-...go up there? Behind the theater?
-When the stakes are good wages and precious jobs,
sometimes union reformers end up dead on the floor.
A possible motive but perhaps not the only explanation
for the killings of Gene Viernes, union dispatcher,
and Silme Domingo, unions secretary treasurer.
To their friends and union brothers,
Domingo and Viernes are martyrs.
Many believe they were gunned down
for running the union by the book.
No kickbacks, no sweetheart deals with the canners.
-I don't know. I think we're all sort of
in that extended period of shock
for a while where you're sort of doing things
and you're making sure that things are going right.
But we weren't really -- Nobody took, like, time off
and went away and grieved
or didn't do what needed to be done
in order to carry on the work of the union.
You know, I think when people die over what you're doing,
you get -- you get committed to make it happen.
-I will say that that period that we were in
after the murders was kind of a resurgence
of a democratic, progressive union
within Local 37.
-I think the -- you know,
the measure of good leadership is that they train other people.
And so I think when -- You know, I think that
that's what they underestimated when they killed
Gene and Silme,
that they thought by killing Gene and Silme
that they were going to kill the movement.
And we had built -- we had built the reform movement.
We had built a movement within the -- within the union.
And so they took them out,
but they didn't stop the movement.
♪♪
-Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes,
two names which are synonymous
with Seattle Asian-American activism
and fishing cannery workers rights.
They were two men who,
despite their differences and personality,
were united in their dedication to community service
and labor reform.
-You couldn't ask for two more different people,
but the one constant between the two of them
was that they were very dedicated to the cause
of reforming the union.
So they shared that very strongly together.
Silme was very -- more urban,
very gregarious, outgoing.
Gene was a country boy raised in Wapato.
♪♪
-Wapato.
A small farming town in the Yakima Valley
of Central Washington.
It is from this tight-knit agricultural community
that Gene Viernes and other Filipino-American laborers
traveled to Alaska to work in salmon canneries
during the summer months.
-Yes, I did grow up in Yakima Valley.
I was born in Yakima.
And my folks lived in -- lived in the Lower Valley.
They were farmers.
And had four brothers working on the farms,
And at that time during the '70s and even during the '60s,
the employers of the Alaska seafood industry
did a lot of recruiting down in these areas,
Wapato and also in the San Joaquin Valley
in Stockton and Delano, California.
There was a lot of -- a lot of prospective cannery workers
there because the employer knew that they -- they can do
the grueling work that was necessary in the industry.
-Gene was the eldest sibling of nine,
the first of his family to follow his father,
Felix Viernes, up to Alaska in 1967.
He was 15 years old.
Friends remember him as down-to-earth and low-key.
-Gene was more of a country guy,
and he didn't really care what he looked like.
He'd wear this Levi jacket, he'd wear jeans,
he'd have this white hat or -- what did they call --
painter's hat. He'd have that all the time.
And he would never wear a suit or tie.
He would be really very casual all the time.
-A star wrestler and excellent student,
Gene took an interest in history and enrolled
in the recently established ethnic studies program
at Central Washington State College.
-He had so many books, you know?
He was always buying them, and he'd amassed
big libraries of it, and -- and he'd know it all.
You know, everything he read, he'd have it up there.
It's kind of different the way he was.
'Cause he could meet people,
and he'd have them figured out in no time flat.
Within a few minutes, he's figured them out,
and he's already trying to help them correct
one of their problems. [ Chuckles ]
-Smart and intuitive, he was also a natural leader.
-One thing he was, he was very persistent.
I mean, he would just keep after things until he got them.
And, I mean, you know,
one person's leader is another person's bossy person.
[ Chuckles ]
He was the kind of guy, we were working,
and they would say, "I need someone to drive a jitney,"
and we didn't know how to drive a jitney,
but he would raise his hand and say, "I'll drive it."
And then he had a new skill,
and then he was always to go one more step.
And so, a lot of times, he became the leader
because he had that skill
or he was willing to take that risk.
-Gene was very energetic, very forceful.
He was a small package, but he was very forceful.
You know, he knew what he wanted,
you know, what needed to be done.
And I'd fight him tooth and nail
for my share of the power, but...
[ Laughs ]
But, yeah, like I said, I really respected him.
It grew, you know, as he did things like head up to Alaska,
and he just became my idol, you know, my role model.
-Going off to work in the canneries in Alaska
was a rite of passage for many of these Wapato boys.
It wasn't just an opportunity to work.
It was also a chance to connect to the past.
-Basically, Alaska was kind of a connection to our parents.
And we were really aware of our -- of our parents',
you know, travels and journeys through life,
you know, coming from the Philippines
and working the migrant trails, and Alaska was part of that.
-As early as 1917, over 100 canneries in Alaska
packed more than half the world's supply
of canned salmon, a multimillion dollar industry
that only continue to grow throughout the decades.
Filipino seasonal workers competed for these backbreaking
yet lucrative jobs,
and their work ethic was passed on to their sons.
