FoundSF

Historical Essay

by Molly Martin, Gail Sansbury, Elaine Elison, and the Bernal History Project

Giuliana "Huli" Milanese, 1944- (center)

Bernal Heights has been a center of labor activism for over a century; many prominent labor organizers can be traced there. This profile is part of a series put together by the Bernal History Project for Labor Fest in 2008 that tells the stories of six “reds” from Bernal Heights: Miriam Dinkin Johnson, Eugene Paton, Phiz Mezey, Dow Wilson, Bill Sorro, and Giuliana Milanese.

Giuliana “Huli” Milanese was born in Oakland in 1944 and first became active during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1970, she went to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade and met Bill Sorro; they married in 1973. She did support work with many unions and organizations, including hotel workers, the ILWU anti-apartheid campaign, the Coalition for Civil Rights, and the I-Hotel.

She joined the Communist Party in 1974 and became its Northern California organizer in 1975. She was already becoming critical of the party when she traveled to Moscow in 1987 for a study group. She joined with others, including Angela Davis, to begin a national reform movement to change the party doctrine on questions of women, gays, democracy, and more. After the Communist Party National Convention in 1992, Huli and Bill, along with most in the reform movement, voted to leave the party. Their slogan was “Glad we joined, glad we left.” Said Huli, “The most important thing I took with me was the ability to connect race and class. The CP also knew how to connect with working people in a way that other left groups did not.”

Huli was among the reformers who formed the Committees of Correspondence to keep the movement going. She dropped from the national leadership in 2002.

In 1992, she was the organizer of Italian-Americans against Christopher Columbus for the 500th year anniversary of Christopher Columbus' landfall.

Huli and the Nurses Association at one of Schwarzenegger’s public appearances.

In January 1995 she went to work for the California Nurses Association where she worked as an organizer for 12 years on many campaigns: Anti-Schwarzenegger, safe staffing, Kaiser, organizing the community to prevent the closure of units, training nurses in public speaking, and fighting managed care. Huli and the Nurses Association followed Schwarzenegger around the state harassing him over the issue of staffing; the governor had suspended a hard-won law that lowered patient-to-nurse ratios in the state's hospitals and emergency rooms. He said in response ”I’ll kick their ass,” referring to the nurses. That didn’t go over well—the nurses won and the law stayed.

Read about other Bernal Heights labor activists here. Thanks to the SF Labor Archives and Research Center, a rich source of information about union movements and working class life in the Bay Area, and the families of our subjects.