Staying Home: No Bulos in Boston
July 30, 2004
Alice Bulos has a bad hip and walks with a cane. She reminds me of my mother. She even talks like her.
The cane means she’s feeling some pain — but not from four years of Bush.
It’s from something more mundane.
“Arthritis,” she said.
But no matter how much pain she’s feeling, it isn’t enough to stop the grassroots politico from attending several events and meetings during any given week throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
When you’re a 74-year-old true believer, you have a high threshold for pain.
“My only disability is when I sit down,” she said. “To stand up is hard.”
It makes her affliction perfect for the activist.
That’s why when Bulos told me she’s not going to Boston for the Democratic National Convention, I did a double take.
Not going?
She’s got to have a good reason.
“I’ve been to five conventions,” she said to me. “It’s time to do our work locally. If I want John Kerry, John Edwards and the party to win I have to work within the district.”
So her goals aren’t based on Boston in July. It’s places like Vallejo, northeast of San Francisco, and her home base of San Mateo County, south of the city, that matter. A few weeks before the convention, she helmed a leadership development forum of the Filipino American Democratic Caucus on increasing turnout.
“So many of our people are registered, but don’t get out to the polls,” she said. “We have to work out an absentee-ballot strategy. Our people are too busy. They come home from work. They have to cook the food, attend to the children. So many things. That’s why they’re not voting.”
It’s less about the issues, more about the practical aspects of democracy. Activists have to make it easy for voters to exercise their franchise. You have to make politics a part of their lives.
Bulos’ life has been impacted by politics ever since her immigration to America in 1970.
But it wasn’t until 1977 that she found herself knee-deep in it, working as an employment counselor in Sacramento for CETA, the legendary jobs and training project of President Carter.
When she came to the United States, she left her post as a sociology professor and chair of the department after 23 years at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines.
She came to America to follow her husband, Dony, who left a law practice and ended up working at the old Pacific Bell in the Bay Area.
Bulos commuted to Sacramento for a number of years. But then politics happened.
“Reagan did not approve the budget for CETA in 1979,” Bulos said. “I came back to the Bay Area with a renewed commitment.”
Bulos began to volunteer. For everything. The activism period in her life had begun.
She used old Sacramento contacts and began organizing Asian Pacific American women. It led to a Fil-Am women’s network in 1980.
Back then, there was only an Asian caucus. But Filipino numbers were skyrocketing from immigration. Bulos saw the need for Filipino American Democrats to organize distinctively within the state party.
In the midst of this came great personal loss. Her husband, Dony, died in 1984. “He was always encouraging me,” she said.
So she continued on, and with the help of fellow activists Carl Lindstrom and Steve Arevelo, the three convinced a young Steve Westley, then Northern California chair of the Democratic Party, to support the move for a Filipino American Caucus. It worked.
”It gave the Filipino American [community] more recognition, more visibility and power,” Bulos said.
Bulos enjoyed eight years as state chair of the caucus. It raised her own profile and in the ’90s, she became a Clinton appointee to the Federal Council on Aging, where she was able to put the Filipino veterans issue on the agenda.
This past summer, she recalls sitting with Edwards during the primary campaign: “I told him how the vets were all dying.” Edwards told her that the Republican majority was holding up the issue in the Senate. “He said they didn’t understand. But that he did.”
Bulos understands that her work is here at home right now, on the front lines.
“I will concentrate on local policy,” she said. “And local voters.”
And she’s working with the state and local candidates, too. At a special South of Market event for state Controller Westley this month, Bulos was all a glow about her old ally.
“I think he’s running for governor,” she said with glee. The excitement of that race was making her feel young again.
Reach Emil at emil@amok.com.
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