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El Tecolote: social and political conditions during its inception--1970

2012-02-16T06:38:30Z

Fflores124: this article surveys the cultural and political panorama in the Mission District of SF when El Tecolote was founded by Juan Gonzales and volunteers

By Francisco FloresLanda and Pilar Mejia

“Viva la Causa!” could be heard from almost every block of the Mission District at the time El Tecolote was founded in August 1970. It was a time of great social and political effervescence throughout the Chicano/Latino movimiento. During 1968 to 1970 , the residents of the Mission District were organizing on a broad front of issues – access to social services, welfare and tenant right, educational access, job and professional opportunities, health care and legal rights (especially against police brutality).

This period also gave birth to a cultural renacimiento and the struggle for our right to our language. The community participated in electoral political action and called for “revolutionary” social change. This author remembers a time when youth would show up to a picket line or a film showing when casually informed of the event on the street.

Today, it is common to attribute the beginning of Mission District activism to the May 1, 1969, Los Siete de la Raza police brutality case, but, even though the Los Siete case was a catalyst that brought a visible presence to the nascent activism, the Mission and the movimiento were already seething with activity.

By 1968, the Civil Rights movement and the Summer Freedom rides, the Black Panther Party, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the counter-culture youth and student movement, and the feminist movement were in full swing. Who can forget the UC Berkeley free Speech Movement? Chicano actions included Reies Lopez Tijerina’s raid on the courthouse in New Mexico, Corky Gonzalez’s Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado, and Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers’ (UFW) organizing drive and grape boycott

All of these movements had direct influence on Mission District activists. Many in the Mission were sympathizers of these movements and had participated directly in them.

On the international front, principal figures included Viet Nam’s Ho Chi Minh who founded the National Liberation Front, Che Guevara whose heroic life ended in Bolivia in 1967, Fidel Castro who continues to lead the revolution in Cuba, and China’s Mao Tse Tung whose little Red Books influenced political thought throughout the world. Especially important in the Mission District was the Sandinistas of Nicaragua who had become heroes to many in this county.

Within this context, our community faced poor government services, high dropout rates, and police brutality. Mission residents responded with a massive social movement. But this movement included various social-political currents. Some clung to a “nationalist” perspective while others pursued “revolutionary” work. A large segment opted to “work within the system,” but there was often spontaneous unified militant political activism that responded to the oppressive conditions in the Mission District between 1968 and 1970.

The “nationalist” groups forming in the Mission included the Brown Berets, and even though the UFW was a labor group, their struggle became a symbol of La Causa and of a nationalist identity for many Chicano/Mexicanos and Latinos. Latino America Unida was another nationalist group formed by youth and young adults who gathered at la Veinte (Mission Street at 20th St.). The “revolutionary” current of Mission District activism expressed itself predominantly in the Committee to Defend Los Siete de la Raza. Many of the founding members of the committee had been members of the Third World Liberation Front during the SF State student strike of 1969 and had made a commitment to go back to the community.

The “revolutionary” current was often antagonistic to activists who opted to work within the system, calling them Tio Tacos (Latino Uncle Toms). Instead, they built alliances with Chinatown’s Red Guards (later I Wor Kun) , the Black Panther Party, the International Hotel struggle, white radical groups like the Revolutionary Union, and independent workers caucuses in many labor unions and workplaces. This current also saw itself in alliance with revolutionary national liberation fronts in countries struggling against US imperialism. The Committee ran the Los Siete defense campaign and operated many serve the people programs like the Centro de Salud Para la Gente, La Raza Legal Defense, the Breakfast Program, La Casa de La Raza (a pinto halfway house, a pinto is a man who has been in prison), and published the newspaper Basta Ya! (Enough!)

Many Mission activists opted to “work within the system.” They felt that this was a more effective way to advance the community struggle for basic rights. Some of these activists had also come from the San Francisco State College strike and were dedicated to “give back to the community.” These activists often worked in social service agencies and older Mexican-American political groups.

The War on Poverty’s Economic Opportunity Commission funded many social welfare agencies. In 1970 these agencies were Horizons Unlimited, Youth for Service, Mission Rebels, Mission Language and Vocational School, Arriba Juntos, and Mission Coalition Organization among others. Mexican–American Political groups that worked within the system included theme Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), the League of United Latin American citizens (LULAC) founded in 1929, and the American GI Forum, a group formed by Mexican-American World War II veterans.

During this time, a polemic raged regarding the best strategy for el movimiento to follow. Was it best to work within the system or advocate for revolutionary change? Both sides attacked each other ideologically but in many instances united and worked on common issues. One of the spontaneous organizations that grew from the conditions Latinos faced was the Centro Social Obrero , a group of Mexicanos in the Laborer’s Union Local 261. Because of the discrimination the Mexicano workers faced in the union, they organized to get equal access to the jobs in the local. This group later received one million dollars to operate the Mission Language and Vocational School.

Another important spontaneous struggle was the race riot that turned into a political struggle at Mission High School in 1969. Although it started as a fight between Latino and African American students, activists helped the students see their common struggles. The students joined forces and presented united demands to the administration for ethnic studies and improve conditions.

Cultural groups in the Mission during this time included Teatro de la Mision, The Alvarado Art Project, and the Galeria de la Raza. There were also many poet and musician activists. The cultural front was very important in the development of activism in the Mission. On one hand, it was a vehicle for young and old to get involved, furthermore, it gave voice to and disseminated the progressive ideas of la causa, el movimiento, and la revolucion.

Within this milieu, El Tecolote responded to a need in the community for non-partisan journalistic movimiento newspaper. El Tecolote filled a void in the information needs of a politicized community. Before El Tecolote, the United Neighborhood Organization had published La Mision which folded. At that time, El Tecolote founder and editor Juan Gonzales was a student at SFSU who, in the spring 1969, did a five part series on the Mission. After La Mision folded, Juan Gonzales realized the need for a bilingual Chicano/La Raza community newspaper and founded El Tecolote. The only other community newspaper was a commercial Spanish language enterprise, La America, which was primarily reprints. The commercial radio and television information available (not political and definitely not partisan of el movimiento) were radio station KOFY and television station Channel 14. These venues were not linked to the political and social needs of the Mission district.

We do not pretend to have provided a complete history of the Mision at the time of the founding of El Tecolote due to limited space we have given only a brief “snapshot” of the context in which El Tecolote was founded.

'''Francisco FloresLanda was working on a teaching credential at SF State and is a history major. He is staff writer and translator for El Tecolote.'''

'''Pilar Mejia was the bilingual parent coordinator for San Francisco Unified School District. She was a staff photographer and writer for El Tecolote. She is now retired.'''

File:El Teco Masthead.jpg

2012-02-16T06:22:07Z

Fflores124: El Tecolote Masthead

El Tecolote Masthead

Ricardo Carrillo; Mission Youth Activist

2011-12-11T05:44:49Z

Fflores124:

''' "I was there..." '''

''Interview of Ricardo Carrillo by Francisco FloresLanda''

[[image:Ricardo carrillo.JPG|260px|left|Ricardo Carrillo]]

''The following interview was incidental to the researching of and of documenting the history of the Mission High School 1969 race riot and student strike. Important lessons can be drawn from the student rebellion against the status quo at Mission High. These important lessons bear exploring and documenting because the history of the Mission District during the late 60s to seventies is a fascinating series of events and actions we wish to pass on to posterity. The Mission District, this small patch of geography was a cauldron of activity—reformist, progressive, revolutionary and Marxist. In passing on Ricardo’s story two lessons that I find particularly useful for the next generations of activists, progressives, revolutionaries, and democrats who fight for an improved future for oppressed communities of all ethnicities, are; one is of how a young person can get trained to be a social justice organizer by mentors. Another is about the resilience of the young, how they manage to rise from humble beginnings, overcome traumatic events and reach a life of either normalcy or of heights of accomplishment. Ricardo and I have many things in common; an immigrant background, having suffered traumatic events and overcoming them. We also shared space in a sociopolitical and cultural sense.

''In our mobilization at Mission High School a lesson I learned how correct we were about our mobilization and the reforms we offered. Another is that we were part of the new and continuing Latino(a)/Chicano(a) social movement within the civil rights and the class struggle nationally and internationally, We were also part of the broad
anti-imperialist movement. Our focus was educational reform, what we called “relevant education.” During this time we learned how interethnic (interracial) and intergenerational support could play a crucial role in the social movement.

''San Francisco’s Latino community has the distinction of not being Mexicano, Mexican American, or Chicano (a) like other communities in the Southwest, in the Mission District the majority of its Latino members happen to descend from countries other than Mexico. This fact has hindered other regions from accepting our “Latino” contributions to the Chicano(a) movimiento. From my vantage point, as my vision grew and developed, we denounced the “narrow nationalism” of the Chicanos and Chicanas. The reason for this was that it leads to conflict with African Americans as well as it being the outlook of chauvinism, superiority and injustice. In addition to class oppression, African Americans are one of the ethnic groups with whom we should strive to unite with to struggle against white supremacy in addition to class oppression. That position of ethnic competition plays into the reactionary’s’ weapon of divide and conquer. After the [[Race Riot Epicenter--Mission High School: 1969|race riot]], we made interethnic unity one of our touchstones.

''We, those who lived through this experience, agree that this story has to be shared. The article on the previous web site led to the activity where Ricardo’s stood up and made his presence count. As I interviewed Ricardo to continue that story I was fascinated by his personal history—his early family history and his story as a Mission District youth activist.

''This story is about Ricardo, not so much about the political motions at the high school campus. But Ricardo’s history and the political movement intersect at many points. The entire story about the struggle in the high school will be forthcoming. While Ricardo’s story is the story of La Raza and the movimiento, simultaneously the movimiento is the story of the many brave youth activists like Ricardo.

''He played a crucial role at a crucial time. When we the organizers were frozen with fear and ineptitude Ricardo literally stood up and showed us the way. We the Latino student organizers at Mission High School in 1969 called for a strike in alliance with the BSU—Black Student Union, in preparation we had distributed flyers calling for the gathering, when we had the students gathered in front of the school clamoring for action, none of the organizers had the experience and courage to tell the world we were beginning a strike at Mission High School. Who dared to get up there? It was Ricardo. He made the call to rally the troops; he made the speech that had to be made. And so, with his timely and crucial intervention the strike started. If he hadn’t done that we would have petered out. We moved on to other facets of striking like meetings with the principal and to presentations at the SF Board of Education and other activities maintaining the student agitation.

''Opponents of our movements consistently claim that outside agitators rile up the students, even though Ricardo was not a student at the high school he was part of the Mission community and had a stake in the reform movement; he had every right to be involved in a movement of Latino youth in a Latino community. [As well as any class conscious persons who supported us, they have the right and the duty. The claim of “outside agitators” was used then and it is used now in other struggles, the conservative reactionary forces of society consistently dredge up this claim to delegitimize supporters and organizers and divide and conquer. This is a lesson to be clear about, the purpose of that claim is simply and always, in my experience, a way to attack the movement, thereby denying the intrinsic reasons for the rebellion and supporting the claims of the colonized mentality.]

'''Note: Brackets [ ] are comments by the author, where parentheses ( ) are inserted to clarify Ricardo’s comments. '''

'''Ricardo say something about your background?'''

I’m a sixty year old licensed clinical psychologist, born in Guadalajara, raised in the Mission District of San Francisco. Right now we are doing community psychology work in east Oakland. [He is active in the violence prevention efforts in that city] And right now I have a small practice down in the Peninsula.

'''You lived in the Mission?'''

I lived in the Mission all my childhood since I was seven through to when I went to college, 1969.

'''Your folks were immigrants, what kind of work did they do?'''

My dad was a miner from Nogales, Sonora . . . three generations of miners . . . (in) the mining industry they didn’t work for big mining companies like Dodge Phelps and those things. Back then they kind of did their own mining business . . . family of laborers, hard working men for the most part, (my) father was the youngest of five kids. My dad and uncle and granddad built the family adobe home down there in Nogales . . . he migrated when he was eighteen . . . [Ricardo’s and my family immigration journey share features like our fathers leaving home in Mexico and coming to el norte and labored on the US railroads, thereby contributing in building the US’ western economy to what it is today]

The work had dried up there so he ended up in El Paso doing construction work . . . that type of thing . . . that’s when he met my mom and then he worked trains. So he was a railroad maintenance guy laying track . . . all that kind of thing and he ended up here in Oakland . . . The maintenance business kind of thing. [This is an example of how the second wave of Mexican immigration built up the Southwest United States, building the railroad and mining industries, as well as the large agricultural enterprises. This is the untaught history of Mexican Americans of the US. US companies first displaced individuals and family miners in Mexico by infiltrating the economy in Northwest Mexico, modernizing and mechanizing it. And afterwards some came to the US to work as cheap labor contributing to the US economy. Furthermore, Mexican Americans are made to feel as foreigners, even second and third generation residents.]

So he ended up in San Francisco, we lived on Twentieth and Bryant. Those really old apartments, ‘u’ shaped places . . . he ended living there. [By the N.W. corner]. That is my earliest memory of being in the city there. And then my dad struggled, he didn’t acclimate too well, he didn’t do the immigrant taqueria thing [or] the gardening thing, he was a construction guy tried to do the steel mills and that kind of thing for a little bit, did Bethlehem Steel, did some bus boy thing at Fisherman’s Wharf. So he said, “You know what? This ain’t me!” So he got into a pretty particular kind of lifestyle, pretty extreme, pretty out there, for even back then, late 50s early 60s. He started selling dope. He got into selling pharmaceutical liquid amphetamine. So . . . he had a script for that and had people coming to the house all the time. My mom didn’t like those people who came. She tolerated the guys that drank and the guys who smoked dope; [father] he was musician, he played music, she [tolerated] musicians, guys who liked music.

