No Filipino Is an Island

How PASO Has Been Bridging Generations in Northeast Ohio for Nearly 60 Years

Every May, the United States observes Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a formal recognition of the contributions, histories, and cultures of one of the country's most diverse communities. Forty-seven ethnic groups. Over thirty languages. Centuries of migration, labor, sacrifice, and survival, folded into a single acronym: AANHPI.

And somewhere inside that acronym, there are about 4.2 million Filipino Americans quietly raising their hands.

Nandito kami. We're here.

Filipino Americans are the third-largest Asian American ethnic group in the United States.¹ Third largest. That is not a footnote statistic. That is a headline that somehow keeps getting buried beneath the fold. And for a community that has been in this country since the 1500s, longer than the United States itself has existed, the question of visibility is one we've been sitting with for a very long time.

This May's AANHPI Heritage Month theme is "Power in Unity: Strengthening Communities Together." The official imagery centers on a bridge: a symbol of innovation, resilience, hard work, and connection. We'll take it. Filipinos have been building bridges, literal and otherwise, long before anyone thought to give us credit for it.

Kasaysayan (History)

Here is a thing many people don't know: the first Filipinos arrived on what is now American soil in October 1587, when Filipino sailors known as Luzon Indios landed at Morro Bay, California, aboard the galleon Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza.² They predated the Mayflower by 33 years.

They were not colonizers. They were crew: navigators, laborers, men pressed into service on someone else's ships. They didn't get a monument. They got a footnote, if they got anything at all.

Thirty-three years. The Pilgrims had buckle hats and a boat. We had navigational expertise and clearly superior timing. We just didn't get the federal holiday. Which is especially remarkable when you consider that this is the same community that coined the phrase Filipino Time, a cultural institution defined by arriving exactly as late as possible to everything. Apparently we used up our punctuality budget in 1587 and have been running on borrowed minutes ever since.

This is the recurring shape of Filipino American history. Presence without recognition. Contribution without credit.

In the 1920s and 30s, Manong farmworkers in California's Central Valley were picking the crops that fed the country, living in labor camps, facing exclusion laws that barred them from owning land or marrying outside their race. Larry Itliong, a Filipino labor organizer, launched the 1965 Delano Grape Strike by leading over 1,500 Filipino farmworkers off the fields, then reached out to César Chávez to bring Mexican farmworkers into the cause.³ The two unions merged to form the United Farm Workers in 1966, with Chávez as director and Itliong as assistant director. For decades afterward, Chávez received the recognition while Itliong's foundational role was largely overlooked. That part of the story is only recently starting to get its due.⁴

Post-1965 immigration brought a new wave: nurses, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs. The community that built PASO in 1967 was part of this wave: professionals putting down roots in Ohio, building institutions, creating spaces for culture and connection that would serve generations to come.

In 2026, as this country marks its 250th anniversary, the full story of who built America is long overdue for a complete telling. Filipino Americans are part of that story. We have always been part of that story.

Patuloy tayo. We continue.

Kapwa (Shared Self)

The word kapwa doesn't translate cleanly into English.⁵ The closest version is something like "shared identity" or "fellow being," but even that undersells it. Kapwa is the recognition that the self and the other are not separate. That your humanity is bound up in mine. That we are, in some fundamental way, the same.

It is one of the most distinctly Filipino philosophical concepts. It is also, quietly, the entire philosophical foundation of the AANHPI coalition.

Side note: Filipino culture also has a word for the specific guilt of leaving food on your plate at someone else's house (hiya), a word for the irresistible urge to pinch something unbearably cute (gigil), and a word for the experience of craving something you were exposed to before birth (lihi, though every Tita has a different theory about how it works). Of course we also have a word for the philosophical concept of shared humanity. We contain multitudes.

AANHPI is not a monolith. It never claimed to be. Vietnamese Americans and Samoan Americans and Korean Americans and Pakistani Americans and Filipino Americans do not share a single language, a single religion, a single colonial history, or a single set of lived experiences. What we share is something more like kapwa: the recognition that in the American context, our stories rhyme. That the exclusion laws targeting one community echoed across others. That the invisibility one group faces is a version of the invisibility others know.

This year's theme understands that. "Power in Unity" is not a call for sameness. It's a call for solidarity. Bridges don't erase the distance between two shores. They connect them. That's the work.

Ugat at Sanga (Roots and Branches)

The Filipino community in Northeast Ohio is not one thing. It never was.

There are the families who came in the late 1960s and 70s: doctors, nurses, engineers who answered the call of post-1965 immigration reform, put down roots in the suburbs, built careers, raised children who grew up negotiating two cultures simultaneously and somehow made it look easy. These are the families who founded PASO in 1967, who built the Philippine-American Cultural and Civic Center in Parma, who made sure there was a place in Ohio where being Filipino wasn't something you explained. It was something you just were.