-Our forefathers actually got started working
in the Alaska seafood industry
and then graduated up to the next generation,
which I'm a second-generation Filipino-American,
in that it was pretty much a rite of passage,
in terms of going to work in the canneries.
♪♪
-It was a rite of passage for those from the city, too.
Many Filipino Alaskan cannery workers were from Seattle,
and one of them was a charismatic young man
named Silme Domingo.
-Silme was very much a big-city guy, right?
-Silme scared the hell out of me.
[ Laughs ]
He used to wear his, you know, black coat,
and he had that big black hat, and he had the high boots,
and he was just kind of a tough guy.
-He had his hangouts,
which I used to hang out with him.
Liked to party, you know?
-It was almost infectious when you were around him
that you would have a good time.
-Silme was stylish and popular,
and he was keenly interested in the world around him.
His charm transferred over to community activism.
As a University of Washington student in 1971,
he joined the growing community newspaper movement
which helped cement his commitment to social change.
-And as much as he was a guy
with a kind of goofball sense of humor,
he was very serious about getting done
what he wanted to get done.
-In some ways, Silme was a bigger-than-life personality.
Had a lot of friends, a lot of acquaintances.
Came from a recognized Alaskero family.
-Filipino seasonal workers who traveled up to Alaska
to work in the canneries were called Alaskeros.
Silme's father, Nemesio,
who hailed from Ilocos Sur province,
was part of the first large wave of immigrants
from the Philippines in the 1920s.
Silme and his older brother, Nemesio Jr.,
both became actively involved in the Local 37,
the Cannery Workers Union
their father's generation had helped establish.
-International Longshoremen's Warehousemen's Union.
And the Local 37 was the branch, the Seattle branch,
but it was -- it consisted mostly of Filipinos.
I think over 90%, 95%.
-It was the era when post-World War II-generation
Alaskeros were beginning to work alongside the elder generation.
Younger Filipino-Americans, like Gene and Silme,
began to realize that they shared a common history
and that they needed to work together
to fight for social change,
despite their personal differences.
-But they were very similar
in terms of their... thinking, right?
Silme was really out there, just really social,
and Gene was really quiet, very into his writings and very,
you know, mild-mannered and...
They were very different,
but the combination itself was dynamic.
-Their passion and determination for social change
was to become part of a decades-old continuum
of union activism
around Alaska cannery workers and Filipino community.
♪♪
First-generation Filipino men are often called manos,
a respectful Ilocano term meaning "older brother."
It was the manos who led the first workers' rights
struggles as part of Local 37.
Their leaders included writer Carlos Bulosan,
author of the seminal novel "America is in the Heart,"
and Chris Mensalvas' father, Chris Sr.,
the president of the Local 37,
during a very turbulent time for labor unions.
-He was president of Local 37 for I don't know how many years.
As long as I've known my dad,
he was always involved in union work.
And the reason why he didn't go to the Philippines,
what I heard is that he was told by some of his
labor contacts in the Philippines,
that he would be assassinated
as soon as he got to the Philippines.
-Within the Local, there had been, you know,
in the '50s, a number of the officers
were brought up on un-American activities and were --
they tried to deport them at the same time
they were trying to deport the president
of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union,
Harry Bridges.
-Founder and leader of the ILWU,
Harry Bridges was one of the most important
labor leaders of the era.
The second-generation Local 37 members
were just starting to get an idea of the legacy
of the struggles of their forefathers.
-Didn't really know anything about the union
except that was the place we paid our dues,
and that's why it kind of -- where we got dispatched.
And I knew my dad was attorney for the union.
He talked a number of times about Harry Bridges.
My dad talking about Christmas,
all of us and Harry Bridges, is sort of like
very different people in very --
from very different walks of life
but who had a very significant impact on
the West Coast labor movement.
-So, there was a lot of political ties
within the Local.
And so a lot of the early fights were around political struggles,
political issues about which way the Local should go.
So, Silme being very political himself,
found that very interesting
and really sought out the stories from the elders
in the Local.
And Gene was very much a historian.
So Gene did a lot of the research
on the -- in the local and just in his community,
the link between Wapato and Seattle and the Alaska
Cannery Workers Union.
-Terri Mast, a young woman
from the Wallingford neighborhood in Seattle,
had been a cook at a cannery and began working
at the newly formed Alaska Cannery Workers Association,
a legal advocacy group created by the younger Alaskeros,
to challenge the discrimination against non-whites
in the canneries.
It was at the ACWA that many social causes banded together
and where Terri met the dynamic activist Silme.
-Yeah, I was definitely attracted to Silme
by the political work and his intellect.
You know, he was kind of a wild guy back then, too,
but so we all were.
[ Laughs ]
-This generation was coming of age in a time
when sociopolitical unrest
was happening nationally, internationally, and locally.
-I was sent to Vietnam, then came back wounded.
And at the same time, I was sent to the Fort Leavenworth prison,
and I was facing a 2 1/2-year sentence.
It was there where I was in contact
with the ex Black Panther Party.
And so I started reading about them.
And so that's where my eyes got opened.