So my mother was the one who worked two jobs, different kinds of job, waiting on tables, working in restaurants, that kind of thing. And my dad was a kind of a freelance guy that is how he supported the family. Around that time, late sixties, I was nine years old going to St. Charles Elementary, my brother and I, my sister went there. My mom was pretty adamant . . . she wanted to protect us from these addicts . . . they were pretty psychotic. See there (are) addicts now using methamphetamine and they are pretty out there , think about . . . pure stuff . . . they were we into pretty dangerous things . . . so he got murdered over some drug deal . . . some guys came in the middle of the night October 22nd 1960, ripped him off, brought him into the house, cut him up pretty bad, put the house on fire, my brother and I were in the house when the fire was raging . . . woke up in the middle of the night . . . my dad was screaming, “the house is on fire.” Smoke coming through . . . smoke . . . trying to get to him . . . smoking billowing in . . . breathing it in . . . my dad stopped screaming and I started thinking about, “ I got to get out of here.” That’s what happened to me.

I went to wake up my brother who had already been inhaling the smoke, I woke him up and immediately tried to drag him out trying to go to the back door, and I fell out. The next t thing I remember we were at the hospital, my mother was already in the hospital because she had been pistol whipped a couple of days before by one of these guys who were trying to get dope from my dad, so she was in the hospital. Luckily my sister was not at the house. The baby Rosalinda she would have died because the crib she slept (in) was in my parents’ bedroom, so the survivors were; my brother, myself, and my father didn’t survive he had burned to death. [Here is an important lesson for those who want to survive by dealing dope or don’t see other choices. If you are not at risk of going to prison from the pigs, the dealer is at risk from the drug users or competitors. I understand that lack of opportunity, racism and discrimination, sometimes makes the black market appealing. What is a poor Mexican to do? The system presents demeaning opportunities and it needs a reserve pool of unskilled labor; on the other hand the underworld is an appealing choice. To avoid this, young people need to prepare themselves for living a legitimate adulthood. Drug dealing and other black market activities are responses to the social environment with poor job prospects and inferior education in ghetto communities such as the Mission.]

We had to start all over again; my brother, myself, two sisters, and my mom. We survived that with the help of familia (and) St. Charles’ folks. We survived the homicide with the help of the church, Red Cross and that type of thing . . . my mother didn’t ask for welfare or anything like that she just worked and I remember the way in which we were treated by the department of social services, we were made to feel like there was something wrong with us—dirty Mexicans needing assistance.

'''What year was it?'''

1960. . . . in San Francisco. The nuns were cool, they were white and Filipina, Sisters of the Holy Cross. The rest of the community looked at us with a lot of pity and disgust, “Why did we need this kind of help?” My mom was pretty proud and she just kept working and made sure we went to Catholic School. She didn’t want us in public school. We started off in Marshall and Hawthorne [currently Cesar Chavez] but eventually went to Catholic. She didn’t want us to be gangbanging and all that. You know that crazy stuff. Trying to do something different for us . . . so we stayed . . . we stayed in school . . . I was a school boy . . . after school, I come home make sure the house was clean.. . . trying . . . fix the kids dinner, my mom always worked two jobs. Then got accepted into Sacred Heart School and went through that whole thing and talk about overt racism. There I was the spic and the greaser, I wore nigger knockers and pachuco suits and having fights with the Irish and Italian boys . . . every Friday (I) was involved in some kind of fight.

'''How many Latinos were there?'''

There weren’t too many of us maybe five or six . . . Sacred Heart School, all boys’ school. And the blacks who went there they were the affluent, the Francois’, he was a supervisor [on the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco circa 1964] like Barry Bonds that is the kind of black kids we had [not sure what comparison with Bonds Ricardo is making, I suppose the well-off arrogant kind of person]. So the rest of us came from the Mission. Now it’s different, its boys and girls and lots of Latinos go there back then it wasn’t that much.

It was from a very turbulent time from 1965 to 1969. There was a lot of action going on; there were a lot of things going on. Every community of color was talking about racism and discrimination. Schools and universities, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State was in the middle of the Third World organization [student strike], you know, different ethnic groups organizing.

What saved me, I was part of Horizons Unlimited, [[Managua North: San Francisco's Solidarity Movement|Roberto Vargas]] was counselor there. He lived down the street from where we were living on Twenty-Sixth Street. [Roberto is a well-known cultural activist in the Mission District. He was active in the cultural world and was in leadership of the Nicaraguan solidarity movement in the 1970s.] My brother and this guy named Charlie Gil were kinda hanging out and said, “Hey man, this dude, Hippie Bob, come meet Hippie Bob.” “Who is this guy?” I said. This poet, El Nicoya, this Nicaraguense guy living (with) this white broad. . . . naked poetry down at North Beach. And, you know . . . got me hooked up with Horizons, bunch of kids, like me, kids of color, going to different schools, went to Balboa, went to Mission, went to different high schools, played a little music . . . so got me plugged up . . . hooked up . . . a chance to play a little music with them. It was the first time I was social . . . that [I] had to do anything to do with anybody else that had to do beside with my family. [Here one can see how issues of Adult Child of Alcoholic/Addict (ACA) crop up transgenerationally. Being a child of an addict has the effect of isolating the family and the children in the family, around issues of shame and guilt they crop up emotionally, mentally, and socially. Here is another similarity between Ricardo and myself, where political involvement drew me away from ‘ripping and running’ in the street life, although only temporarily, until much later getting over that totally.]

'''That was after you graduated?'''

I got into Horizons in the last couple of years of high school, it was because I was trying to fit into Sacred Heart, I wasn’t going to fit there, I wasn’t white, I wasn’t Italian, I wasn’t Irish, but you learn how to work around people. Horizons was a really good thing, Judith Dunlap was there, Ed Sandoval was there, Chuy Campusano was there, the artista Roberto Vargas, so it was a really good good group of people and they were into high school dropout prevention. [Also Georgiana Quinones] Made sure we had things to do and out of that group we organized the Brown Berets. So . . . Isidro Macias was a student at Berkeley at that time. Him and Roberto Vargas got together and it resonated with us. You know, we thought it was a good thing . . . get indoctrinated . . . started reading . . . things like Che, like Mao Tse-Tung, Marx and Lenin, we were starting to see the relationship between what’s going on in the United States, Nicaragua, Mexico. Sandino, the struggles of Sandino. Nicaragua starting to heat up, actually Roberto started recruiting to go fight La Revolucion,[this was about ten years later] and that was all that movement, the hippie movement, the Haight-Ashbury thing was going on, free love, all that stuff was going on . . . Free concerts in the park. That’s how I grew up. Because of my involvement with Horizons I got a scholarship, I got in the EOP (Economic Opportunity Program) . . . admitted into UC Santa Cruz, and I was not prepared. I’m over here demonstrating in the streets instead of taking care of my ps & qs. Yea. [During my political involvement my awareness became more class conscious, like Ricardo, I went from cultural nationalism to reading Mao, Che, Lenin, and Marx.]

'''When we were going on strike at Mission, how did you come there, were you with Roberto?'''

Because I was involved in Horizons, if you remember, back then in the Sixties . . . they tried to acclimate the communities of color, [I think ‘pacify’ would better describe the goal of the government] after the Watts (riots), all that stuff, Chicago (riots)[I call them rebellions]. They started . . . federal monies started coming in the community over the summer, called Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC), [the federal government began President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964 simultaneously the FBI had a program called COINTELPRO or Counter Insurgency Program where the popular movement was attacked in a two pronged manner—direct police attacks, and along with buying off the leadership of the communities with subsidies and money—Model Cities Program (MCP) was more in line with COINTELPRO. One of the stated goals of Mission MCP was to build a “middle class” in the ghetto, as some ‘leaders’ went to college bought homes, etcetera] I don’t know how much money came into (the community) but you had to decide where the jobs were going to go. In San Francisco, they did it pretty much according to neighborhood and according to ethnic breakdown, whoever lived in the neighborhoods. The Mission was diverse, so we formed the Mission Area Youth Council, I was the chairman of the Mission Area Youth Council, Sadie Villapando was secretary, she was also part of Horizons, and then every neighborhood had to organize, the African American guys, like in Potrero Hill [was] one group, Bernal Heights was another group, Chicano kind of guys, those guys up on Bernal Heights were radical guys. [Another teachable moment is here, that being the relationship of government money coming into the community after the militant civil rights movement got started, to me this shows the effectiveness of direct radical action for social change, not only money was used to pacify the community but direct FBI and police intervention, false charges were made against people thereby tying up energy and funds in defense campaigns, as well as direct infiltration of civil rights groups, and sometimes direct killing of activists. Today, leaders of the US publicly speak of killing their enemies in other countries when people of color resist US dominations and exploitation so much for the rule of law.]

'''Was that Model Cities? '''

No, that was later on, but I was the youth representative on Model Cities but [that was] . . . because of my involvement [in Neighborhood Youth Corps]. We had Samoans, we had the Native Americans, the Latinos there on Twentieth and Mission [this was the group I had affinity with and belonged to; known as La Veinte], that whole group that was different from the guys on 24th Street; they were achicanados, Pachucos [these youths and young adults were less transculturated than the guys on 24th]. All those guys were there looking for work, “How many jobs you gonna give me?” So we had to decide among us how the jobs were going to be split up, who was going to supervise them, who was going to get hired, all that kind of thing it was a pretty political gig. Again, I was just thrown into it . . . I had a big mouth . . .. I think I was good with people, that’s how I got involved in it . . . I was a young guy, I was chair of the Brown Berets so when we were going out . . . [the] Mission Rebels was doing their thing. RAP was just starting; Jimmy Queen (was) organizing guys there into RAP (Real Alternatives Program) before it finally became what it became. [Jimmy, who had come to the community after the student strike at San Francisco State College was an adult organizer working with the 24th St., 26th St., and the Lucky Alley boys, who organized into the East Mission United Youth Neighborhood Organization (E.M.U.N.Y.O.), RAP was a social service agency formation working with at-risk youth involved with the criminal justice system] There was a lot of movement, when you guys were doing the High School thing I was involved in that way. So Roberto and Isidro had me as a spokesperson for the Brown Berets or the Mission Area Youth Council trying to advocate. I remember you invited me to do something over there [laughs] I remember the police coming, they were going to charge me with inciting people to riot. [The pigs attempted to grab Ricardo for standing up to call for the strike as explained in the introduction.]

'''We had passed out leaflets asking student to congregate in front of the school to begin the strike, then what happened?'''

I came up, you said . . . ok . . . I don’t remember what the topic was but back in those days we were talking about youth empowerment young people having a voice. [We the students had drawn up some reforms as demands we wanted implemented, and we were asking the students to strike in order to implement them]

'''We were organizing for a strike but I was afraid to get up there in front of the crowd at the school entrance and make the call that had to be made, people waited, no one was getting up there to lead, we all became anxious, the time had come, and was passing, suddenly you got up and called for the strike, how was that?'''

It was pretty powerful. The people resonated with it, we were pretty radical . . . powerful . . . it was the times . . .. We were doing these rallies and things in all the parks. Roberto Vargas [Hippie Bob] was reading poetry, Victor Hernandez Cruz was reading poetry, Alejandro Murguia was reading, we had [[The Tropics of Pocho-Ché|Pocho Ché]] [Magazine]. [Mentoring and training the young to be able to get out there and lead has its payout] So there was a lot of talk about empowerment about having a voice and standing up against police discrimination [police brutality] and abuse and racist policies and that kind of stuff. That was before the gang banging days. I think I was giving the same kind of talk because the students were standing up for themselves so my talk was just about supporting them and encouraging them . . . to stand up for themselves to look at injustice and that type of thing. [This was forty two years ago for Ricardo to recall exact words would be extremely difficult] And then I remember the police wanted to come in, the riot squad had organized and the crowd circled around me and hid me from the cops so I could get out. I remember I went wow! Man, [Ricardo cracks up laughing here] I was gone. That would have messed me up . . . ‘cause Sacred Heart. I was low key at school but I was just beginning to become a student body officer. That type of thing. They didn’t know what I was doing in the Mission. I kept those worlds apart, and then my mother que pedo that would have been something else too.

'''Did she disapprove of your involvement?'''

She approved in raising our voice and standing up for things but not if we’re getting in trouble. [Right after Ricardo’s brief words he was followed by an African American young man, I think he was either from the Third World Liberation Front at State or he was a Black Panther who had come to support us and teach us that the enemy was the system not other minorities. When he got up there on the pedestal the pigs grabbed him, arrested him and took him away. He did had a chance to say a few things motivating the students]

'''What else happened that day?'''

I don’t remember what happened day, if I went to Horizons, but if I was hanging out with Roberto probably ended up going back to Horizons, I remember the people there at the school from seeing them in the community at different events and they went to the school there.

'''Do you remember any adults that were there?'''

No, I remember you inviting me [by inviting him I was organizing support and reaching out, by this time I had become a full-time self-ordained organizer in the ''movimiento,'' for years after even today I look for opportunities to resist ‘the man’]. And seeing some of the different community people I would see at events, students whom I saw around all the time, because I didn’t go to high school there.
I don’t remember anybody with me specifically, I remember the people I was doing things with . . . [it] was Ron Ayala, Sadie Villapando, Ray Romero, these were people who were either at the tail end of the high school or were just out of high school. We were at that time doing youth kind of things The Mission Musician’s Workshop so we offered music classes to people. People would bring their nephews, kids and we would kind of work with them. So we did a lot of the concerts at St. Peter’s [Hall], at Precita Park, at Mission Dolores [Park], we brought Mongo Santamaria, we brought Eddie Palmieri, we were doing all that, but they all ended up being political rallies, at some point or other Roberto would say always say something, and we were part of Pocho Che, were political poetas, and so they were always talking up something, it was an active time. If I would have been with anybody it would have been that circle. The group from Horizons’ probably participated in those things ‘cause the group (meaning some of the youth participants at Horizons) were going to Mission High.

'''Roberto put me on the caseload as a youth organizer, I said.'''

That was a wild time, thinking back on that, we don’t have that right now, I see the community really needing youth to be involved, the way we were involved, there is too many killings, too many distorted gang banging kinds of ideas and ideologies, people standing up for things but in the wrong way. I don’t think it was ever our intent to be violent when we organized back in the sixties. People had a lot of rhetoric, the Black Panther Party had, “By All Means Necessary”, the Wa-Ching had martial arts training, we in the Brown Berets had a little martial arts training but we were not going to kill anybody, when Nicaragua came along and people were being recruited to fight in La Revolucion then the pedo got serio (serious) that was there, that wasn’t in the hood. [The anti-Somoza revolution in Nicaragua occurred ten years later, that is when the FSLN through Roberto recrutited people] People in the Mission District were not talking about violent struggle. [The uprising to overthrow the Somoza Dictatorship in Nicaragua began in 1979; our high school reform movement was in 1969.]

