LORA JO FOO - 4/29, 2026

It’s very easy to live life, clueless of how it evolved.  As if it were just you going it alone, unable to see how all of life is interconnected.  Forgetting or not aware how those you meet along the way make a profound imprint on how you live life.

That is how Lora Jo Foo affected me.  I am truly blessed to have intersected with Lora Jo as a friend since the mid 70s.   Who Lora Jo was and how she lived life, shaped who I am today.  We met working as room cleaners in class A hotels in San Francisco.  We became shop stewards for what became HERE, Local 2 (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union) with a membership of 25,000.   We were in our 20s. 

Lora Jo was already a justice warrior back then.  She had been formed from working as a garment worker at 11.  I watched and worked with Lora Jo in the pursuit of justice for low wage, immigrant and hotel workers, both in the union as well as in the community.  We started out as colleagues and allies. 

There was an instant affection for one another.  Lora Jo was someone you could immediately feel was a good soul, someone who lived with honor, was driven by truth, honesty and the belief in justice.   We quickly became close friends while participating in the transformation of the hotel industry and Local 2 HERE in the 70s.

In the early 80s, Lora Jo decided to pursue a law degree.  She became an accomplished lawyer, defending the rights of low wage workers.  She litigated numerous ground breaking cases.  She co-founded Sweatshop Watch and the National Asian Pacific American Womens Forum.  Lora Jo imprinted a larger legacy for the same causes, but in a different role.  Another one she mastered.  

Ironically, we interweaved paths in 3 labor institutions.   We started at HERE Local 2 and went through the transformation of the union.  Earned some strips in 1980 Hotel Strike that became a national story.  We sequentially worked for the AFL-CIO in the 90s.  Both as the first Chinese females in our respective roles.  Finally, we ended our labor careers in the California Faculty Association in the 2000s.  The last dance being one of preparing for a strike for 22,000 university professors.  By then we had learned how to achieve goals by using the threat strike to avert a strike.  The Art of War.

We dovetailed learning skills of mass organizing, strategy and tactics, how to navigate the intrigue of politics and power struggles.  Lora Jo went further to engrave her legacy through legal maneuvering.

Lora Jo changed the trajectory of my life in early 1982.  We had been dissidents, progressive forces testing the boundaries of an intransigent union leadership that had forgotten its purpose.  The union rank and file was in revolt. Through years of struggle, we had arrived at the possibility of changing the union from a different perspective, from the inside.  Three of us who had been in the opposition were offered to work for the union.  A 180 degree turn from our previous roles of dissidents.

That put us at a cross hairs with those we fought along side in the rank and file and the conservative forces in the union who held distain for us.  The positions required a vote of the membership.  Already in a tumultuous time, both sides did not like what we were doing and set to prevent the move.

Lora Jo had been out of the union for a couple of years and into her law career.  Although, she kept her membership and her reputation.  She attended the raucous meeting that took the vote for our hiring. She was very familiar with all the forces in the assembly. She entered there room to the chants of, “Vote No! Vote No!”

In stealth mode, Lora Jo moved into the meeting, chose to sit in the back with a group of Chinese workers who were cheering along side the dissidents, opposing the “sellout” move.  She was clear and focussed, calmly made counter points to why they should vote yes.  Then she took another group.  And another.

When the time for speakers came, Lora Jo stepped up to the mike.  A bold move as she knew she would be Boo’ed by the dissidents and progressive forces as well as mistrusted by the conservative voices.  Lora Jo was the only progressive voice to speak on our behalf.  She spoke in Cantonese, explaining what it meant for the union to make this change and what it meant to Chinese workers and the back of the house (room cleaners and diswashers).  She chose to speak first to those who mostly could not understand the full complexity of the debate.

The dissidents yelled at Lora Jo, “Speak in English! Speak in English!”

They demanded, “What’s your vote? Yes or No?”  The chants repeated themselves.

It was a bad move which prompted the Chinese members in the audience to counter, “Let her speak! Let her speak!”  Lora Jo undeterred by the cat calls, finished her remarks in Cantonese. Then translated what she said in English.  It was a rare thing to see someone so incredibly intelligent, articulate and brave.  She now complemented her ability to influence large swaths of people with her newly acquired legal speaking skills.

As it turned out, we won by 3 votes!  Lora Jo had swung enough Chinese members to balance the voices of resistance.  A very close friend who was progressive activist said to Lora Jo, “I came to vote No.  You changed my mind.”  Lora Jo had single handedly changed the outcome in a room filled with hundreds of people.

There was much heated debate as to the right and wrong of our actions.  We entered a den of people who trusted us no more than those who opposed our hiring.  What was indisputable, was that the Chinese members had someone on the inside who was a progressive voice advocating for their issues.  As the first Chinese female to be hired at the Union, Lora Jo understood fully the implications and possibilities.  She often gave advice how to be effective and keep to the principles we had shared.

This event was the impetus to future career moves, moving from one position to another in labor, each one giving a larger platform to help improve the lives of working people. I recognize Lora Jo's demonstration of bravery, the ability to stand up when the odds are against you.  It deeply bore into my psyche.

For some reason, our friendship while it had its public moments, we lived in a private parallel world of deep friendship.  Lora Jo was the first Asian American I could speak all out truth to, absent bullsh*t and ornaments.  Telling truths and secrets we almost did not know ourselves, having masked them to the point of extinction.  She and I use to relished debriefing our  overlapping immigrant stories.  It was our way of healing and recovery.  We got to understand and respect why we became who we were through sharing the struggles of immigrant stories to survive in America.  The struggle to find a meaningful place in the world.  

I came to love and adore Lora Jo more deeply through talking story and how those difficulties affected and shaped our lives.  We shared personal struggles through tears that arrived at triumph.  Her perspective of her personal history taught me how to look at my own.  

To learn we were not alone.

To be reflective and retrospective.

To understand the meaning of life vs just feeling the pain of it.

To use it to help others.

I was fortunate to meet Lora Jo's train of 6 sisters, each one as with their depth.  To know one, you must know them all.

In the 90s, Lora Jo became a sensitive photographer and travelled the world to capture images of nature that told her life story.  When Lora Jo first showed me her manuscript, I relived our personal time together, the sorrows, the drive to make right for what went wrong, to claim a place in society.   I saw images rich in the drama of her life.  Stories I had heard or could comprehend. It was a journey of recovery when Lora Jo published her book, Earth Passages.  

In Lora Jo’s words, “They are images of Mother Nature giving her what she did not receive from her overworked mother — the folds of earth that cradle, the caressing boulder and trees, the sense of belonging, the tender warm embrace of early morning and late afternoon sunlight, the sustenance, serenity, the safety of the womb, the attention of an only child.” Earth Passages, “played a major role in her healing from the traumas and wounds of childhood." 

In Earth Passages, I could see Lora Jo had developed a mature perspective of her life in a way she would teach others.

I regret we lost contact in the last 10 years.  So much more life and stories to have shared. So many more lessons. I regret not being able to tell Lora Jo how much she impacted my life. Sad to say, sometimes it takes a person to pass before you can grasp the full potential of their life.

I am fortunate for the time we did have. Lora Jo left an imprint on me through how she lived her life, left her legacy in a way it affected my own.  

With greatest Love and Honor I say goodbye to you my dearest friend Lora Jo Foo, a Giant in my life.

Pat