And there are newer arrivals: more recent immigrants navigating a different America than their predecessors, searching for the same thing every Filipino diaspora community has always searched for. A thread back. A table with familiar food on it. Someone who already understands without being told.

And there are the kids: Gen Z and Gen Alpha children of both groups, growing up Filipino-American in a moment where that identity is more visible, more celebrated, and more complicated than it has ever been. They are learning tinikling in community center gyms. They are asking questions about the Philippines that their grandparents answer in Tagalog, sometimes translating, sometimes not. They are figuring out what it means to inherit a culture you didn't choose and decide to claim it anyway.

PASO sits at the intersection of all of these.

The cooking classes aren't just about adobo. They're about making sure the recipe doesn't get lost in the translation between generations. The mahjong nights aren't just a game. They're a room where the oldest members of the community and the newest arrivals find out they already have something in common. Pista Sa Nayon isn't just a festival. It's an annual proof of concept: that the community is still here, still growing, still gathering.

When PASO's kids step onto that stage at the Cleveland Asian Festival this May to dance the tinikling, they aren't performing for tourists. They are performing for each other, and for every Filipino American in that crowd who ever stood in a gym counting beats while bamboo poles clapped around their ankles. They are the branches. The roots are in the room watching.

That's the bridge PASO has been building for nearly sixty years. Not just between the Philippines and America, though that too. Between who we were when we arrived and who we are becoming. Between the generation that planted and the generation that grows.

Sama-sama. But not same-same. Always together. All of us.

Malasakit (Community Care)

PASO has been practicing malasakit, deep community care, since 1967. Not because it's trendy. Because it's foundational: care is how a community stays one.

PASO has been the Tita of Northeast Ohio Filipino American life for nearly sixty years. Feeding people. Showing up to the most important moments. Making sure nobody arrives in this community and feels like they got here alone. It's love expressed as logistics, which is very Filipino. Timing TBD.

This May, you can find us at the Cleveland Asian Festival, one of the fastest-growing cultural festivals in Ohio, drawing over 40,000 attendees last year to Cleveland's AsiaTown.⁶ Two full days, completely free, and PASO will be there in full force. Here's what to look for.

Tinikling (Watch Your Feet)

On the festival stage, PASO's youth performers will be dancing the tinikling, and if you've never seen it live, prepare to stand very still with your mouth open.

The tinikling is the national folk dance of the Philippines, and it is, on paper, a completely unreasonable thing to ask a human body to do. Two bamboo poles are clapped together on the ground in rhythmic patterns while dancers step, hop, and weave between them with precision that looks effortless and absolutely is not. The dance takes its name from the tikling bird, a long-legged Philippine rail known for picking its way through rice field traps with quick, delicate steps. The idea is that the dancers move like the bird: light, fast, exactly where they need to be, never where they shouldn't.

In practice, learning tinikling involves a very specific kind of childhood: afternoons in community center gyms or someone's basement, counting out loud, occasionally getting your ankles tapped by bamboo because you were a half-beat behind. You learn the count. You learn to trust the count. You learn to trust the clapper (maybe?). And then one day the music is playing, the poles are moving, and your feet just know.

Watching PASO's kids perform this at one of the largest Asian cultural festivals in Ohio isn't just a performance. It's a declaration. We are here. We have been here. And we are teaching the next generation exactly where to put their feet.

PASO takes the stage Sunday, May 17 at 3:45pm. We recommend arriving early, on the assumption that you are not running on Filipino time. If you are running on Filipino time: good news, you'll still get excellent seats. It works out either way. It always does.

Full festival schedule and details at clevelandasianfestival.org.

Filipiniana and Barong: Dressed in Heritage

PASO will also be participating in the festival's Colors of Asia Fashion Showcase, and we are showing up dressed.

The women will be wearing Filipiniana: traditional Filipino dress that carries centuries of history in every pleat and stitch. The most iconic form is the terno, with its distinctive butterfly sleeves (called mangas paro, literally "butterfly sleeves") that rise from the shoulders in a wide, structured arc. It is formal, arresting, and completely unmistakable in a room. Then there's the baro't saya, the traditional blouse-and-skirt combination, often layered with a panuelo shawl, that predates Spanish colonization and became the foundation of Filipino women's formal dress across centuries.

Filipiniana is not a costume. It is not a throwback. It is a living tradition that Filipino designers have been pushing forward for decades, and seeing it worn at a festival stage in Cleveland, Ohio, by Filipino-American women who grew up here, is exactly what "Power in Unity" looks like in practice.

The men will be wearing the Barong Tagalog, the national formal garment of the Philippines and arguably one of the most elegant pieces of menswear on the planet. Traditionally made from piña, a fabric woven from pineapple leaf fibers, or jusi, a silk-like weave, the barong is sheer, intricately embroidered, and worn untucked over a white undershirt. No jacket. No tie. Just craftsmanship that takes your breath away if you look closely enough.