'''So you curtailed your activism after High School? What happened later in the Mission?'''

I got admitted into Santa Cruz in ’69. I left for school. But the Mission, they always had different elements, some very conservative people, there was Model Cities [yea, there was money] Soto . . . Lee Soto and Arriba Juntos, all the different community people they had different ideas. Some people were about violent struggle, other people were radical advocating for that, there were differences of opinion. I left went to Santa Cruz, not really knowing what I wanted to do, struggling with what . . . needed to do. I began getting disconnected from what went on the Mission. Shortly thereafter that is when I got strung out [addicted to heroin] myself and ended up doing time. It took me ten years to get back to school finish up my bachelors because I got diverted, you know, instead of going (and) finishing my education or instead of going into the military because Vietnam was hot. They say, “How did you do? What did you do?” I say, “Oh I went to the department of corrections.” [Laughs]. I learned that I didn’t belong.

'''Do you want to say anything more?'''

I hope that this historical piece helps young people, that they think about the need for involvement in what is going on in their community because a lot of the things that are wrong today, they are being committed by a lot of young people, I think that we as elders have to provide some leadership like what we were doing back in those days organizing, but we were being mentored by cats who pretty much had pretty good minds, pretty good hearts, and I think that is what young people are missing right now, leadership, guidance, direction and a voice having a voice so they can learn to make their community safe. It’s not safe right now.

'''Conclusion '''

Ricardo Carrillo came to us at Mission High School us at a critical time. It is important to see how his background and his level of training paid off at a critical time. I don’t mean to minimize his courage and valor and say that it was only his training that allowed him to jump up on the platform. His training and his mentoring as a leader, organizer and public speaking, shows how a young person can develop those skills. Personally, my leadership and speaking skills hadn’t developed by this time so Ricardo was a ray of sunshine for our movement at the school. Today as always, it is important to train young people in developing these skills. Conversely, if you are a youth you can seek mentoring opportunities trying on different roles in hospitals, in education facilities, in clubs, drama groups, and other venues. Remember, we become what we think about, what we pursue. We could join groups at school or in the community.
In other areas of Ricardo’s life we learn how we can come back from trauma like his father’s murder and having fallen to addiction. Ricardo can testify that it is possible to get “strung out” and jump back to become productive constructive people. As I pointed out as the interview progressed there are a lot of lessons we can learn in this story and more importantly pass on. We, all of us, with Ricardo, are intertwined with history. Lucky for us, the Mission was a cauldron of activism struggling to overcome racial, class, and gender oppression and exploitation. We are also lucky we lived and saw firsthand what happened. Our fight was a local expression of a worldwide mobilization in the 60s and 70s. Locally, we wanted educational reform and learned valuable lessons of how to change education society has to change. Another valuable lesson is about how adults, the community, and interethnic unity are crucial. The struggle continues.

'''“Youth makes the revolution.”'''

[[Race Riot Epicenter--Mission High School: 1969|Prev. document]] [[Mission Memoir of Los Siete de la Raza and More|Next document]]

[[category:Mission]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:1970s]] [[category:Latino]] [[category:schools]]

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2011-12-10T21:08:00Z

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2011-12-10T21:00:04Z

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Ricardo Carrillo; Mission Youth Activist

2011-12-10T20:44:23Z

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''' "I was there..." '''

''Interview of Ricardo Carrillo by Francisco FloresLanda''

[[image:Ricardo carrillo.JPG|260px|left|Ricardo Carrillo]]

''The following interview was incidental to the researching of and of documenting the history of the Mission High School 1969 race riot and student strike. Important lessons can be drawn from the student rebellion against the status quo at Mission High. These important lessons bear exploring and documenting because the history of the Mission District during the late 60s to seventies is a fascinating series of events and actions we wish to pass on to posterity. The Mission District, this small patch of geography was a cauldron of activity—reformist, progressive’ revolutionary and Marxist. In passing on Ricardo’s story two lessons that I find particularly useful for the next generations of activists, progressives, revolutionaries, and democrats who fight for an improved future for oppressed communities of all ethnicities, are; one is of how a young person can get trained to be a social justice organizer by mentors. Another is about the resilience of the young, how they manage to rise from humble beginnings, overcome traumatic events and reach a life of either normalcy or of heights of accomplishment. Ricardo and I have many things in common; an immigrant background, having suffered traumatic events and overcoming them. We also shared space in a sociopolitical and cultural sense.

''In our mobilization at Mission High School a lesson I learned how correct we were about our mobilization and the reforms we offered. Another is that we were part of the new and continuing Latino(a) (Chicano(a)) social movement within the civil and class struggle nationally and internationally, We were also part of the broad anti-imperialist movement. Our focus was educational reform, what we called “relevant education.” During this time we learned how interethnic (interracial) and intergenerational support could play a crucial role in the social movement.

''San Francisco’s Latino community has the distinction of not being Mexicano, Mexican American, or Chicano (a) like other communities in the Southwest, in the Mission District the majority of its Latino members happen to descend from countries other than Mexico. This fact has hindered other regions from accepting our “Latino” contributions to the Chicano(a) movimiento. From my vantage point, as my vision grew and developed, we denounced the “narrow nationalism” of the Chicanos and Chicanas. The reason for this was that it leads to conflict with African Americans as well as it being the outlook of chauvinism, superiority and injustice. In addition to class oppression, African Americans are one of the ethnic groups with whom we should strive to unite with to struggle against white supremacy in addition to class oppression. That position of ethnic competition plays into the reactionary’s’ weapon of divide and conquer. After the [[race riot|Race Riot Epicenter--Mission High School: 1969]], we made interethnic unity one of our touchstones.

''We, those who lived through this experience, agree that this story has to be shared. The article on the previous web site led to the activity where Ricardo’s stood up and made his presence count. As I interviewed Ricardo to continue that story I was fascinated by his personal history—his early family history and his story as a Mission District youth activist.

''This story is about Ricardo, not so much about the political motions at the high school campus. But Ricardo’s history and the political movement intersect at many points. The entire story about the struggle in the high school will be forthcoming. While Ricardo’s story is the story of La Raza and the movimiento, simultaneously the movimiento is the story of the many brave youth activists like Ricardo.

''He played a crucial role at a crucial time. When we the organizers were frozen with fear and ineptitude Ricardo literally stood up and showed us the way. We the Latino student organizers at Mission High School in 1969 called for a strike in alliance with the BSU—Black Student Union, in preparation we had distributed flyers calling for the gathering, when we had the students gathered in front of the school clamoring for action, none of the organizers had the experience and courage to tell the world we were beginning a strike at Mission High School. Who dared to get up there? It was Ricardo. He made the call to rally the troops; he made the speech that had to be made. And so, with his timely and crucial intervention the strike started. If he hadn’t done that we would have petered out. We moved on to other facets of striking like meetings with the principal and to presentations at the SF Board of Education and other activities maintaining the student agitation.

''Opponents of our movements consistently claim that outside agitators rile up the students, even though Ricardo was not a student at the high school he was part of the Mission community and had a stake in the reform movement; he had every right to be involved in a movement of Latino youth in a Latino community. [As well as any class conscious persons who supported us, they have the right and the duty. The claim of “outside agitators” was used then and it is used now in other struggles, the conservative reactionary forces of society consistently dredge up this claim to delegitimize supporters and organizers and divide and conquer. This is a lesson to be clear about, the purpose of that claim is simply and always, in my experience, a way to attack the movement, thereby denying the intrinsic reasons for the rebellion and supporting the claims of the colonized mentality.]

'''Note: Brackets [ ] are comments by the author, where parentheses ( ) are inserted to clarify Ricardo’s comments. '''

'''Ricardo say something about your background?'''

I’m a sixty year old licensed clinical psychologist, born in Guadalajara, raised in the Mission District of San Francisco. Right now we are doing community psychology work in east Oakland. [He is active in the violence prevention efforts in that city] And right now I have a small practice down in the Peninsula.

'''You lived in the Mission?'''

I lived in the Mission all my childhood since I was seven through to when I went to college, 1969.

'''Your folks were immigrants, what kind of work did they do?'''

My dad was a miner from Nogales, Sonora . . . three generations of miners . . . (in) the mining industry they didn’t work for big mining companies like Dodge Phelps and those things. Back then they kind of did their own mining business . . . family of laborers, hard working men for the most part, (my) father was the youngest of five kids. My dad and uncle and granddad built the family adobe home down there in Nogales . . . he migrated when he was eighteen . . . [Ricardo’s and my family immigration journey share features like our fathers leaving home in Mexico and coming to el norte and labored on the US railroads, thereby contributing in building the US’ western economy to what it is today]

The work had dried up there so he ended up in El Paso doing construction work . . . that type of thing . . . that’s when he met my mom and then he worked trains. So he was a railroad maintenance guy laying track . . . all that kind of thing and he ended up here in Oakland . . . The maintenance business kind of thing. [This is an example of how the second wave of Mexican immigration built up the Southwest United States, building the railroad and mining industries, as well as the large agricultural enterprises. This is the untaught history of Mexican Americans of the US. US companies first displaced individuals and family miners in Mexico by infiltrating the economy in Northwest Mexico, modernizing and mechanizing it. And afterwards some came to the US to work as cheap labor contributing to the US economy. Furthermore, Mexican Americans are made to feel as foreigners, even second and third generation residents.]

So he ended up in San Francisco, we lived on Twentieth and Bryant. Those really old apartments, ‘u’ shaped places . . . he ended living there. [By the N.W. corner]. That is my earliest memory of being in the city there. And then my dad struggled, he didn’t acclimate too well, he didn’t do the immigrant taqueria thing [or] the gardening thing, he was a construction guy tried to do the steel mills and that kind of thing for a little bit, did Bethlehem Steel, did some bus boy thing at Fisherman’s Wharf. So he said, “You know what? This ain’t me!” So he got into a pretty particular kind of lifestyle, pretty extreme, pretty out there, for even back then, late 50s early 60s. He started selling dope. He got into selling pharmaceutical liquid amphetamine. So . . . he had a script for that and had people coming to the house all the time. My mom didn’t like those people who came. She tolerated the guys that drank and the guys who smoked dope; [father] he was musician, he played music, she [tolerated] musicians, guys who liked music.

So my mother was the one who worked two jobs, different kinds of job, waiting on tables, working in restaurants, that kind of thing. And my dad was a kind of a freelance guy that is how he supported the family. Around that time, late sixties, I was nine years old going to St. Charles Elementary, my brother and I, my sister went there. My mom was pretty adamant . . . she wanted to protect us from these addicts . . . they were pretty psychotic. See there (are) addicts now using methamphetamine and they are pretty out there , think about . . . pure stuff . . . they were we into pretty dangerous things . . . so he got murdered over some drug deal . . . some guys came in the middle of the night October 22nd 1960, ripped him off, brought him into the house, cut him up pretty bad, put the house on fire, my brother and I were in the house when the fire was raging . . . woke up in the middle of the night . . . my dad was screaming, “the house is on fire.” Smoke coming through . . . smoke . . . trying to get to him . . . smoking billowing in . . . breathing it in . . . my dad stopped screaming and I started thinking about, “ I got to get out of here.” That’s what happened to me.

I went to wake up my brother who had already been inhaling the smoke, I woke him up and immediately tried to drag him out trying to go to the back door, and I fell out. The next t thing I remember we were at the hospital, my mother was already in the hospital because she had been pistol whipped a couple of days before by one of these guys who were trying to get dope from my dad, so she was in the hospital. Luckily my sister was not at the house. The baby Rosalinda she would have died because the crib she slept (in) was in my parents’ bedroom, so the survivors were; my brother, myself, and my father didn’t survive he had burned to death. [Here is an important lesson for those who want to survive by dealing dope or don’t see other choices. If you are not at risk of going to prison from the pigs, the dealer is at risk from the drug users or competitors. I understand that lack of opportunity, racism and discrimination, sometimes makes the black market appealing. What is a poor Mexican to do? The system presents demeaning opportunities and it needs a reserve pool of unskilled labor; on the other hand the underworld is an appealing choice. To avoid this, young people need to prepare themselves for living a legitimate adulthood. Drug dealing and other black market activities are responses to the social environment with poor job prospects and inferior education in ghetto communities such as the Mission.]

We had to start all over again; my brother, myself, two sisters, and my mom. We survived that with the help of familia (and) St. Charles’ folks. We survived the homicide with the help of the church, Red Cross and that type of thing . . . my mother didn’t ask for welfare or anything like that she just worked and I remember the way in which we were treated by the department of social services, we were made to feel like there was something wrong with us—dirty Mexicans needing assistance.

'''What year was it?'''

1960. . . . in San Francisco. The nuns were cool, they were white and Filipina, Sisters of the Holy Cross. The rest of the community looked at us with a lot of pity and disgust, “Why did we need this kind of help?” My mom was pretty proud and she just kept working and made sure we went to Catholic School. She didn’t want us in public school. We started off in Marshall and Hawthorne [currently Cesar Chavez] but eventually went to Catholic. She didn’t want us to be gangbanging and all that. You know that crazy stuff. Trying to do something different for us . . . so we stayed . . . we stayed in school . . . I was a school boy . . . after school, I come home make sure the house was clean.. . . trying . . . fix the kids dinner, my mom always worked two jobs. Then got accepted into Sacred Heart School and went through that whole thing and talk about overt racism. There I was the spic and the greaser, I wore nigger knockers and pachuco suits and having fights with the Irish and Italian boys . . . every Friday (I) was involved in some kind of fight.

'''How many Latinos were there?'''

There weren’t too many of us maybe five or six . . . Sacred Heart School, all boys’ school. And the blacks who went there they were the affluent, the Francois’, he was a supervisor [on the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco circa 1964] like Barry Bonds that is the kind of black kids we had [not sure what comparison with Bonds Ricardo is making, I suppose the well-off arrogant kind of person]. So the rest of us came from the Mission. Now it’s different, its boys and girls and lots of Latinos go there back then it wasn’t that much.