And so when I came out of prison,
I started going to Seattle Central Community College,
and that's where I was introduced
with the Oriental Union at that time
and began to get involved with the Asian movement.
-Activists organized rallies to support community housing,
health services, diversity in higher education,
fairness in the trades,
and the impending construction of The Kingdome,
a new sports arena that would displace residents
and change the face of the international district,
a mostly Asian-populated neighborhood.
Their efforts resulted in establishment
of low-income housing, a health clinic,
a neighborhood preservation plan,
and equitable hiring practices.
And many of these movements came together
at the ACWA office on 8th Avenue South.
-Because there was a lot going on in the community
at that time -- I mean, there was all kinds
of struggles going on.
Community-based struggles, civil-rights struggles,
the whole integration of the building trades,
the women in trades, the --
You know, the office was, I would say,
kind of a hotbed of people who were working on
and being active in progressive political pursuits.
-We were supported by UCWA,
the Construction Workers Association,
and then, in turn, we supported other folks.
We formed coalitions with other Asian groups.
There was support of preserving the international district.
There was support of the anti-martial law activities.
-Two months prior to the Kingdome protests,
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos
had declared martial law on September 21, 1972.
The Union of Democratic Filipinos,
also known by its Tagalog acronym, the KDP,
fought against the Marcos dictatorship
and called for social change among Filipino-Americans.
-The first time I met Silme and Gene and Angel,
all these guys -- Terri -- is in the context of
we were establishing a KDP chapter here in Seattle.
Our commitment was to organize this community,
this Filipino community here.
So then, of course,
the approach we took in KDP was
really to get to the -- the particular details
of every Filipino community we were trying to organize.
So, in Seattle, as soon as you start that review,
you come up to the canneries and the Alaska situation.
-The Alaska situation, though grateful to be employed
each season at the canneries, the Alaskeros
were experiencing blatant discrimination
due to race, a status quo that didn't sit well
with this newly politicized generation of workers.
-When I was at the cannery, we basically saw a lot of things
that was quite disturbing,
you know, things that you wouldn't think happened,
such as a segregated bunkhouse, segregated jobs.
You're stuck in certain jobs without any chance of promotion.
And everything was segregated -- your laundry,
your mail, where you live, the type of food you had.
And the bunkhouse that held the white workers
had better food.
-When I go to Alaska, I saw the conditions being really bad.
I got called "little brown boy" right to my face.
I had to sleep in a room with eight people, you know?
I had to work 20 hours a day, you know?
Relative to growing up in a school where I was, like,
you know, a wrestling star or, you know,
like a sports star or a Scholastic Excel
or something like that.
I mean, you go there, and you're automatically stepped on.
So, like, I would say things were bad now.
-This is the -- [ Scoffs ] -- the 1970s.
My God, you know I mean?
It's like -- That's why I meant
It was like a flashback because you think --
we knew we had an organizing effort,
and yet there was inequality.
But personally, I was stunned. I thought --
I expected inequality, but, you know,
that it would be a little bit more subtle than this.
This was just, like, straight out of a book.
-We'd been talking all summer,
'cause the Filipinos just got rice and meat
and sometimes salmon heads.
No, I mean, we would joke,
but we were kind of serious that, "God, we're getting scurvy
or something," you know?
For coffee breaks,
us Filipinos were getting just black coffee
and a little package of cookies
to divide up a whole crew, you know?
The white crew had vegetables, sandwiches,
fruits, hot chocolate.
I mean, just a banquet, table full of stuff.
And we used to tell our foreman, "How come they get all that
and we don't?"
"That's the way it is, you know?
Just be content."
And we went to this warehouse, and it had all this food,
'cause they were supplying the ships
and supplying the white man's mess,
and they had, like, fruit cocktail and peaches.
I mean, we never saw any of that.
-The Alaskeros who did the grueling jobs
inside the fish houses
often worked 18 or more hours a day
at dangerous, repetitive tasks,
barely pausing to eat and sleep.
It was worsened by the terrible housing conditions and food.
After one particularly hard day,
Gene organized an impromptu food strike.
We had just worked a long stretch,
maybe three, four days.
The way Alaska works is, they have fishing,
and then the authorities closed down the fisheries
for a few days to let some salmon through.
So we just worked really -- a real long stretch,
three or four days at 20 hours a day.
And so we're all really tired.
And they had -- We basically had a day
where we could have a day off,
but we were still under contract.
And we were saying, "We want some of that food
we know is there," you know?
And they said, "No."
So what they would have us do on these kind of days,
rather than just let us relax in our barracks,
they had us --
Imagine a gigantic warehouse, right?
With these metal for canning.
We'd move the boxes, hundreds of big cartons full of metal,
from one side of the warehouse to the other side.
And then, the next day, we would move it back.
And it was simply because they didn't want to pay us
without us working.
And so it was kind of a harassment type thing.
So that's what they were --
And so people were angry and stuff,
and we said, "You know what?
we're not going to the warehouse today,
not until we get better food and stuff."
And Gene became the spokesperson.