You may have heard the story that the barong's untucked, transparent style was imposed during the Spanish colonial period to mark Filipino men as servants, preventing them from concealing weapons. It's a compelling story. It is also, according to historians, almost certainly not true. There are no historical records of any such decree, and the barong was worn untucked long before the Spanish arrived, simply because the Philippine climate is not interested in your tucking preferences.⁷ The more likely origin is pre-colonial Filipino dress tradition, adapted and refined across centuries.

What is absolutely true is what happened next: Filipinos took the garment and made it magnificent. The barong became the formal wear of presidents, diplomats, and wedding parties. It became the thing you wear to the most important moments of your life. The designer who ended up with it probably didn't intend to create the most elegant formal garment in Southeast Asia. And yet. That's Filipinos for you.

When you see us in Filipiniana and barong at the Colors of Asia Fashion Showcase, you're seeing something that survived 400 years of colonization, made it to Cleveland, and still looks this good.

Come find us. We'll be the well-dressed ones.

Sama-Sama (Together)

There's a particular kind of AANHPI experience that Filipino Americans will recognize immediately: the moment someone asks where you're "really" from. The slight recalibration when people are surprised your family has been in the U.S. for three generations. The way your name gets mispronounced and you let it go, the twentieth time, because the correction costs more energy than you have today.

These aren't uniquely Filipino experiences. They are AANHPI experiences. They are part of why this month exists: not just to celebrate the wins, but to name the work still left.

We celebrate in May because celebration and accountability can share the same table. That's very Filipino, actually. The party is loud. The feelings are real. The food is non-negotiable. And the conversation, if you stay long enough after dessert, eventually gets honest. Maybe you did gain weight also.

PASO has been doing that work for nearly sixty years: gathering the community, feeding it, dressing it up, putting its children on stage, making sure nobody arrives in Northeast Ohio and feels like they got here alone. Old families and new ones. Elders and kids counting bamboo beats. The generation that built the institution and the generation that will carry it forward.

That is what "Power in Unity" looks like from the inside. Not an acronym. Not a theme on a banner. A community that keeps showing up for itself, year after year, May after May.

Sama-sama tayo. We're in this together.

Happy AANHPI Heritage Month from all of us at PASO. Now go call your Tita. Yes, she will comment on your weight. Yes, she has been feeding you for thirty years. These two facts coexist peacefully in Filipino American family life. You already know this.

Mabuhay.

Footnotes

¹ Filipino Americans are currently the third-largest Asian American ethnic group in the U.S., with approximately 4.2 million people identifying as Filipino alone or in combination, per Pew Research Center analysis of the 2021-23 American Community Survey. Filipino Americans were the second-largest group as of the 2010 census; growth in the Indian American population has since moved them to third, behind Chinese and Indian Americans. Source: Pew Research Center, "Filipinos in the U.S." (2024); U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Decennial Census.

² The landing of Luzon Indios at Morro Bay on October 18, 1587 is documented by the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), which dedicated a historical landmark at the site in 1995. The ship was the Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza, commanded by Spanish captain Pedro de Unamuno. Source: Wikipedia, "First landing of Filipinos in the United States"; FANHS California Central Coast Chapter landmark dedication, 1995.

³ The Delano Grape Strike began September 8, 1965, when Itliong and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led Filipino farmworkers off the vineyards. Itliong then persuaded Chávez to bring the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) into the cause. Sources: National Park Service, "Larry Itliong"; United Farm Workers, "Larry Itliong Day"; Wikipedia, "Delano Grape Strike."

⁴ The AWOC and NFWA merged to form the United Farm Workers in 1966. Itliong served as assistant director under Chávez and later resigned in 1971. California designated October 25 as Larry Itliong Day in 2015. Source: UFW; Wikipedia, "Larry Itliong"; Smithsonian Magazine, "Why It Is Important to Know the Story of Filipino-American Larry Itliong" (2019).

⁵ The concept of kapwa as a core Filipino value was developed and formalized by Filipino psychologist Virgilio Enriquez, founder of Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) in the 1970s. Enriquez described kapwa as the unity of self and others and as the foundation of Filipino social values.

⁶ Cleveland Asian Festival 2025 attendance of 40,000+ is confirmed on the festival's official website. The 2026 festival runs May 16-17 at Asia Plaza, 2999 Payne Ave, Cleveland, OH. Admission is free. Source: clevelandasianfestival.org.

⁷ Wikipedia's entry on the Barong Tagalog states there are no historical records of any Spanish decree requiring untucked or transparent dress from the 16th to late 19th century, and that barong were worn untucked even in the precolonial period. Additional sources: FilipiKnow, "The Controversial Origin of Philippines' National Costume"; Pineapple Industries, "Journey of the Barong Tagalog."