It was from a very turbulent time from 1965 to 1969. There was a lot of action going on; there were a lot of things going on. Every community of color was talking about racism and discrimination. Schools and universities, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State was in the middle of the Third World organization [student strike], you know, different ethnic groups organizing.

What saved me, I was part of Horizons Unlimited, [[Managua North: San Francisco's Solidarity Movement|Roberto Vargas]] was counselor there. He lived down the street from where we were living on Twenty-Sixth Street. [Roberto is a well-known cultural activist in the Mission District. He was active in the cultural world and was in leadership of the Nicaraguan solidarity movement in the 1970s.] My brother and this guy named Charlie Gil were kinda hanging out and said, “Hey man, this dude, Hippie Bob, come meet Hippie Bob.” “Who is this guy?” I said. This poet, El Nicoya, this Nicaraguense guy living (with) this white broad. . . . naked poetry down at North Beach. And, you know . . . got me hooked up with Horizons, bunch of kids, like me, kids of color, going to different schools, went to Balboa, went to Mission, went to different high schools, played a little music . . . so got me plugged up . . . hooked up . . . a chance to play a little music with them. It was the first time I was social . . . that [I] had to do anything to do with anybody else that had to do beside with my family. [Here one can see how issues of Adult Child of Alcoholic/Addict (ACA) crop up transgenerationally. Being a child of an addict has the effect of isolating the family and the children in the family, around issues of shame and guilt they crop up emotionally, mentally, and socially. Here is another similarity between Ricardo and myself, where political involvement drew me away from ‘ripping and running’ in the street life, although only temporarily, until much later getting over that totally.]

'''That was after you graduated?'''

I got into Horizons in the last couple of years of high school, it was because I was trying to fit into Sacred Heart, I wasn’t going to fit there, I wasn’t white, I wasn’t Italian, I wasn’t Irish, but you learn how to work around people. Horizons was a really good thing, Judith Dunlap was there, Ed Sandoval was there, Chuy Campusano was there, the artista Roberto Vargas, so it was a really good good group of people and they were into high school dropout prevention. [Also Georgiana Quinones] Made sure we had things to do and out of that group we organized the Brown Berets. So . . . Isidro Macias was a student at Berkeley at that time. Him and Roberto Vargas got together and it resonated with us. You know, we thought it was a good thing . . . get indoctrinated . . . started reading . . . things like Che, like Mao Tse-Tung, Marx and Lenin, we were starting to see the relationship between what’s going on in the United States, Nicaragua, Mexico. Sandino, the struggles of Sandino. Nicaragua starting to heat up, actually Roberto started recruiting to go fight La Revolucion,[this was about ten years later] and that was all that movement, the hippie movement, the Haight-Ashbury thing was going on, free love, all that stuff was going on . . . Free concerts in the park. That’s how I grew up. Because of my involvement with Horizons I got a scholarship, I got in the EOP (Economic Opportunity Program) . . . admitted into UC Santa Cruz, and I was not prepared. I’m over here demonstrating in the streets instead of taking care of my ps & qs. Yea. [During my political involvement my awareness became more class conscious, like Ricardo, I went from cultural nationalism to reading Mao, Che, Lenin, and Marx.]

'''When we were going on strike at Mission, how did you come there, were you with Roberto?'''

Because I was involved in Horizons, if you remember, back then in the Sixties . . . they tried to acclimate the communities of color, [I think ‘pacify’ would better describe the goal of the government] after the Watts (riots), all that stuff, Chicago (riots)[I call them rebellions]. They started . . . federal monies started coming in the community over the summer, called Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC), [the federal government began President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964 simultaneously the FBI had a program called COINTELPRO or Counter Insurgency Program where the popular movement was attacked in a two pronged manner—direct police attacks, and along with buying off the leadership of the communities with subsidies and money—Model Cities Program (MCP) was more in line with COINTELPRO. One of the stated goals of Mission MCP was to build a “middle class” in the ghetto, as some ‘leaders’ went to college bought homes, etcetera] I don’t know how much money came into (the community) but you had to decide where the jobs were going to go. In San Francisco, they did it pretty much according to neighborhood and according to ethnic breakdown, whoever lived in the neighborhoods. The Mission was diverse, so we formed the Mission Area Youth Council, I was the chairman of the Mission Area Youth Council, Sadie Villapando was secretary, she was also part of Horizons, and then every neighborhood had to organize, the African American guys, like in Potrero Hill [was] one group, Bernal Heights was another group, Chicano kind of guys, those guys up on Bernal Heights were radical guys. [Another teachable moment is here, that being the relationship of government money coming into the community after the militant civil rights movement got started, to me this shows the effectiveness of direct radical action for social change, not only money was used to pacify the community but direct FBI and police intervention, false charges were made against people thereby tying up energy and funds in defense campaigns, as well as direct infiltration of civil rights groups, and sometimes direct killing of activists. Today, leaders of the US publicly speak of killing their enemies in other countries when people of color resist US dominations and exploitation so much for the rule of law.]

'''Was that Model Cities? '''

No, that was later on, but I was the youth representative on Model Cities but [that was] . . . because of my involvement [in Neighborhood Youth Corps]. We had Samoans, we had the Native Americans, the Latinos there on Twentieth and Mission [this was the group I had affinity with and belonged to; known as La Veinte], that whole group that was different from the guys on 24th Street; they were achicanados, Pachucos [these youths and young adults were less transculturated than the guys on 24th]. All those guys were there looking for work, “How many jobs you gonna give me?” So we had to decide among us how the jobs were going to be split up, who was going to supervise them, who was going to get hired, all that kind of thing it was a pretty political gig. Again, I was just thrown into it . . . I had a big mouth . . .. I think I was good with people, that’s how I got involved in it . . . I was a young guy, I was chair of the Brown Berets so when we were going out . . . [the] Mission Rebels was doing their thing. RAP was just starting; Jimmy Queen (was) organizing guys there into RAP (Real Alternatives Program) before it finally became what it became. [Jimmy, who had come to the community after the student strike at San Francisco State College was an adult organizer working with the 24th St., 26th St., and the Lucky Alley boys, who organized into the East Mission United Youth Neighborhood Organization (E.M.U.N.Y.O.), RAP was a social service agency formation working with at-risk youth involved with the criminal justice system] There was a lot of movement, when you guys were doing the High School thing I was involved in that way. So Roberto and Isidro had me as a spokesperson for the Brown Berets or the Mission Area Youth Council trying to advocate. I remember you invited me to do something over there [laughs] I remember the police coming, they were going to charge me with inciting people to riot. [The pigs attempted to grab Ricardo for standing up to call for the strike as explained in the introduction.]

'''We had passed out leaflets asking student to congregate in front of the school to begin the strike, then what happened?'''

I came up, you said . . . ok . . . I don’t remember what the topic was but back in those days we were talking about youth empowerment young people having a voice. [We the students had drawn up some reforms as demands we wanted implemented, and we were asking the students to strike in order to implement them]

'''We were organizing for a strike but I was afraid to get up there in front of the crowd at the school entrance and make the call that had to be made, people waited, no one was getting up there to lead, we all became anxious, the time had come, and was passing, suddenly you got up and called for the strike, how was that?'''

It was pretty powerful. The people resonated with it, we were pretty radical . . . powerful . . . it was the times . . .. We were doing these rallies and things in all the parks. Roberto Vargas [Hippie Bob] was reading poetry, Victor Hernandez Cruz was reading poetry, Alejandro Murguia was reading, we had [[The Tropics of Pocho-Ché|Pocho Ché]] [Magazine]. [Mentoring and training the young to be able to get out there and lead has its payout] So there was a lot of talk about empowerment about having a voice and standing up against police discrimination [police brutality] and abuse and racist policies and that kind of stuff. That was before the gang banging days. I think I was giving the same kind of talk because the students were standing up for themselves so my talk was just about supporting them and encouraging them . . . to stand up for themselves to look at injustice and that type of thing. [This was forty two years ago for Ricardo to recall exact words would be extremely difficult] And then I remember the police wanted to come in, the riot squad had organized and the crowd circled around me and hid me from the cops so I could get out. I remember I went wow! Man, [Ricardo cracks up laughing here] I was gone. That would have messed me up . . . ‘cause Sacred Heart. I was low key at school but I was just beginning to become a student body officer. That type of thing. They didn’t know what I was doing in the Mission. I kept those worlds apart, and then my mother que pedo that would have been something else too.

'''Did she disapprove of your involvement?'''

She approved in raising our voice and standing up for things but not if we’re getting in trouble. [Right after Ricardo’s brief words he was followed by an African American young man, I think he was either from the Third World Liberation Front at State or he was a Black Panther who had come to support us and teach us that the enemy was the system not other minorities. When he got up there on the pedestal the pigs grabbed him, arrested him and took him away. He did had a chance to say a few things motivating the students]

'''What else happened that day?'''

I don’t remember what happened day, if I went to Horizons, but if I was hanging out with Roberto probably ended up going back to Horizons, I remember the people there at the school from seeing them in the community at different events and they went to the school there.

'''Do you remember any adults that were there?'''

No, I remember you inviting me [by inviting him I was organizing support and reaching out, by this time I had become a full-time self-ordained organizer in the ''movimiento,'' for years after even today I look for opportunities to resist ‘the man’]. And seeing some of the different community people I would see at events, students whom I saw around all the time, because I didn’t go to high school there.
I don’t remember anybody with me specifically, I remember the people I was doing things with . . . [it] was Ron Ayala, Sadie Villapando, Ray Romero, these were people who were either at the tail end of the high school or were just out of high school. We were at that time doing youth kind of things The Mission Musician’s Workshop so we offered music classes to people. People would bring their nephews, kids and we would kind of work with them. So we did a lot of the concerts at St. Peter’s [Hall], at Precita Park, at Mission Dolores [Park], we brought Mongo Santamaria, we brought Eddie Palmieri, we were doing all that, but they all ended up being political rallies, at some point or other Roberto would say always say something, and we were part of Pocho Che, were political poetas, and so they were always talking up something, it was an active time. If I would have been with anybody it would have been that circle. The group from Horizons’ probably participated in those things ‘cause the group (meaning some of the youth participants at Horizons) were going to Mission High.

'''Roberto put me on the caseload as a youth organizer, I said.'''

That was a wild time, thinking back on that, we don’t have that right now, I see the community really needing youth to be involved, the way we were involved, there is too many killings, too many distorted gang banging kinds of ideas and ideologies, people standing up for things but in the wrong way. I don’t think it was ever our intent to be violent when we organized back in the sixties. People had a lot of rhetoric, the Black Panther Party had, “By All Means Necessary”, the Wa-Ching had martial arts training, we in the Brown Berets had a little martial arts training but we were not going to kill anybody, when Nicaragua came along and people were being recruited to fight in La Revolucion then the pedo got serio (serious) that was there, that wasn’t in the hood. [The anti-Somoza revolution in Nicaragua occurred ten years later, that is when the FSLN through Roberto recrutited people] People in the Mission District were not talking about violent struggle. [The uprising to overthrow the Somoza Dictatorship in Nicaragua began in 1979; our high school reform movement was in 1969.]

'''So you curtailed your activism after High School? What happened later in the Mission?'''

I got admitted into Santa Cruz in ’69. I left for school. But the Mission, they always had different elements, some very conservative people, there was Model Cities [yea, there was money] Soto . . . Lee Soto and Arriba Juntos, all the different community people they had different ideas. Some people were about violent struggle, other people were radical advocating for that, there were differences of opinion. I left went to Santa Cruz, not really knowing what I wanted to do, struggling with what . . . needed to do. I began getting disconnected from what went on the Mission. Shortly thereafter that is when I got strung out [addicted to heroin] myself and ended up doing time. It took me ten years to get back to school finish up my bachelors because I got diverted, you know, instead of going (and) finishing my education or instead of going into the military because Vietnam was hot. They say, “How did you do? What did you do?” I say, “Oh I went to the department of corrections.” [Laughs]. I learned that I didn’t belong.

'''Do you want to say anything more?'''

I hope that this historical piece helps young people, that they think about the need for involvement in what is going on in their community because a lot of the things that are wrong today, they are being committed by a lot of young people, I think that we as elders have to provide some leadership like what we were doing back in those days organizing, but we were being mentored by cats who pretty much had pretty good minds, pretty good hearts, and I think that is what young people are missing right now, leadership, guidance, direction and a voice having a voice so they can learn to make their community safe. It’s not safe right now.

'''Conclusion '''

Ricardo Carrillo came to us at Mission High School us at a critical time. It is important to see how his background and his level of training paid off at a critical time. I don’t mean to minimize his courage and valor and say that it was only his training that allowed him to jump up on the platform. His training and his mentoring as a leader, organizer and public speaking, shows how a young person can develop those skills. Personally, my leadership and speaking skills hadn’t developed by this time so Ricardo was a ray of sunshine for our movement at the school. Today as always, it is important to train young people in developing these skills. Conversely, if you are a youth you can seek mentoring opportunities trying on different roles in hospitals, in education facilities, in clubs, drama groups, and other venues. Remember, we become what we think about, what we pursue. We could join groups at school or in the community.
In other areas of Ricardo’s life we learn how we can come back from trauma like his father’s murder and having fallen to addiction. Ricardo can testify that it is possible to get “strung out” and jump back to become productive constructive people. As I pointed out as the interview progressed there are a lot of lessons we can learn in this story and more importantly pass on. We, all of us, with Ricardo, are intertwined with history. Lucky for us, the Mission was a cauldron of activism struggling to overcome racial, class, and gender oppression and exploitation. We are also lucky we lived and saw firsthand what happened. Our fight was a local expression of a worldwide mobilization in the 60s and 70s. Locally, we wanted educational reform and learned valuable lessons of how to change education society has to change. Another valuable lesson is about how adults, the community, and interethnic unity are crucial. The struggle continues.

'''“Youth makes the revolution.”'''

[[category:Mission]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:1970s]] [[category:Latino]] [[category:schools]]

Ricardo Carrillo; Mission Youth Activist

2011-12-10T20:42:22Z

Fflores124: Created page with '''' "I was there..." ''' ''Interview of Ricardo Carrillo by Francisco FloresLanda'' [[image:Ricar...'