-After that fishing season in the summer of 1973,
the ACWA filed three class-action lawsuits
on behalf of Filipino
and non-white workers in the Alaska canneries.
-I think we were part of the generation
that at least started to raise questions
at the company about, "Why is it like this?"
Because many of our fathers and uncles and people before us,
they just took the -- they just took the abuse
and they just continued to work
because they had no choice but to do that.
We felt we had a choice.
And so we started making some noise about that,
started documenting a lot of what was going on.
-We need to learn how to organize.
So I went to Alaska early on,
freezing my butt off, actually crying,
said, "What the hell am I doing here?
It's so cold," right?
And learning how to organize a union.
-And when I came back, the younger people in the union
were starting to talk about doing some sort of documentation
of the discrimination up in Alaska
to file lawsuits against the industry.
-The three lawsuits were filed
against the largest canneries in Alaska,
citing discrimination under Title VII
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
As the lawsuits slowly made their way through the courts,
ACWA members, including Silme and Gene,
found themselves blacklisted
from obtaining work in the canneries.
But they began to enlist others to help them in the struggle.
-I think it was Gene actually called me up and said,
"Hey, you know, we've got this reform movement
in the union, and we thought we'd talk to you about it."
And I had been involved in anti-war stuff with Vietnam.
And I -- you know, I wanted to change the world,
make it a better place.
-Part of going there, really,
is to understand trade unions
and what is it like to be a member of a union.
What is it like to file grievance,
what do we mean by being a shop steward,
how do you negotiate.
Some basic trade-union mechanics.
-And they also found an inspiration and model
from the past, their mano forefathers,
who had fought these battles decades before.
♪♪
-Talked about, like, your organizing experiences
down in California. And then, like, you know,
I've read a lot of history of this union,
and that dates -- you know, it starts off about 1932
when the workers really put their foot down
and decided that they were gonna --
they were really gonna start organizing people.
-We Filipinos opened our eyes to how these white people
are better-conditioned in the working conditions.
-The local manos who had the closest ties
to the work of the union,
they really came from a generation out of
the '30s and '40s and '50s.
And it was really a blessing to have some of these manos
still around who remembered and had the literature,
had the pamphlets and leaflets and had the stories to tell
about where they've come and what they've done.
-Our purpose, we Filipinos were to unite together
in order to fight for a better condition of living.
-Most of those old-timers were part of the the Communist Party.
And so they had no hesitancy
about talking about their experiences
and what they went through to be political activists
and especially in a multiracial movement
and sometimes the difficulties of that.
Being able to sit down, have drinks with them,
and talk about their histories
is really what influenced me a lot
and gave me my political insight.
And, really, that's where I got politicized
was around being around them.
-Though the manos had created a road map
the activists could follow,
current inequities were not just created by the canneries.
In the years following the rabid anti-communist era of the 1950s,
the union ousted its more radical early reformers.
By the 1960s, the union had become part of the problem,
its leaders sanctioning bribes in exchange for jobs in Alaska.
-Something that was very paramount
to the reform of the union
was to abolish the bribery and the favoritism
that was so rampant for all the canneries.
And it really did take a team to make sure
that everything was -- was correct.
The records were kept in good order
and that people did get up to Alaska based off of seniority.
-As the second-generation activist soon found out,
trying to change a broken system threatened the old guard
who controlled the union and profited from the bribes.
Change would not come easily.
-There really wasn't a lot of thinking in our minds
that this is going to be dangerous.
I mean, we just thought that, you know,
it's just another organizing thing,
and we're going to take things on
and, you know, things are gonna be on our side on this thing,
you know, if we worked hard
and we did our organizing right as we were trained.
And then I think as our movement got taken a lot more serious
in the union, we began to see resistance
occurring on the part of Tony Baruso,
who was the president of the union,
and some of his kind of supporters in the union,
starting to resist our efforts a little bit more, right?
-Tony Baruso had served
as Local 37's president for six years.
He had also made a failed run
for the Washington state legislature in 1970.
As a high-profile community leader,
he was also a staunch supporter of President Ferdinand Marcos,
and he kept a photograph of them shaking hands
in his office.
Many from the community supported Marcos,
a fellow Ilocos province native
who rose to the highest position of power in the Philippines.
Marcos' violation of democracy through martial law
was a divisive point of conflict
within the Seattle Filipino community.
-When I was growing up,
most of the people, the Filipinos,
were here pre-World War II.
And there were post-World War II immigrants,
and they're very different,
especially those who are from the area
where my father was from, Ilocos,
where Marcos was from.
-Geographic distance and hometown allegiances
influenced attitudes towards
the divisive and corrupt Philippines president.
-Kind of like, "He's just a nice boy.
You know, he's doing the right thing,"
because of that regional connection.
Plus, they hadn't, I think,
lived in the Philippines for a long time,
even though they'd go back to visit.
And then you have the post-World War people that
were seeing what he was doing to their country,
and they were closely aligned to it.
Some people were perceived as supporting Marcos
and were just labeled as just evil people.
And they're going, "Wait a minute.
