lee family has always been very close, and Pat recalls the warmth and happiness of her childhood at home.

My mother was slim and beautiful, with an angelic smile. She was like a girlfriend to us. She giggled and gossiped with me and my sisters. She fed us fish from the river, Chinese vegetables and Cantonese fried chicken fresh from our back yard. My father raised chickens in cages and grew long beans, bitter melons, gourds, taro, and fruit trees. He was a wiry man, wrinkled by years of work in the hot fields and orchards and long nights at the card table. My sisters and I were very close Ð we shared our clothes and our thoughts. On hot days, we'd swim in pools carved from the riverbanks by the gravel companies. Sometimes, we'd pool our money from sorting peaches and tomatoes or picking fruit for some orchard owner. We'd buy a bag of jerky or some dried squid. One sister would eat hers all at once, another would sell hers for a profit, and I would save mine to eat a little at a time.

As a child outside Chinatown, being Chinese meant being different from and inferior to everyone else.

I never ate a salad until I moved away from home; I remember that other people were amazed that I was so clumsy with a knife and fork. In elementary school, everyone else had different clothes each day of the week, but I used to wear the same hand-me-downs from my sisters every day. Once, when I was invited to a white girl's birthday party, I wore an old dress that was too long. I had brought a twelve-cent paddleball and wrapped it in Christmas paper. The other children all wore pretty dresses and bought expensive gifts, and I was so ashamed.

Pat had talent in art, which became her means of self-expression. As a high school student, she exhibited her work in a one-woman art show.

Years later, I realized that my drawings and paintings were social or political statements. There was a collage with depictions of poverty and war. I don't know how I did this drawing, because I had never been anywhere except Marysville or Yuba City, and I rarely watched the news or read newspapers. In one self-portrait, I tried to make my Chinese features look white. I was screaming in the picture. I guess that's how I felt then Ð frightened and lost. For years, I thought of myself as ugly and wanted to look white. I used to go to church and pray that I would grow up to look white. I did a painting which was red, white, and blue, like an abstract of an American flag, with one yellow dot. That was how I must have felt about being Chinese in America.

From her mother, Pat learned that poverty was not something to be ashamed of if you worked hard to improve yourself and help your family. Every evening and on weekends, Pat helped her mother at the family laundry and later at a restaurant. She learned to cook and sew from an older sister. Pat sewed for her whole family, including her father, and she dreamed of becoming a fashion designer in Europe or New York. She made all her own clothes in high school. “I was delighted when I was voted 'best-dressed' in my senior year. There were other girls who were always well-dressed because they were wealthy,” Pat remembers. “I realized then that what you didn't have in wealth, you could make up for in other ways.”

After graduating from high school, Pat won a college art scholarship. Although she never finished her degree, her experiences at the University of California at Davis helped shaped her attitudes and thinking.

The very first week, two good-looking Asian American guys visited me at the dormitory and asked me to enroll in an Ethnic Studies class. That was the first time anyone had ever sought me out because of my nationality. Besides, they were kind of cute! So I joined in right away. In those classes, I started thinking about what it meant to be Asian in America. Before then, I just thought that I was weird myself. I began to learn that a person's inferiority might not be caused by her own stupidity or poverty, but that there were reasons for racism.

As an Asian American student in the early 1970s, Pat became involved in the movement against American involvement in the Vietnam War.

Like most of the people of my generation, I was very much influenced by the war. From television and the newspapers, I could see that the United States was doing great harm to the Vietnamese people. The napalming of villages and the My Lai massacre may seem like ancient history today, but those images of injured Vietnamese children will always remain in my memory. We were just students; as individuals, none of us had the decision-making power of a Congressman or an army general. But by banding together at rallies and teach-ins, we could make our voices heard. That's when I learned that there's strength in numbers. Too often, we just “mind our own business” when we see injustices. But if we don't speak out, wrongdoings like the Vietnam War can continue on and on. In any institution or government, the most important “check and balance” is the people themselves. I suppose that's why I'm a labor organizer and not a fashion designer today.

In 1979, Pat was elected by the members to the policy-making executive board of her union. As the first Chinese American woman to hold this post, she became an active spokesperson for women and for Chinese and other Asian immigrant workers. She helped increase their participation in the union by setting up special Chinese language union meetings and social events such as banquets, by getting contracts translated, and by working on restaurant organizing drives. As a delegate to the union's national convention, she pressed for a resolution introduced by her local that favored the civil and labor rights of immigrants and undocumented workers. Pat has represented the union in community coalitions, church meetings, and political functions.

In 1980, she met with Philippine hotel workers at an international workshop on tourism in Manila. She was even able to see the other side of the tourist trade as a travel guide for American educators on a month-long visit to China via Yugoslavia and Japan.

Pat Lee says that it has taken many years to develop her self-confidence and feel comfortable with herself. “Confidence grows from taking chances and facing the consequences,” she says. “But it also helps to have a stable home life.” She is married to a 34-year-old Japanese American.

I would be lost without Yoichi. He helps me sort things out when I get discouraged or confused. Sometimes, I get so frustrated when I lose or when I expect too much too soon. I come home feeling depressed and act nasty to him or blame him for my problems. Yoichi forces me to confront the problems. Eventually, I realize that the issue is not with him or even me, but with the situation I'm facing. We talk about how to move on. I've learned a lot from him, and I'm a stronger person because of our relationship.

Pat and Yoichi fell in love on the Staten Island Ferry when she was visiting New York.

We were madly in love with each other, but we had to carry on a long-distance affair because he lived in New York and I was in San Francisco. Anyone who has ever been in love like that knows how you can't stand being apart. I was thinking about him all the time. He was so handsome and intelligent, and yet warm and sensitive. He'd write me juicy love letters, which made being separated even harder. In many ways we're opposites Ð I'm always joking and kidding around, while he's romantic and sentimental. But we're a prefect match for each other.

The couple worried about Pat's parents, who intensely disliked Japanese. Pat's mother remembers when the Japanese Imperial army invaded China and occupied her home village of Toisan. She recalls the soldiers brandishing their long swords as they marched into the village, smashing every house. To protect herself and her child, she had to flee to the countryside, where she hid from the occupiers for years. Pat's father had violently opposed her sister's relationship with a Japanese American boy in the past. “He burst into her high school party, dragged her off the dance floor, and threatened to shoot the boy if he followed,” Pat recalls. But in the end, her parents accepted Pat's marriage warmly. “Time has a way of working things out,” Pat says. “They saw how happy I was and what a wonderful person Yoichi is. As an individual, he had nothing to do with the Japanese invasion of China. In fact, his Nisei father served on the other side in the U.S. Army during World War II.”

Since they were planning to settle down in New York, Yoichi found a good job for himself and a position as a fabric designer for Pat in Manhattan. But after a visit to San Francisco, he decided to give up his career and move to California.

It was the maids who convinced me. They wanted Pat to represent them so badly. I realized that her work had greater meaning to other people's lives than our own individual career development. The same magnetic personality I fell in love with made it possible for her to communicate with the people she works with. I saw that she was able to articulate what they felt and work toward what they wanted Ð to protect their health, to raise their families, to make a decent living, and to have a say in running their own lives. Even though I knew I would have to start all over again myself, I've never regretted that decision; life is filled with choices, and I made my choice because I believe in her and the work she is doing.