''' "I was there..." '''

''Interview of Ricardo Carrillo by Francisco FloresLanda''

[[image:Ricardo carrillo.JPG|260px|left|Ricardo Carrillo]]

''The following interview was incidental to the researching of and of documenting the history of the Mission High School 1969 race riot and student strike. Important lessons can be drawn from the student rebellion against the status quo at Mission High. These important lessons bear exploring and documenting because the history of the Mission District during the late 60s to seventies is a fascinating series of events and actions we wish to pass on to posterity. The Mission District, this small patch of geography was a cauldron of activity—reformist, progressive’ revolutionary and Marxist. In passing on Ricardo’s story two lessons that I find particularly useful for the next generations of activists, progressives, revolutionaries, and democrats who fight for an improved future for oppressed communities of all ethnicities, are; one is of how a young person can get trained to be a social justice organizer by mentors. Another is about the resilience of the young, how they manage to rise from humble beginnings, overcome traumatic events and reach a life of either normalcy or of heights of accomplishment. Ricardo and I have many things in common; an immigrant background, having suffered traumatic events and overcoming them. We also shared space in a sociopolitical and cultural sense.

''In our mobilization at Mission High School a lesson I learned how correct we were about our mobilization and the reforms we offered. Another is that we were part of the new and continuing Latino(a) (Chicano(a)) social movement within the civil and class struggle nationally and internationally, We were also part of the broad anti-imperialist movement. Our focus was educational reform, what we called “relevant education.” During this time we learned how interethnic (interracial) and intergenerational support could play a crucial role in the social movement.

''San Francisco’s Latino community has the distinction of not being Mexicano, Mexican American, or Chicano (a) like other communities in the Southwest, in the Mission District the majority of its Latino members happen to descend from countries other than Mexico. This fact has hindered other regions from accepting our “Latino” contributions to the Chicano(a) movimiento. From my vantage point, as my vision grew and developed, we denounced the “narrow nationalism” of the Chicanos and Chicanas. The reason for this was that it leads to conflict with African Americans as well as it being the outlook of chauvinism, superiority and injustice. In addition to class oppression, African Americans are one of the ethnic groups with whom we should strive to unite with to struggle against white supremacy in addition to class oppression. That position of ethnic competition plays into the reactionary’s’ weapon of divide and conquer. After the [[race riot|Race_Riot_Epicenter--Mission_High_School:_1969]], we made interethnic unity one of our touchstones.

''We, those who lived through this experience, agree that this story has to be shared. The article on the previous web site led to the activity where Ricardo’s stood up and made his presence count. As I interviewed Ricardo to continue that story I was fascinated by his personal history—his early family history and his story as a Mission District youth activist.

''This story is about Ricardo, not so much about the political motions at the high school campus. But Ricardo’s history and the political movement intersect at many points. The entire story about the struggle in the high school will be forthcoming. While Ricardo’s story is the story of La Raza and the movimiento, simultaneously the movimiento is the story of the many brave youth activists like Ricardo.

''He played a crucial role at a crucial time. When we the organizers were frozen with fear and ineptitude Ricardo literally stood up and showed us the way. We the Latino student organizers at Mission High School in 1969 called for a strike in alliance with the BSU—Black Student Union, in preparation we had distributed flyers calling for the gathering, when we had the students gathered in front of the school clamoring for action, none of the organizers had the experience and courage to tell the world we were beginning a strike at Mission High School. Who dared to get up there? It was Ricardo. He made the call to rally the troops; he made the speech that had to be made. And so, with his timely and crucial intervention the strike started. If he hadn’t done that we would have petered out. We moved on to other facets of striking like meetings with the principal and to presentations at the SF Board of Education and other activities maintaining the student agitation.

''Opponents of our movements consistently claim that outside agitators rile up the students, even though Ricardo was not a student at the high school he was part of the Mission community and had a stake in the reform movement; he had every right to be involved in a movement of Latino youth in a Latino community. [As well as any class conscious persons who supported us, they have the right and the duty. The claim of “outside agitators” was used then and it is used now in other struggles, the conservative reactionary forces of society consistently dredge up this claim to delegitimize supporters and organizers and divide and conquer. This is a lesson to be clear about, the purpose of that claim is simply and always, in my experience, a way to attack the movement, thereby denying the intrinsic reasons for the rebellion and supporting the claims of the colonized mentality.]

'''Note: Brackets [ ] are comments by the author, where parentheses ( ) are inserted to clarify Ricardo’s comments. '''

'''Ricardo say something about your background?'''

I’m a sixty year old licensed clinical psychologist, born in Guadalajara, raised in the Mission District of San Francisco. Right now we are doing community psychology work in east Oakland. [He is active in the violence prevention efforts in that city] And right now I have a small practice down in the Peninsula.

'''You lived in the Mission?'''

I lived in the Mission all my childhood since I was seven through to when I went to college, 1969.

'''Your folks were immigrants, what kind of work did they do?'''

My dad was a miner from Nogales, Sonora . . . three generations of miners . . . (in) the mining industry they didn’t work for big mining companies like Dodge Phelps and those things. Back then they kind of did their own mining business . . . family of laborers, hard working men for the most part, (my) father was the youngest of five kids. My dad and uncle and granddad built the family adobe home down there in Nogales . . . he migrated when he was eighteen . . . [Ricardo’s and my family immigration journey share features like our fathers leaving home in Mexico and coming to el norte and labored on the US railroads, thereby contributing in building the US’ western economy to what it is today]

The work had dried up there so he ended up in El Paso doing construction work . . . that type of thing . . . that’s when he met my mom and then he worked trains. So he was a railroad maintenance guy laying track . . . all that kind of thing and he ended up here in Oakland . . . The maintenance business kind of thing. [This is an example of how the second wave of Mexican immigration built up the Southwest United States, building the railroad and mining industries, as well as the large agricultural enterprises. This is the untaught history of Mexican Americans of the US. US companies first displaced individuals and family miners in Mexico by infiltrating the economy in Northwest Mexico, modernizing and mechanizing it. And afterwards some came to the US to work as cheap labor contributing to the US economy. Furthermore, Mexican Americans are made to feel as foreigners, even second and third generation residents.]

So he ended up in San Francisco, we lived on Twentieth and Bryant. Those really old apartments, ‘u’ shaped places . . . he ended living there. [By the N.W. corner]. That is my earliest memory of being in the city there. And then my dad struggled, he didn’t acclimate too well, he didn’t do the immigrant taqueria thing [or] the gardening thing, he was a construction guy tried to do the steel mills and that kind of thing for a little bit, did Bethlehem Steel, did some bus boy thing at Fisherman’s Wharf. So he said, “You know what? This ain’t me!” So he got into a pretty particular kind of lifestyle, pretty extreme, pretty out there, for even back then, late 50s early 60s. He started selling dope. He got into selling pharmaceutical liquid amphetamine. So . . . he had a script for that and had people coming to the house all the time. My mom didn’t like those people who came. She tolerated the guys that drank and the guys who smoked dope; [father] he was musician, he played music, she [tolerated] musicians, guys who liked music.

So my mother was the one who worked two jobs, different kinds of job, waiting on tables, working in restaurants, that kind of thing. And my dad was a kind of a freelance guy that is how he supported the family. Around that time, late sixties, I was nine years old going to St. Charles Elementary, my brother and I, my sister went there. My mom was pretty adamant . . . she wanted to protect us from these addicts . . . they were pretty psychotic. See there (are) addicts now using methamphetamine and they are pretty out there , think about . . . pure stuff . . . they were we into pretty dangerous things . . . so he got murdered over some drug deal . . . some guys came in the middle of the night October 22nd 1960, ripped him off, brought him into the house, cut him up pretty bad, put the house on fire, my brother and I were in the house when the fire was raging . . . woke up in the middle of the night . . . my dad was screaming, “the house is on fire.” Smoke coming through . . . smoke . . . trying to get to him . . . smoking billowing in . . . breathing it in . . . my dad stopped screaming and I started thinking about, “ I got to get out of here.” That’s what happened to me.

I went to wake up my brother who had already been inhaling the smoke, I woke him up and immediately tried to drag him out trying to go to the back door, and I fell out. The next t thing I remember we were at the hospital, my mother was already in the hospital because she had been pistol whipped a couple of days before by one of these guys who were trying to get dope from my dad, so she was in the hospital. Luckily my sister was not at the house. The baby Rosalinda she would have died because the crib she slept (in) was in my parents’ bedroom, so the survivors were; my brother, myself, and my father didn’t survive he had burned to death. [Here is an important lesson for those who want to survive by dealing dope or don’t see other choices. If you are not at risk of going to prison from the pigs, the dealer is at risk from the drug users or competitors. I understand that lack of opportunity, racism and discrimination, sometimes makes the black market appealing. What is a poor Mexican to do? The system presents demeaning opportunities and it needs a reserve pool of unskilled labor; on the other hand the underworld is an appealing choice. To avoid this, young people need to prepare themselves for living a legitimate adulthood. Drug dealing and other black market activities are responses to the social environment with poor job prospects and inferior education in ghetto communities such as the Mission.]

We had to start all over again; my brother, myself, two sisters, and my mom. We survived that with the help of familia (and) St. Charles’ folks. We survived the homicide with the help of the church, Red Cross and that type of thing . . . my mother didn’t ask for welfare or anything like that she just worked and I remember the way in which we were treated by the department of social services, we were made to feel like there was something wrong with us—dirty Mexicans needing assistance.

'''What year was it?'''

1960. . . . in San Francisco. The nuns were cool, they were white and Filipina, Sisters of the Holy Cross. The rest of the community looked at us with a lot of pity and disgust, “Why did we need this kind of help?” My mom was pretty proud and she just kept working and made sure we went to Catholic School. She didn’t want us in public school. We started off in Marshall and Hawthorne [currently Cesar Chavez] but eventually went to Catholic. She didn’t want us to be gangbanging and all that. You know that crazy stuff. Trying to do something different for us . . . so we stayed . . . we stayed in school . . . I was a school boy . . . after school, I come home make sure the house was clean.. . . trying . . . fix the kids dinner, my mom always worked two jobs. Then got accepted into Sacred Heart School and went through that whole thing and talk about overt racism. There I was the spic and the greaser, I wore nigger knockers and pachuco suits and having fights with the Irish and Italian boys . . . every Friday (I) was involved in some kind of fight.

'''How many Latinos were there?'''

There weren’t too many of us maybe five or six . . . Sacred Heart School, all boys’ school. And the blacks who went there they were the affluent, the Francois’, he was a supervisor [on the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco circa 1964] like Barry Bonds that is the kind of black kids we had [not sure what comparison with Bonds Ricardo is making, I suppose the well-off arrogant kind of person]. So the rest of us came from the Mission. Now it’s different, its boys and girls and lots of Latinos go there back then it wasn’t that much.

It was from a very turbulent time from 1965 to 1969. There was a lot of action going on; there were a lot of things going on. Every community of color was talking about racism and discrimination. Schools and universities, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State was in the middle of the Third World organization [student strike], you know, different ethnic groups organizing.

What saved me, I was part of Horizons Unlimited, [[Managua North: San Francisco's Solidarity Movement|Roberto Vargas]] was counselor there. He lived down the street from where we were living on Twenty-Sixth Street. [Roberto is a well-known cultural activist in the Mission District. He was active in the cultural world and was in leadership of the Nicaraguan solidarity movement in the 1970s.] My brother and this guy named Charlie Gil were kinda hanging out and said, “Hey man, this dude, Hippie Bob, come meet Hippie Bob.” “Who is this guy?” I said. This poet, El Nicoya, this Nicaraguense guy living (with) this white broad. . . . naked poetry down at North Beach. And, you know . . . got me hooked up with Horizons, bunch of kids, like me, kids of color, going to different schools, went to Balboa, went to Mission, went to different high schools, played a little music . . . so got me plugged up . . . hooked up . . . a chance to play a little music with them. It was the first time I was social . . . that [I] had to do anything to do with anybody else that had to do beside with my family. [Here one can see how issues of Adult Child of Alcoholic/Addict (ACA) crop up transgenerationally. Being a child of an addict has the effect of isolating the family and the children in the family, around issues of shame and guilt they crop up emotionally, mentally, and socially. Here is another similarity between Ricardo and myself, where political involvement drew me away from ‘ripping and running’ in the street life, although only temporarily, until much later getting over that totally.]

'''That was after you graduated?'''

I got into Horizons in the last couple of years of high school, it was because I was trying to fit into Sacred Heart, I wasn’t going to fit there, I wasn’t white, I wasn’t Italian, I wasn’t Irish, but you learn how to work around people. Horizons was a really good thing, Judith Dunlap was there, Ed Sandoval was there, Chuy Campusano was there, the artista Roberto Vargas, so it was a really good good group of people and they were into high school dropout prevention. [Also Georgiana Quinones] Made sure we had things to do and out of that group we organized the Brown Berets. So . . . Isidro Macias was a student at Berkeley at that time. Him and Roberto Vargas got together and it resonated with us. You know, we thought it was a good thing . . . get indoctrinated . . . started reading . . . things like Che, like Mao Tse-Tung, Marx and Lenin, we were starting to see the relationship between what’s going on in the United States, Nicaragua, Mexico. Sandino, the struggles of Sandino. Nicaragua starting to heat up, actually Roberto started recruiting to go fight La Revolucion,[this was about ten years later] and that was all that movement, the hippie movement, the Haight-Ashbury thing was going on, free love, all that stuff was going on . . . Free concerts in the park. That’s how I grew up. Because of my involvement with Horizons I got a scholarship, I got in the EOP (Economic Opportunity Program) . . . admitted into UC Santa Cruz, and I was not prepared. I’m over here demonstrating in the streets instead of taking care of my ps & qs. Yea. [During my political involvement my awareness became more class conscious, like Ricardo, I went from cultural nationalism to reading Mao, Che, Lenin, and Marx.]

'''When we were going on strike at Mission, how did you come there, were you with Roberto?'''