We've been here for all this time,
and we've built up the community centers,
and all of this that you guys,
the latecomers, are coming now and trying to take over.
And because we think we're loyal, like, Filipino-Americans,
you're attacking us," and these other people are going,
"But you're supporting a man that's suppressing our country."
-This sharp tension played into the battles
of the anti-Marcos work,
the lawsuits, and the union-reform movement.
The young activists were all but frozen out of the union
by the old-guard Marcos supporters.
-We realized that it was gonna take more of a movement
within the union to make it happen.
So we created a --
what we called the rank-and-file movement,
which was something that we had looked
at historically within the union.
There had been, at one point in time,
another rank-and-file movement.
So we kind of used that as our model
and talked to some of the old-timers
about how they did it and how they created it
and how it was effective or not effective
and used some lessons from them
and re-created what we called the rank-and-file movement.
-After several unsuccessful attempts at election reform
candidates for the Local 37's executive board,
the young rank-and-file committee members
nearly swept the ballot in 1980,
with Silme elected secretary treasurer
and Gene winning the key position of dispatcher.
Only Baruso remained from the old leadership.
-And so as we were doing the organizing
into the reform movement all the way up
until the ILWU convention in Hawaii,
we thought nothing of the real danger of this.
I mean, we're young and brash,
and we had our ideas about what needs to get done,
so we just went gangbusters forward,
and we just did what we needed to do.
-Before attending the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union convention in Hawaii,
Gene traveled to the Philippines to meet with family members
and anti-Marcos leaders, including the Kilusang Mayo Uno,
or KMU, a federation of anti-Marcos trade unions.
Gene arrived at the convention determined to get ILWU support
for the Philippines labor movement.
-You know, the ILWU itself has a very progressive,
rich history,
and this was probably the only time that the ILWU
had not taken a position against a dictator.
And so it was very significant that Gene brought back
that not only greetings from the KMU
and that the Local 37
brought this resolution to the international.
-The vote on the resolution
to send an ILWU team to the Philippines
to investigate repression of the labor movement
was initially split due to opposition from Baruso
and other Marcos supporters.
But it eventually passed,
setting in motion a challenge against the Marcos dictatorship.
The start of the fishing season
was right on the heels of the convention.
The young activists held the keys
to running a fair dispatch, and Gene was determined
to eliminate bribes from the process.
Emboldened by their victory in Hawaii,
Gene and Silme continued their outspoken opposition to Marcos
despite the growing danger to their lives.
♪♪
-When he came -- like, when he came back
from the Philippines, he was only there --
I had to leave to Alaska because I went up early,
way earlier than the cannery crews,
to get things ready,
so I only got to see him for about a week.
And so he had told me --
'Cause he used my truck a lot here and there,
and so he'd say,
"If you notice somebody following you...,"
and I go, "What?"
then he'd say, "Yeah, just be aware, you know?"
-When Silme actually came to me and the executive board
and said, "We need to buy life insurance"...
I was driving Silme's car because my car had broken down.
I was living on Beacon Hill.
And...
I've noticed that, going back and forth to school,
there was a car following me.
And I told Silme, "Somebody's following you,"
and he started laughing.
And nobody believed me, right?
And I was like, "No, there is somebody following you, Silme."
-But I remember asking him, "Is this really dangerous?
Do you need to come home?"
And he says, "No, no. I mean, they're angry,
but they're --"
He thought he had it under control.
And the feeling was is, "Yeah, it's dangerous,
but it's worth doing," and if not him,
then somebody's gonna have to do it,
and it's just as dangerous for them.
-Gene stood fast in his refusal
to take bribes and allow unfair favoritism.
Tony Dictado, leader of the Tulisan,
a Filipino street gang
who controlled gambling in the union,
was enraged because he was unable to get his gang members
dispatched up to Alaska for the coming season.
Baruso also grew increasingly upset
by the actions of Gene, Silme,
and the other young rank-and-file reformers.
-I think the week before the murders, Tony Dictado
was sort of a known -- he was a known gangster to us.
He was in the office talking to Baruso.
They went in and shut the door.
You could see, 'cause he had a glass door
so you could see him in there, you know, talking.
So he was around a lot that last week.
He had made threats against Gene about the Dillingham dispatch,
and he said he was going to kill Gene.
I just think we didn't really think that...
You know, there's a lot of that kind of bravado,
the talk that sometimes you just sort of put into a category,
you just kind of go "That's just, you know,
braggadocio or whatever."
But, yeah, I think it was shocking.
Didn't think it would really happen.
♪♪
-I had gone to work.
I went to pick up the girls and was driving home,
and the funny thing is, I almost went by the hall,
and I didn't. I decided to go home.
So I went home, and I made dinner,
because we were supposed to have a meeting that night.
-And so the meeting was set for, I think, 4:00 or 4:15
or something like that.
Well, I was running late from work,
and I was caught in traffic.
So I was going down there,
and as I was approaching the union hall on the right,
there were -- It was cordoned off,
and there were police cars and fire trucks there.