Because I was involved in Horizons, if you remember, back then in the Sixties . . . they tried to acclimate the communities of color, [I think ‘pacify’ would better describe the goal of the government] after the Watts (riots), all that stuff, Chicago (riots)[I call them rebellions]. They started . . . federal monies started coming in the community over the summer, called Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC), [the federal government began President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964 simultaneously the FBI had a program called COINTELPRO or Counter Insurgency Program where the popular movement was attacked in a two pronged manner—direct police attacks, and along with buying off the leadership of the communities with subsidies and money—Model Cities Program (MCP) was more in line with COINTELPRO. One of the stated goals of Mission MCP was to build a “middle class” in the ghetto, as some ‘leaders’ went to college bought homes, etcetera] I don’t know how much money came into (the community) but you had to decide where the jobs were going to go. In San Francisco, they did it pretty much according to neighborhood and according to ethnic breakdown, whoever lived in the neighborhoods. The Mission was diverse, so we formed the Mission Area Youth Council, I was the chairman of the Mission Area Youth Council, Sadie Villapando was secretary, she was also part of Horizons, and then every neighborhood had to organize, the African American guys, like in Potrero Hill [was] one group, Bernal Heights was another group, Chicano kind of guys, those guys up on Bernal Heights were radical guys. [Another teachable moment is here, that being the relationship of government money coming into the community after the militant civil rights movement got started, to me this shows the effectiveness of direct radical action for social change, not only money was used to pacify the community but direct FBI and police intervention, false charges were made against people thereby tying up energy and funds in defense campaigns, as well as direct infiltration of civil rights groups, and sometimes direct killing of activists. Today, leaders of the US publicly speak of killing their enemies in other countries when people of color resist US dominations and exploitation so much for the rule of law.]

'''Was that Model Cities? '''

No, that was later on, but I was the youth representative on Model Cities but [that was] . . . because of my involvement [in Neighborhood Youth Corps]. We had Samoans, we had the Native Americans, the Latinos there on Twentieth and Mission [this was the group I had affinity with and belonged to; known as La Veinte], that whole group that was different from the guys on 24th Street; they were achicanados, Pachucos [these youths and young adults were less transculturated than the guys on 24th]. All those guys were there looking for work, “How many jobs you gonna give me?” So we had to decide among us how the jobs were going to be split up, who was going to supervise them, who was going to get hired, all that kind of thing it was a pretty political gig. Again, I was just thrown into it . . . I had a big mouth . . .. I think I was good with people, that’s how I got involved in it . . . I was a young guy, I was chair of the Brown Berets so when we were going out . . . [the] Mission Rebels was doing their thing. RAP was just starting; Jimmy Queen (was) organizing guys there into RAP (Real Alternatives Program) before it finally became what it became. [Jimmy, who had come to the community after the student strike at San Francisco State College was an adult organizer working with the 24th St., 26th St., and the Lucky Alley boys, who organized into the East Mission United Youth Neighborhood Organization (E.M.U.N.Y.O.), RAP was a social service agency formation working with at-risk youth involved with the criminal justice system] There was a lot of movement, when you guys were doing the High School thing I was involved in that way. So Roberto and Isidro had me as a spokesperson for the Brown Berets or the Mission Area Youth Council trying to advocate. I remember you invited me to do something over there [laughs] I remember the police coming, they were going to charge me with inciting people to riot. [The pigs attempted to grab Ricardo for standing up to call for the strike as explained in the introduction.]

'''We had passed out leaflets asking student to congregate in front of the school to begin the strike, then what happened?'''

I came up, you said . . . ok . . . I don’t remember what the topic was but back in those days we were talking about youth empowerment young people having a voice. [We the students had drawn up some reforms as demands we wanted implemented, and we were asking the students to strike in order to implement them]

'''We were organizing for a strike but I was afraid to get up there in front of the crowd at the school entrance and make the call that had to be made, people waited, no one was getting up there to lead, we all became anxious, the time had come, and was passing, suddenly you got up and called for the strike, how was that?'''

It was pretty powerful. The people resonated with it, we were pretty radical . . . powerful . . . it was the times . . .. We were doing these rallies and things in all the parks. Roberto Vargas [Hippie Bob] was reading poetry, Victor Hernandez Cruz was reading poetry, Alejandro Murguia was reading, we had [[The Tropics of Pocho-Ché|Pocho Ché]] [Magazine]. [Mentoring and training the young to be able to get out there and lead has its payout] So there was a lot of talk about empowerment about having a voice and standing up against police discrimination [police brutality] and abuse and racist policies and that kind of stuff. That was before the gang banging days. I think I was giving the same kind of talk because the students were standing up for themselves so my talk was just about supporting them and encouraging them . . . to stand up for themselves to look at injustice and that type of thing. [This was forty two years ago for Ricardo to recall exact words would be extremely difficult] And then I remember the police wanted to come in, the riot squad had organized and the crowd circled around me and hid me from the cops so I could get out. I remember I went wow! Man, [Ricardo cracks up laughing here] I was gone. That would have messed me up . . . ‘cause Sacred Heart. I was low key at school but I was just beginning to become a student body officer. That type of thing. They didn’t know what I was doing in the Mission. I kept those worlds apart, and then my mother que pedo that would have been something else too.

'''Did she disapprove of your involvement?'''

She approved in raising our voice and standing up for things but not if we’re getting in trouble. [Right after Ricardo’s brief words he was followed by an African American young man, I think he was either from the Third World Liberation Front at State or he was a Black Panther who had come to support us and teach us that the enemy was the system not other minorities. When he got up there on the pedestal the pigs grabbed him, arrested him and took him away. He did had a chance to say a few things motivating the students]

'''What else happened that day?'''

I don’t remember what happened day, if I went to Horizons, but if I was hanging out with Roberto probably ended up going back to Horizons, I remember the people there at the school from seeing them in the community at different events and they went to the school there.

'''Do you remember any adults that were there?'''

No, I remember you inviting me [by inviting him I was organizing support and reaching out, by this time I had become a full-time self-ordained organizer in the ''movimiento,'' for years after even today I look for opportunities to resist ‘the man’]. And seeing some of the different community people I would see at events, students whom I saw around all the time, because I didn’t go to high school there.
I don’t remember anybody with me specifically, I remember the people I was doing things with . . . [it] was Ron Ayala, Sadie Villapando, Ray Romero, these were people who were either at the tail end of the high school or were just out of high school. We were at that time doing youth kind of things The Mission Musician’s Workshop so we offered music classes to people. People would bring their nephews, kids and we would kind of work with them. So we did a lot of the concerts at St. Peter’s [Hall], at Precita Park, at Mission Dolores [Park], we brought Mongo Santamaria, we brought Eddie Palmieri, we were doing all that, but they all ended up being political rallies, at some point or other Roberto would say always say something, and we were part of Pocho Che, were political poetas, and so they were always talking up something, it was an active time. If I would have been with anybody it would have been that circle. The group from Horizons’ probably participated in those things ‘cause the group (meaning some of the youth participants at Horizons) were going to Mission High.

'''Roberto put me on the caseload as a youth organizer, I said.'''

That was a wild time, thinking back on that, we don’t have that right now, I see the community really needing youth to be involved, the way we were involved, there is too many killings, too many distorted gang banging kinds of ideas and ideologies, people standing up for things but in the wrong way. I don’t think it was ever our intent to be violent when we organized back in the sixties. People had a lot of rhetoric, the Black Panther Party had, “By All Means Necessary”, the Wa-Ching had martial arts training, we in the Brown Berets had a little martial arts training but we were not going to kill anybody, when Nicaragua came along and people were being recruited to fight in La Revolucion then the pedo got serio (serious) that was there, that wasn’t in the hood. [The anti-Somoza revolution in Nicaragua occurred ten years later, that is when the FSLN through Roberto recrutited people] People in the Mission District were not talking about violent struggle. [The uprising to overthrow the Somoza Dictatorship in Nicaragua began in 1979; our high school reform movement was in 1969.]

'''So you curtailed your activism after High School? What happened later in the Mission?'''

I got admitted into Santa Cruz in ’69. I left for school. But the Mission, they always had different elements, some very conservative people, there was Model Cities [yea, there was money] Soto . . . Lee Soto and Arriba Juntos, all the different community people they had different ideas. Some people were about violent struggle, other people were radical advocating for that, there were differences of opinion. I left went to Santa Cruz, not really knowing what I wanted to do, struggling with what . . . needed to do. I began getting disconnected from what went on the Mission. Shortly thereafter that is when I got strung out [addicted to heroin] myself and ended up doing time. It took me ten years to get back to school finish up my bachelors because I got diverted, you know, instead of going (and) finishing my education or instead of going into the military because Vietnam was hot. They say, “How did you do? What did you do?” I say, “Oh I went to the department of corrections.” [Laughs]. I learned that I didn’t belong.

'''Do you want to say anything more?'''

I hope that this historical piece helps young people, that they think about the need for involvement in what is going on in their community because a lot of the things that are wrong today, they are being committed by a lot of young people, I think that we as elders have to provide some leadership like what we were doing back in those days organizing, but we were being mentored by cats who pretty much had pretty good minds, pretty good hearts, and I think that is what young people are missing right now, leadership, guidance, direction and a voice having a voice so they can learn to make their community safe. It’s not safe right now.

'''Conclusion '''

Ricardo Carrillo came to us at Mission High School us at a critical time. It is important to see how his background and his level of training paid off at a critical time. I don’t mean to minimize his courage and valor and say that it was only his training that allowed him to jump up on the platform. His training and his mentoring as a leader, organizer and public speaking, shows how a young person can develop those skills. Personally, my leadership and speaking skills hadn’t developed by this time so Ricardo was a ray of sunshine for our movement at the school. Today as always, it is important to train young people in developing these skills. Conversely, if you are a youth you can seek mentoring opportunities trying on different roles in hospitals, in education facilities, in clubs, drama groups, and other venues. Remember, we become what we think about, what we pursue. We could join groups at school or in the community.
In other areas of Ricardo’s life we learn how we can come back from trauma like his father’s murder and having fallen to addiction. Ricardo can testify that it is possible to get “strung out” and jump back to become productive constructive people. As I pointed out as the interview progressed there are a lot of lessons we can learn in this story and more importantly pass on. We, all of us, with Ricardo, are intertwined with history. Lucky for us, the Mission was a cauldron of activism struggling to overcome racial, class, and gender oppression and exploitation. We are also lucky we lived and saw firsthand what happened. Our fight was a local expression of a worldwide mobilization in the 60s and 70s. Locally, we wanted educational reform and learned valuable lessons of how to change education society has to change. Another valuable lesson is about how adults, the community, and interethnic unity are crucial. The struggle continues.

'''“Youth makes the revolution.”'''

[[category:Mission]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:1970s]] [[category:Latino]] [[category:schools]]

File:Ricardo carrillo.JPG

2011-12-10T20:37:28Z

Fflores124:

Los Siete Defense Committee

2011-12-08T18:16:48Z

Fflores124: francisco flores shares his memoirs of his participation in the committee to defend los siete de la raza

Mission District Adopted Son Remembers Los Siete de la Raza and Other Stuff by Francisco FloresLanda 2010
It was Thursday, May 1, 1969, the extraordinary day I saw helicopters flying over the Mission. I was not at Mission High, I was across the street at Dolores Park with friends; cutting class getting high across. We saw helicopters hovering over the Mission, our beloved Mission District. After school I went to 20th and Mission and saw the hood was crawling with squad cars, sirens blaring, and still, SFPD Gestapo helicopters hovering all around. Word was something crucial had happened on Alvarado Street in Noe Valley .
The afternoon Examiner declared that "Latino hoods” had attacked and killed an officer. Finally, we learned that the young men were part of “La Veinte.” A large group (not a ‘gang’ in today’s vernacular) of Spanish speaking young male immigrants who either linguistically or culturally had not integrated into the ‘melting pot’ of the Mission. I belonged to this group because I had come to the US at age ten, and in 1969 I was seventeen years old and, significantly, lived around the block on Capp. I spoke Spanish and culturally identified with Latinos and Mexicanismo, instilled in me early in primary school in Mexicali.
Out of the brothers that soon became known as Los Siete de la Raza, I was more familiar with José Rios AKA “El Popo” but I knew most of Los Siete since they came by “La Veinte” to hang out and socialize, play pool, or get into other stuff. We were teens, young adults, and some ‘viejos’ who hung out at the ‘billar’ on Mission Street between 20th and 21st Streets, and at Hunt’s Donuts, across the street, the coffee shop was famous for being “open 25 hours a day.” In contradistinction to other young Latino groups of the Mission La Veinte had not lost their Latino culture and language, like the 26th Street Boys, Lucky Alley, the 22nd Street Boys, Landers Street, 24th Street, 22nd and Florida, 30th and Mission, Precita Park, among others.
Brodnick and McGoran were plainclothes narcotics officers who provoked a brutal confrontation with Tony and Mario Martinez, Gary “el Pinky”Lescallet, “Bebe” Melendez, Jose “El Popo” Rios, Nelson Rodriguez, and Gio Lopez, the result was that someone killed Brodnick. I think a couple of Los Siete weren’t there. But one gotta give it to the guys, they stood up and they didn’t let the pigs push them around. These two pigs were well known among Mission youth for their brutality and for planting dope on their victims. During the trial, Los Siete lead lawyer Charles Garry, who also defended Black Panther Huey Newton, suggested the only other person on the scene with a gun besides Brodnick was his partner, McGoran, so he must have been the person who killed the pig. Garry portrayed McGoran as a violent person and he lost all credibility. To back this claim up, his ex-wife testified that he had kicked her out of a moving car on the freeway. Garry managed to persuade the jury that Los Siete were not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Unlike most of the Mission who identified with and supported the cause to “Free Los Siete” I had a direct connection to Los Siete. Today, when I hook up with OGs (Old Guys or Old Gangstas) who were as close to the case as me the memory and influence of Los Siete and the Committee are remembered, felt, and hashed out. This case had a tremendous influence on individuals and the community, and has been immortalized in the various ways, a movie, a book by Marjorie Heinz, a play by Richard Talavera, and chapters in several books on Bay Area history. Los Siete continues to be remembered and motivates others who become familiar with the case. Men and women who were tots at the time speak of Los Siete in their families and social circles.
After the May 1st incident, The Committee to Free Los Siete de la Raza organized itself and published the “Basta Ya” newspaper with the message: Free Los Siete. Other articles related to the oppression and exploitation of the community and the Third World, it also emphasized national liberation struggles all over the world. Not only did it have a national but an internationalist perspective as well. The first issue was printed on the back of the Black Panther Party newspaper, “The Black Panther.” Los Siete folded it back to show only the “Basta Ya!” side. One morning at Mission High School one of my staunch student allies, Diana Monge, felt that because the Panther paper was attached to a brown people’s paper it would not do well. Then as now there was much competition between Blacks and Browns.
I didn’t actively participate in the campaign to Free Los Siete outside of speaking out in their support. I would explain to people that they were victims of police brutality and completely innocent. Some of us knew that our Los Siete were not perfect and, but we always made them out to be organizers and heroes, we never mentioned that when the pigs approached them on Alvarado Street as they were transporting an alleged stolen TV into the Rios home. In our zeal, we made Los Siete into heroes and messiahs of the Brown Movement, even though we knew and ignored the facts but it was the spin we put on the story. We had arrived at group-think mentality a la Brave New World . But there was a large grain of truth in our portrayal. Tony, Mario, and Popo were active in the movimiento, recruiting brown youths into college and organizing in the movimiento. In the ghetto the political and personal overlapped as the need for survival leads the lumpen-proletariat to participate in the black market.
For a few months I was on the fringes of the Committee. Since I was in the same cultural, social, political, as well as geographical circles as Los Siete, I couldn’t help but being around the group. I use the term “Los Siete” to refer to the committee. The term wasused to refer to the “brothers” and sometimes to the support group.
The Los Siete committee adopted a serve the people style of work. We were applying a method of service the Black Panthers had adapted to their own community work. So, our Committee, adopting the serve the masses style, began a breakfast program, a community paper, also called, the “Basta Ya!” and a restaurant, also called the Basta Ya!, where the community could get a coke, a hamburger, and fries for a dollar! The Basta Ya! Restaurant is where my link with the Committee strengthened. I attended functions at the restaurant, with a wide range of people, community and movement. It was there that I first attended a poetry reading, and what a poetry reading it was! Many of the people I had recently met performed revolutionary poetry, including Roberto Vargas and I was really impressed by Tony Miranda, it was quite an inspirational experience for a kid in the US only six years.
At the Basta Ya! on Valencia between Duboce and 14th Streets, next to the Levi Strauss factory, was an intersection of the movement: Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, democrats, Communists, Panthers, Red Guards, Puerto Rican nationalists, revolutionaries from across the country, Latin America and the world. All trekked through the Basta Ya! progressive and revolutionary whites came. It was not a reformist hang out. During those times the spirit of the times was organizing and mobilizing, every sector of society was on the move, prisoners, soldiers and sailors, welfare moms, workers, Blacks, Latinos, Indians, and throughout the world; Asia, Africa and Latin-America waged national liberation wars. Boy! those were the days. There was a sense of effervescence in the Mission I would walk down the street announce marches or pickets and people would show up on the day, time and place. One time when Art Agnos was running for Mayor, he came by to feel us out and seek support, but since no one bothered with him, he just walked back out the door. People were about the truth, radical change not electioneering lies.
Two social-political currents clashed during the founding of the defense committee. One was the reformist current represented by the work-within-the-system side and the other was the overthrow the system current (the revolutionary side). To my understanding the reformists wanted to wage a strictly legal defense while the revolutionary wing pushed for a political defense and a legal team be engaged). The anti-system side won the struggle took control and a political defense ensued tactics consisted of politically mobilizing the community exposing the racist nature of the “system” and police brutality, which the system caused. The idea was to consistently expose the class nature of society and it’s oppression of “the people,” domestically and internationally. That was called “raising the level of consciousness” and to show that that was the reason for the Brothers being attacked and being in jail. On the reformers side there was a desire to avoid controversy because it might upset the funding source; aka the man.
The brown movement as a whole ranged from brown nationalist groups like the Brown Berets, whom we referred to as narrow nationalists because of their La Raza first and only. We self-defined ourselves as revolutionary nationalists, eventually we studied Marxism and began moving along its proscriptions. At that time, that was our analysis instead of narrow nationalism, it was that a multinational working class would join forces during the struggle and lead to the revolutionary triumph. The Committee was Latinos only, no whites could join the committee but could participate in the serve the people programs. The reformists’ strgegy was to integrate a la Martin Luther King—Civil Rights style. The broader multinational international movement ranged from anti-imperialist “revolution now!” people to peace activists (remember this is 1969 and the Viet Nam War was at its height), counterculture types: hippies and the gamut of the white counterculture youth and back-to-nature people. It definitely didn’t include government program people, Mission Coalition and Model Cities types (even though model cities did not exist yet) according to us these were Tio Tacos (Uncle Toms), they were in with the enemy, enemy agents in our midst, whose purpose was to pacify the spontaneous revolutionary movement of the masses and part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program). They existed to get the crumbs off the master’s table. No names here; these people and orientation are still out there.
At one point, an emergency meeting was called by the Los Siete Defense Committee at the restaurant. A group of interns from San Francisco General Hospital wanted Los Siete’s help because they were going to shut down General Hospital during a strike. They wanted a place for patients to receive free medical care during the strike; this shows how conscientious the strikers were. They proposed a partnership with our group to open a free community clinic where patient care could continue for the Mission. Doctors who volunteered included Ed Bernstein, Corey Weinstein, Jerry Frank, Dick Fine, and Richard Basford, who later performed the autopsy on Vicente Fernandez and diagnosed that his death was due to a beating, and not from an overdose of reds as the police claimed. Lab workers, Stan Rose I remember, and pharmacists were also on board for the project, Larry Kline and Stephanie. Los Siete agreed and chose to help get it together. Initially I worked with other Los Siete members, Nilda Alverio, Tom Oneida, and later on Tony Herrera, and many community volunteers to get the Los Siete Clinic up and running. By opening the clinic, the committee expanded its serve the people network. And, I was in the mix of the Los Siete Defense Committee now.
As time went on, as a clinic volunteer, while simultaneously being actively a clinic organizer, I was informed by Nilda that people in the Los 7 committee felt I should be attending the general committee meetings of Los Siete. At first I didn’t go but word came back that I needed to attend those meetings. I had the idea that those meetings were for the important heavies. So I went to a Saturday general meeting at La Casa de La Raza. This house was a mini-mansion a doctor, unconnected to the clinic, had donated for the use of the Los Siete organization on Guerrero Street between 21rst and 22nd Streets. It served as our headquarters and as a halfway house for the pintos, ex-cons, who were allowed out of prison under the supervision of Mike Molano. Work with pintos was viewed as another area of work in the serve the people projects. It was also used as a work space for our newspaper, as housing for some of the members, and as a crash pad and sleeping quarters for out of town visitors, among other things.
I arrived at the meeting in awe (well not quite at awe). I was attending this organizational meeting it meant I was going to be a member of the hallowed group (in my mind). Los Siete partially carried the mantle of the 1968 San Francisco State Strikers led by the Third World Liberation Front. It was kind of an elite revolutionary group, which ranked up (or out there) there with the revolutionary people-of-color groups—the Panthers, the Red Guards, the Young Lords, I Wor Kuen, KDP a revolutionary Filipino group, among others in the Bay Area. Circa 1969 marked the year when the student movement moved from the campus to the community across the nation. The movement had analyzed and concluded that revolutionary change wasn’t going to be achieved on campus but in the community. Later on, after the movement had matured, the emphasis was to change into organizing the working class in work places (circa 1974). In other words, another re-evaluation concluded that revolutionary change would not occur in the community but at the point where the capitalists and the workers face each other daily, on the job. Essentially, the thinking was that the fight was a class fight between the capitalists and the workers and that Latino liberation depended on the unity and triumph of the multinational working class. For the United States is made up of many ethnicities or nationionalities. Nowadays, we Marxists are like the Christians awaiting the day of judgment when Jesus will return likewise for Marxists who await the day of liberation.
When the community came together to defend seven of its members in St. Peter’s Hall in 1969, persons who were fresh from the strike at SF State College confronted reformers who viewed that integration was the way to liberation. These people had confronted the San Francisco Police Department Tactical Squad, Mayor Joseph Alioto, SF State College President S. I. Hayakawa, Governor Ronald Reagan, and the FBI and all its secret agents. They weren’t going to allow the reformists lead the defense of Los Siete without exposing the contradictions of the system and its culture i.e., class exploitation, colonialism, racism, sexism and so on. So most of the reformers retired from direct defense work even though most continued to support Los 7. In the Mission, the Mission Coalition Organization (MCO) was the vehicle of reformism, Model Cities money was the bribe by the Federal Government, after the money arrived the MCO became irrelevant by factional divide, to put it differently, because fighting for control of the money (“da monies”) in Mission Model Cities Corporation became primary. Pricisely the intent of COINTELPRO.
As I looked around the room I saw Roger Alvarado, President of the Third World Liberation Front, brother and sister Gary and Linda Perez, Donna James, Nilda, Chente, Alberto Martinet, Oscar Rios, Reynaldo Aparicio, Yolanda, Jimmy, Greg, Veda, Paula, Judy Drummond, Ralph, Tony Herrera, Estela Richardson, Marty Montemayor, Tom Oneida, surely I missed someone. of all the participants some had retired by then and others arrived later. A prominent feature of the men was that they wore Army fatigues and boots; of course long hair goes without saying. Ralph told me that the dress wasn’t just for show, but because of its sturdiness, that when on the picket line and under attack by the SFPD Tactical Squad one should have sturdy protective clothing. It was also what Che Guevara, one of our revolutionary heroes, wore and for sure the clothing was an identity thing and a fashion statement. I was more into the red bandana and the sarape. Surely some egos were pleased by the show. For sure the women had the look of the counterculture fashion of the day.
I was one of the youngest so I felt like a kid among giants who had taken on the power of the state. I realized that I knew all of them, not intimately, but I was familiar with all. I was like at “I know them all” and the fantasy burst. This relatively small group had an influence far larger than their numbers. This small number could mobilize hundreds of people in a moment’s notice. We had a large influence not only in the Mission, but throughout the Bay Area. For example, when Vicente Gutierrez was murdered by the pigs we leafleted San Francisco so thoroughly that the Chief of Police went on Spanish language stations saying that the leaflets were lying about the actions of the police and were not to be believed. Whoever it was, they were just troublemakers outside agitators, typical comment of the authorities when faced with political resistance. The same charge was used in Egypt and Lybia in January 2011. It wasn’t just a large network, but the consciousness Los Siete created in our community was large. The committee continuously brought up the fact that we live in an exploitative capitalist system that enjoys tremendous wealth due to the imperialist exploitation of people of color in colonized countries throughout the world. These were precisely the politics that had been struggled over with the program people, the reformists and the narrow nationalists. In their zeal to integrate they were unwilling to bring up these kinds of issues because their funding would be jeopardized. Historically it is common for governments to fund the opposition in order to control its direction and activities. Just like what happened to MCO. The Committee didn’t take government money. Of course the radical political orientation has its own shortcomings.
By the time of the Los Siete incident I had been politically aware and active in some minor stuff. I supported Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) I sympathized with. One of the earliest political memories was my father’s rants and raves when he listened to the news over the radio when we lived in Mexicali, Mexico. Listening to the radio was the prevalent medium at that time and place. From my father’s outbursts, I deduced that he possessed class consciousness and nationalism. I now believe that it was the triumph of the Cuban revolution that he heard on the radio that day when he began cheering wildly. I must have been seven years old. He was soooo happy. I remember that he would say that if he was president he would drop a bomb on Washington (or did he say Mexico City?). He and his sister, Conchita, were both atheists and possessed political and social awareness. I think I got that message from things my mother said later in the course of my life. As a teen I found out that my Tia Conchita had been visited by the FBI for allegedly subscribing to communist literature. This must have been during the McCarthy era in the 50s in San Francisco. She was totally radical and an atheist, which is my theological point of view. I suppose that they sympathized with each other. I also recall conversations father had with his friends on job conditions they faced as migrant farmworkers and their anti-authority sentiments (this is a kind of class consciousness and resistance). Once he came home early from working in the fields in the US side of the border by the town of Calexico, he said that he had told his boss “que se vaya a chingar a su madre” (to go fuck himself) and walked off, this is individual class resistance. I suppose this is where I got my awareness from! Intergenerational cultural legacy!!
In the 10th or 11th grade my history teacher at Mission High, Mrs. Barranco, had the class respond to a question about inspiration or contemporary sympathies to which I responded that I sympathized with was the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). She pulled me aside and asked me why that my response and how I arrived at that. I can’t say what I said. I had heard and saw reports on the television newscasts about SDS and what they were doing at UC Berkeley back in the day. I must have been 14 or 15 years old. At the time the SDS embodied the embryonic stage of the nationwide student movement and the Free Speech Movement at UC. For some reason I identified with and sympathized.
Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Union was an issue that moved me to action. I recall that some of the students and I organized walkouts at Mission in support of the Union. Some of my friends, Joaquin, Diana Monge, Martin Ordenana and others led the walkouts and took the marchers to picket Safeway stores at 17th and Valencia, 21st and South Van Ness and at 24th and Potrero. The marchers were Mission High students and supporters. It was through these activities that I met Cesar Chavez. I thought the walkouts were spirited and well attended. The walkouts provided an outlet to the discontent latent in the students and in La Raza in general. The nationalist fervent that was stirring among Latinos nationwide was evident locally. We must have tapped in a reservoir of energy, rebellion and resistance when we called for walkouts. We did this several times before the Los Siete incident occurred. We were calling for relevant education, Latino history and Latino teachers and last but not least for Mexican and Soul food in the café we had united with the Black Student Union.
At Mission High We organized a political Latino group. At first we attempted to work with the existing ‘Spanish’ group sponsored by Mrs. Buchard, but to my amazement the group would have none of it. When I became politically aware I though everyone would join this important stuff. But still I was dumbfounded and it was not to be but importantly we did not falter. They were a conservative social cultural group, only about tacos and Jarabe Tapatio and other traditional cultural stuff. That is relevant and important stuff but it misses the mark of changing socioeconomic conditions, the status quo that Latinos and other ethnicities live under. We formed a separate group and came up with four demands. About this time a race riot erupted between blacks and Latinos luckily students from SF State, Al Martinet, Jimmy Queen and Ricardo Laraniaga, not from State, and others from Horizons Unlimited like Roberto Vargas, Georgiana Quinones, Judy, Ricardo Carrillo, Rachel and others, who were on strike at state came to counsel us, explaining that the enemy was the system not the black people. Black people, some Panthers among them, also came to work with the black students. Finally we united and formed a united front of black and brown students. We developed a joint list of fourteen “unconditional” demands. When we presented the demands to the principal in his office one of the students began smoking cigarettes and someone else followed suit. The principal was stumped. After a while he told us that there was, “no smoking in the principal’s office,” this really really sounds funny today.
At one point, Laraniaga really screwed my mind up by dropping acid with me and reading the poem, ‘I am Joaquin’ by Corky Rodriguez supranationalist stuff quite good though, I returned to school the next day full of rage about Latino oppression, etc. I ran into Diana she looked at me like I was crazy and ran off never to support our politics again. When I told Martinet my new orientation he got pissed and said, “Fucking asshole ruining my work (with me about multiculturalism)” or interethnic unity.
So after fighting with the African American student for a couple of days, we turned the race riot into a political strike. This went on for a few days but basically we didn’t have the leadership (me and others) to continue. I remember going before the board of education to present the demands. That is the only time I’ve been in the newspaper. Some of the activities were not sustained because in my case I was influenced by what the counterculture celebrated; drugs, LSD. In my case, due to personal issues along with the influence of the 60s, I went on to harder and harder drugs and disengagement with the movement and or at best a haphazard involvement. Later, at one point political consciousness pushed me to stop getting high altogether especially after I returned from Cuba in 1971. But unfortunately my drugging and using continued off and on for years after that. But my involvement continued along with my addictions. Sometimes I was into drugging and drinking or into involvement and sometimes doing both concurrently.
I went to Cuba in 1971 as part of the Venceremos Brigade, ‘Norte Americanos’ who wanted to show solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and break the US blockade. I was selected because I was in Los Siete, I recall my interview I was kind of stuck in my brain after having been on an acid trip the day before, I couldn’t answer the questions, I’m sure I was chosen only because of my membership in the ‘chic’ Los Siete. In Cuba we cut sugar cane for six week and toured for two weeks. We visited work centers, farms, towns, cities, schools, a mental hospital, universities, tourist centers (of course), most of the time they let us go by ourselves without guides, it wasn’t about being indoctrinated. The Cubans wanted us to see and hear what the revolution and socialism is all about and return to our home the United States and spread the truth of what Cuba was like. This way “Norte Americanos” (includes Latinos and African Americans) would learn about Cuba and the truth instead of the lies, propaganda, distortion, and disinformation, we are accustomed to, things that we “Americanos” do not even question, we are that brainwashed and conditioned by US institutions.
I participated in Los 7 for about two-plus years, it’s hard to fathom that a period of time so short had such a large influence in my life—politically and mentally, my values stem from this time, it was a time of change. To quote Nilda Alverio at a recent reunion, “this time made me who I am today.” Nilda was my girlfriend at the time for a time. The trial of Los Siete lasted about two years; my area of work was at the Centro de Salud Para la Gente, I fought to name it Centro de Salud Del Pueblo but my motion was voted down, I wanted that name because the other is how pochos (US born Mexicano) speak and that kind of Spanish is awkward. But I also did other political work required of members. I was so dedicated and zealous that I tried to carry through all the tasks the collective set out, I really was into the “collective” I realized that not all people felt like I did way after I was out of the group. At the clinic we, nonprofessional staff , were classified as ‘community worker’, see I got something in common with Barak Obama he was community worker too, our job included being trained to do medical work, the belief was that common people could do medical work, sort of China’s barefoot doctors, like taking blood pressure, taking temperatures, doing hematocrits, etc. Also, we were translators for the non-English speaking patients. The most important work of us was doing political work; that would be “raising the level of consciousness” of the community. As part of doing political work with patients, we even read readings from Mao’s Quotations of Mao Tse Tung ,up to today people make fun of that practice. Even the old members make fun of that practice.
As a member of Los 7, I sold Basta Ya! Newspapers in the street my favorite place was U.S.E. department store on Mission and 22nd, translated newspaper articles, the Basta Ya was a bilingual newspaper, helped organize demonstrations and picket lines activities not only for Los Siete but other stuff in solidarity with other struggles. We picketed at the Hall of Injustice during the trial. I recall that, once the Black Panthers called the left together to a march around the Panther headquarters in West Oakland because Huey Newton had dared the Oakland Police Department to come and get him in his headquarter. We also attended the Angela Davis trial. A major activity for me was showing the Los Siete de la Raza movie as part of the defense of Los 7. This movie was put together by Newsreel. This collective distributed many radical movies that the mainstream media wouldn’t touch. Hanoi Tuesday the 13th, and Battle of Algiers, are two films I recall. The high school members of the Los 7 defense committee showed the Los Siete movie all over the bay area, Magali Perez, Marty Montemayor and Estela Richardson, Domingo Leon was also my collaborator but he was so egoistic that people rejected him, they just couldn’t warm up to him, he was a bad fit. Sympathetic teachers would contact us and invite us to their classes and hold political discussions with the students. I was always nervous and self-conscious because I was in the film quite a bit and quite drunk. Newsreel filmed us of La Veinte who had formed a group called Latino America Despierta and we were filmed at one of our drinking sessions. The organizer of Latino America Despierta was Aurelio Palacios and the chairman was Guillermo AKA PeeWee. We rented a storefront and had business meetings and so on. Newsreel came to our storefront and interviewed everyone and wound up putting me in a lot of the film because of everyone there I was able to articulate the political ideas behind our activism most clearly. We were having a drinking party, we always did that, and I was really drunk. Now when I see the movie I can see how drunk I was. As I am more mature now (sometimes I think that) I can see how clearly I articulated the topics.
Even within the activism of Los Siete, we made time to have fun, including going to parties and events, people would smoke pot, drink, and socialize. Within our group some couples and babies developed. When yet someone else came up pregnant, I remember hearing Alberto yelling out, paraphrasing, “Damn, what are we a political group or a babysitting collective.” I’m hesitant to discuss the personal history of others and myself because i don’t want to out anyone’s secrets. The gamut of human drama was there: romance and fun, sobriety and addiction, after all these were the seventies!
The end of my involvement with the group came when I was kicked out for hitting my girlfriend when we were in Cuba and for an argument we had at home. I think that was the reason, I was never told anything about the proceedings or given a chance to explain myself or what happened or whether it was true or not. In the argument I remember my needs weren’t met when she refused to answer my questions, my ego and machismo and pride turned ugly. I heard a paper was written on the situation. I was denied due process but then there was no due process to speak off, there weren’t rules like that.
The women in the group, our group was by now a collective under strict discipline, met and had a “women’s meeting” where women’s issues were aired. Feminism was at its high point around this time in the movement. For example, one time when I stayed at the Casa de la Raza when my turn to cook came, no woman would show me how to cut up a chicken, something I didn’t know how to do, until Paula Martinet explained that one had to cut between the bones. I suppose some women felt that I would be oppressing them if they showed me, I guess. This is an example of the feminist practice I faced for being a poor man. Speaking seriously, in Los Siete I learned about women’s liberation and now support the issue, as I supported it then—women’s rights. Of course it is difficult to put principles into action. Second wave feminism expressed itself as “the personal is political” this quote was a touchstone of second wave feminism. Relationships and the home were under change in all spheres of society, progress or equality has been made in society but patriarchy is still deeply entrenched in society.
After two years the trial of Los Siete ended with an innocent verdict, technically we could not be a committee to free Los Siete. the political work continued since we had moved from only defense work to community organizing that. So the group continued and I moved on after being ostracized, I began to participate with El Tecolote newspaper. Simultaneously, I was helping in the solidarity movement supporting the Nicaraguan Revolution. For I was a self-ordained organizer, by now I was a Marxist revolutionary. And since I lost my political practice group I was looking elsewhere to continue my quest and my calling.
When I returned from Cuba in 1972 while still in the group, one of Los Siete and a friend of his, close to Los Siete but not one of them, robbed a liquor store, or so I was told. What a blow to the community supporters this was, after it had backed up the guys. As a result we lost a lot of support in the Mission. As part of a restructuring I went to organize at CCSF as part of the student collective we created. It was at this time I was booted out. After some time, the Committee to Defend Los Siete de la Raza changed its name to La Raza Workers Collective along with its methods and areas of work. Some headed to job sites and factories and others left the group and worked on their own or with others from the group. Not everyone agreed with this change and people went on with their lives. Some people continued in the Clinic and at the La Raza Legal Defense.
Eventually La Raza Workers Collective, combined with a other groups who called themselves the August 29th Movement. August 29th is the day Ruben Salazar was killed in Los Angeles during the Chicano Moratorium in 1970. So the movement of those days continued in different alliances and formations until 1989, then the whole of the socialist left became disoriented and fragmented with the fall of the Soviet Union. Revolutionaries and Marxists realize that the class struggle continues, the struggle of the exploited and oppressed will continues until a just society can be established. I still feel like this but my cynicism leads me to believe that the planet will not make it to that time with the environment changing like it is.
In conclusion, my time in the Committee to Defend Los Siete de la Raza had a profound effect on me. In politics I learned about the enemy being the capitalist system not white people and the fight has to be a multinational alliance of all ethnicities. I learned that change has to be systemic not just ethnic integration. On the personal level, I learned to view women differently than the traditional way. I had a son whom with after years of estrangement we have mended our relationship continually improving. I also learned that value as a person doesn’t depend on accumulation possessions. I am grateful for all the gifts I got from the experience.