-Chris was watching the news, and he says --
and he was as white as a ghost, he says,
"Something happened at the union."
He goes, "There's something. They said that
there's a shooting at the union," and stuff.
I'm like, "What?" I go, "No, can't be."
-And I walked up to the union hall
'cause people were standing around the union hall,
and I was met by a police officer
standing outside, saying,
"You can't go in here. There was a shooting in here."
I said, "Shooting?" He said, "Yes.
And two people got shot,
and we think it might be a gang thing,
and one person was taken to the hospital."
-Gene and Silme were alone in the union hall
when two men entered the building.
One pulled a .45-caliber MAC-10 automatic pistol
with a silencer and began firing.
Gene was killed instantly.
But Silme survived despite being shot four times.
He made it out to the alley behind the union hall
where he was spotted by a cook
from the restaurant across the street.
An ambulance transported Silme
to Harborview Medical Center.
-So, I came in, and I called the hall,
and nobody answered.
And I thought, "Oh, okay. He's on his way home."
And so I finished dinner, and, uh...
Then, John Foz called me, I think.
-We received a phone call -- I forget from who.
It was a phone call that said
that Gene and Silme had been shot,
and we did not know their condition.
-And he said, "Are you at home?"
and I said, "Yeah," and he goes,
"Elaine and I are gonna come by for a minute."
I was like, "Oh, okay." I go, "Well, you know,
we're just about to have dinner, waiting for Silme,
I have a meeting," and he's like,
"Well, we just need to come by for a minute."
I'm like, "Okay." So, they come in,
and it was John and Elaine and Shari Woo.
Yeah.
[ Sniffles ]
Yeah, and I opened the door, and I could just tell --
Shari immediately took the kids aside,
and I was like...
And then they go, "Gene and Silme have been shot."
I'm like, "What?"
I mean, it was just so -- I had no...
I don't know what they were talking about.
And I think they took the kids somewhere,
and they took me to the hospital.
-At that point -- [ Sniffles ] --
we went down to pick up my mom,
'cause they said that Silme and Gene had been shot,
and I thought that they were gonna be really strong
and that they would be alive,
but we did not know that Gene had died instantly.
And then, Silme -- We went to pick up my mom,
and she said, "We're going to go to the hospital."
We actually went to Silme when he was in surgery.
And we knew that Silme wasn't going to make it.
He had already had a severe, um...um...
trauma to all his internal organs,
and we -- he --
they were already doing their last CPR on him.
But he lasted as long to at least tell,
you know, Terri and my mom,
you know, who was involved.
-Before he was taken to the hospital,
Silme was able to identify the shooters
to the emergency crews that had arrived on the scene,
Ben Guloy and Jimmy Ramil,
who were both members of the Tulisan street gang.
-I just couldn't believe it.
I mean, basically, the friend who called just said
Gene had died and Silme was in the hospital.
And it was that short. It was like that.
I was just, uh... pretty much just devastated.
-Silme went through three surgeries,
regaining consciousness a number of times,
but his heart finally stopped
and he died about 24 hours after he had been shot.
-Well, you know, this was the first time
that I ever cried in my life since I left the Philippines.
In the war in Vietnam, I never cried.
I didn't have any feelings at all.
I had to cut that off.
But this was different, because this here was a person
that was -- that was very close to me.
He was like a brother.
And, uh... And I loved him a lot, you know?
And to lose something like that,
it just -- kind of just blew me away.
You know?
And I really wanted revenge.
-And one of the decisions that we had to make was
we had to go back into the union hall
the next day to continue that work.
And so that's where we decided to go in as a team.
So it was Emily, myself, Alonzo, John Foz, and Terri
decided to go in the next day.
And we went in the next morning.
-What I think affected me most
is how we responded to the situation.
I didn't think I would be able to respond
to the murders
without the other people, because it was very scary.
-I'm not sure if it was scared, but we just went in there
and we charged in there and said --
And the blood wasn't even dried yet.
And, you know, we're going to take over this.
We're going to continue to work.
-Bottom line is this.
Those are the people who had to actually go back in
and turn the key and open up the union
and get ready for the next dispatch.
Right? We actually ran a dispatch,
a fair dispatch
while the dispatcher had just been killed,
you know, so the incredible heroism on that part.
But I would say that it was the collective strength
because I often muse on the fact that, you know,
no one ever sets out to be a --
real heroes never set out to be heroes.
You're just trying to do what's right, and then circumstance
puts something in front of you.
And so ordinary people wind up doing extraordinary things.
♪♪
-How do -- you know, how do we do -- do the -- still do --
continue doing the work in Local 37,
continue do the work of KDP?
And for me, I was kind of disoriented.
So what do we do? You know, what's going on?
And if it wasn't for the organization's leadership
and the determination to seek justice
by everyone is what kept us going.
You know, I know it kept me going.
-Despite their shock at the murder of their friends
and fears about their own personal safety,
the rank-and-file committee members forged
ahead with union reform efforts.
Meanwhile, another group
of activists and community supporters
focused on seeking justice for Gene and Silme.
-Committee for Justice was formed
immediately after the murders.
You know, everyone knew
that this was more than a random killing
and it was more than union reform.
-Domingo's younger sister, who was elected to his union job
after the killing,
believes there may be a second motive for the murders.
Union reform, but also political opposition to President Marcos.
-Were they more executions than random murders
or gang-war violence?
-I think there could be a possibility.
-I think our goal is to really find the truth.
You know, who killed Silme and Gene and why.
And so what we did is really look at, you know,
the bits and pieces, you know,
how it happened, why it happened,
who are the people that we think, you know, is involved?
-Silme's sister, Cindy Domingo, became the national chair
of the Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes,
an organization that led the effort
to link the murders with perpetrators
that they believed went far beyond the gunmen.
-We went up against some incredible power.
One is the, you know, the power of the gangs.
Nothing to sneeze at, by the way,
so these were the actual guys who pulled the trigger
and they were dangerous.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
-The two gunmen, Jimmy Ramil and Ben Guloy,
were arrested and convicted of first-degree murder
within four months of the killings.
-These trials won't bring back Silme and Gene,
and it's a loss that it's going to take a long time to get over.
But we're going to continue finding out
who's responsible for Silme and Gene's murder,
and it's not going to stop here.
-A few months later, Tulisan gang leader Tony Dictado
was found guilty of directing the shootings.
The murder weapon was found discarded
in a public park garbage can.
It was registered to Tony Baruso.
Baruso was arrested, but he claimed the gun had been stolen.
When he was called to the witness stand
at the trials of Ramil, Guloy, and Dictado,
Baruso refused to answer questions,
invoking his Fifth Amendment right
to avoid self-incrimination 140 times.
The Committee for Justice continue to search for links
to others who might have ordered the murders,
including Ferdinand Marcos.
-It's significant that when they went to the convention
that they put a resolution for an investigation team
to go to the Philippines
and the impact of having a large organization
like the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union
to investigate something like that would have,
you know, results for that country.
-As we went after the perpetrators,
it got very complex,
and so Baruso had two roles.
One is the kingpin for the corruption in the union,
and one is the ally of the Marcos dictatorship.
-Pursuit of Tony Baruso and Ferdinand Marcos
pressed on for years.
-What got uncovered
in the course of the justice effort
was that the Marcos government was in touch with Baruso.
and that Baruso more or less had been outmaneuvered
by the reform effort.
So, then he has ties to the Marcos regime,
and they're really mad at a resolution
on changing something the union pushed through
at the ILWU convention,
basically in solidarity with the Filipino workers movement
that was being suppressed under Marcos.
So that's the confluence of things that came together,
and that's the thing that we didn't see coming.
-'Cause eventually the legal side became the prominent side
when we knew that Baruso was part of the conspiracy,
and we wanted to file the civil suits, right, in court
against the Marcos regime and family.
-That was really their mistake,
that you can't just silence two men
who were leading the group, the opposition.
They underestimated the organizing and the collective
that was created through those years.
-A couple of key people right on the front lines
said basically to Baruso, "Okay, now you're really in trouble.
You think you were in trouble before,
you have not seen anything yet."
-In 1989, after years of steadfast investigation,
a wrongful death civil suit against the Marcos regime
went to trial.
Marcos had since fled to Hawaii
after his regime collapsed in 1986.
He died just months before the trial commenced.
Evidence showed that a sum of $15,000
was paid out from a Marcos-allied slush fund
to Tony Baruso for a special security project
right before the murders.
Baruso, called to testify,
once again invoked the fifth amendment 75 times.
-When the case was, you know, filed,
is that who are we to file the charges
against President of the, you know, country,
which it's never been done?
And so I think for us, it was really just a shock.
I mean, I was shocked, 'cause I like, "Wow."
That actually, as an American citizen,
you can actually do this.
And I think it was a shock for the community
that I said it split it up, because it is like they went --
nobody thought that it can happen, you know?
And more so that we really challenged
the President of the Philippines and win.
-On December 15, 1989,
a federal jury found Ferdinand Marcos
liable for the murders
of Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo.
-And it's still a precedent in law schools.
So when you go to law school, they use this case,
say, "Here's a case where a foreign government
was held liable for the murder of U.S. citizens.
-Armed with the evidence of the $15,000 payment,
Tony Baruso was charged with murder and brought to trial.
He was convicted on March 8, 1991,
almost 10 years after Silme and Gene were murdered.
Given a life sentence without the possibility of parole,
Baruso died in prison at the age of 80 in 2008.
♪♪
1991 proved to be a significant year.
Not only was Baruso finally brought to justice,
but Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991
to strengthen and improve federal civil-rights laws
and to provide for damages
in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
This act was a response to a Supreme Court ruling
which invalidated the last
of the ACWA class action lawsuits
that were initiated in the 1970s.
In a strike against the supporters
of the civil-rights bill,
Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska amended it
to exempt specifically the Ward's Cove Cannery,
which had been named in the original lawsuits.
It was a blow to a legal effort that had lasted 27 years.
-Naturally, I'm disappointed in the outcome
of the Ward's Cove case.
I think anyone in my shoes would be.
It was a time when the whole civil-rights area was changing,
and that was sort of certainly part of the explanation
for how things came out.
Legacy of the lawsuits
was initially to make people aware
that there were laws prohibiting
a lot of the discrimination that people could see
and maybe shift people's attitudes a little bit
so that they didn't simply see and comment on
and accept the discrimination,
but tried to do something about it.
-Many of the canneries that had been accused of discrimination
had gone out of business
by the time the class action lawsuits were finally settled.
But the efforts of Gene, Silme, and others
had paid off nonetheless.
-Having experienced a little bit of what they saw,
'cause it was starting to get better, it was changing,
but it was still there to some extent.
But you could tell that it was changing,
and I still could see
some of the problems that were there,
and I got to see it change,
so I knew what they were doing was working.
-You know, after all of that work they did,
if you were still going to Alaska,
you could see the difference in the treatment we were getting,
the housing, the food.
I mean, things actually changed.
-The period after the murders was a changing time
for the salmon-canning industry and the Local 37.
The second-generation activists
had reformed the union and began steering it
in a democratic, progressive direction.
But by then, the industry had switched from canning
to fresh-frozen processing.
With jobs beginning to vanish,
the union decided to sell the building
that they had owned since 1947
and where Gene and Silme were murdered.
They merged to become Region 37
within the Inlandboatmen's Union,
the marine division of the ILWU.
Terri Mast was elected
the national secretary/treasurer of the IBU,
a position she still holds today.
-For me, it's still being part of a movement.
I think the labor movement is kind of the only hope
for the working class in this country.
So I enjoy doing that.
And I think it's personally rewarding to me,
and, you know, I think at this point,
I also bring something to the table.
Thank you. And I'm Terri Mast,
the national secretary/treasurer of the Inlandboatmen's Union.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's been over 30 years since Gene and Silme were murdered,
and their friends and allies continue to reflect on
and celebrate their lives and influence.
The legacy of Gene and Silme runs deep.
♪ Solidarity forever ♪
♪ For the union makes us strong ♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Well, I think their legacy,
one, was that they did bridge the gap.
They did bridge the history
from before to present and kept it going.
You know, they kept that movement
that was started back then, brought it to present,
and we've kept it going.
So I think that's one.
I think the other is that
they did create change in the industry.
-Who knows what would have happened without these murders.
I mean, if these murders
and the reform of the union had not happened,
it's hard to say where the Cannery Workers Union would be.
It's hard to say where both the ILWU and the IBU would be,
to be honest,
because it injected in some sense
and enlivened a whole sort of international view
of the labor movement in a way
that, you know, it took their blood.
-For me now, that actually still operates,
that collectively, if you put things together,
we can work things out, and we can make change.
You know, change is about
disliking your current condition,
having a vision,
taking the first step, and overcoming resistance, right?
So all those things
somewhat, I think, for me
is the legacy of what Gene and Silme represent.
Not a day I don't think about this, too.
I just think about what they'd be doing right now,
what they would think about the world we live in.
-[ Sniffles ]
Well, like I say, he was my role model,
my beacon in life, you know,
that I was just so proud of him.
Sorry.
-With both those guys, I mean, they lived life,
I think, as far as to the fullest.
They never looked back, and they really, both of them,
they had one thing in common with them.
They always gave.
They never looked to take anything from anybody.
It was always something that they would --
I hate to use the old, common cliché,
but they'd give you the shirt off their back.
-Gene's memory is...
like, he throws a big shadow.
It's like a curse, right?
I kind of think sometimes he was killed when we were 29.
When you're a young man, you have the energy,
and you're strong,
and you're committed.
And when you're an old man [chuckles]
sometimes you just want to sit on the couch, you know,
and you don't want to fight with them, and you don't win.
But the standard is there.
And so I think, you know, what do I do, you know?
Do I not believe who we were, who we are?
-Silme and Gene have not been forgotten.
Their lives, work, and sacrifice
continue to inspire the next generation.
-After my first year of college,
I went to the AFL-CIO three day Organizing Institute
and, you know, started getting trained
to be a union organizer at 18 years old.
Through that process, I sort of started understanding my life
and my experiences
and understanding what my parents' lives were about
and what their work was about.
And, you know, I think I was just really instilled
with this idea about needing to do work that changed the world.
♪♪
-There's a part of me that is from Wapato,
born and raised here, that the outside world is kind of scary.
And then when I get into the outside world,
like, I'm a proponent for --
I feel like I'm kind of a proponent
for speaking the truth.
And I think what Uncle Gene has inspired in me
is to always seek the truth.
Don't necessarily need
to convince other people of the truth,
but always look deeply at issues,
find out what is my truth in these issues,
and move towards that truth.
I think that's what he's inspired in me.
♪♪
-What I remember mostly about them
doesn't have to do with politics or the lawsuits.
It has to do with
there are certain people that are just your friends.
I would have trusted either one of those people
with my life.
♪♪