File:Marty Montemayor and Roger Alvadaro.jpg

2011-12-08T17:37:57Z

Fflores124: Marty Montemayor, a youth from the Mission. Roger Alvarado, President of the Third World Liberation Front cordinating body of the SF State College student strike in 1969. Here they staff a booth at a community fair at Precita Park in the Mission District

Marty Montemayor, a youth from the Mission. Roger Alvarado, President of the Third World Liberation Front cordinating body of the SF State College student strike in 1969. Here they staff a booth at a community fair at Precita Park in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Mission High School Riot 1969

2011-09-30T02:12:32Z

Fflores124: thi

'''Race Riot Epicenter—Mission High School: 1969
From Latino/Black on Black/Latino Ethnic Conflict to United Political Struggle
Interview of Edgar Ivan Morales by Francisco FloresLanda, conducted Sunday, July 31 2011'''

Introduction: The following interview was conducted at San Francisco’s Dolores Park, at the “bell,” a usual meeting spot for people of our generation. Edgar and I were in the epicenter of a “racial riot” actually a rumble between a Latinos and black students. The conflict between his brother, Edy, and a lone black student became generalized; to the point that the whole school was shuttered down. The students in the school were restricted to the classroom; the students outside were locked out of the school. The rumble occurred during one of two lunch periods, after the rumble both ethnicities lined up with their own, the browns and the blacks lined up on the sidewalks of Eighteenth Street, the African Americans on the sidewalk hugging the girl’s gym on the corner at Dolores Street and the Latinos on the opposite side of the street on the park side. The SFPD Tactical Squad was in between it was quite a display of apprehension, confusion and fear. In my politically developing young mind the manifestation of larger issues went over my head—those of education, racism, police control, inequality, immigration, and more.

This interview is a small part of larger story that is in its ‘writing in progress. That larger expanded part is what came before and what came after that fateful incident in the fateful year of 1969.

Notes:
Parentheses ( ) are author inserted for clarity.
Brackets [ ] are used for author’s commentary.

Send me comments and any information or leads to persons that could provide information that might add to this story at fflores124@hotmail.com.

'''Edgar tell me something about you?'''

My name is Edgar Ivan Morales; I’m originally from Managua Nicaragua. I was brought here in 1963 as
an immigrant, along with my other five siblings by a good woman, Manuela Escobar, a single parent raising six kids at a minimum wage. (She) refused to get help or ask for help because of her pride; that
was 1963, when Latinos were practically unheard of in San Francisco, (I) arrived here and was put in an elementary school where no one spoke any Spanish everyone spoke English , so I was incommunicado (at) Golden Gate Elementary in the Western Addition. [Then known as the Fillmore, during the time of the War on Poverty Western Addition was used to whitewash the area famous or infamous, depending on one’s point of view, as a seedy area]

[Note: I would guess that at Edgar’s age it appeared that Latinos were ‘practically unheard of’ because back in the day, the Fillmore was almost totally black, unlike today, when a large number of young white people and other non-blacks have moved in because of Redevelopment, gentrification, and the shift in the worldwide economy, i.e. the disappearance of local blue collar jobs to overseas by outsourcing. I would suppose that this extrapolation would also apply to Golden Gate Elementary. Recently I went to the area and conducting a quick survey, at first, unbelievably, I saw only Anglos after a few seconds some African Americans appeared in my view but, to me, it maintained its white look and feeling. I was almost in shock I was aware of the demographic shift but it is still hard to believe how a community can be destroyed some would say improved.]

'''Was there a Spanish bilingual program at Golden Gate Elementary School? '''

There was no one in the whole school that spoke a word of Spanish; it was a very lonely and isolating place to be for me. For me, for someone coming from Central America, where everyone (knows you), where all doors are open, and where everyone knew each other, to a place no one knew how to communicate with me it was pretty bad. [It was evident from Edgar’s tone that the feeling still resonated with him.]
Originally, when I got here, my mother was in the Western Addition, with as many kids as my mother (had) we moved to many, many, houses always looking for affordable housing, my mother’s goal were affordable housing so my mother could support her children.

'''What kind of work did she do?'''

When I arrived here, she was working at Foster’s, it was a cafeteria type of restaurant, she was a bus lady, and she went around picking up the dishes after everybody ate. The only qualification I suppose was to speak English that was one of her lucky points.

'''Spoke English In Nicaragua? How is that possible?'''

She is originally from Bluefields which is in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua where Spanish is the second language there, she spoke both very well. [Alongside the Spanish, the British established a protectorate on the eastern seaboard beginning in the middle of the 17th century, and ending roughly two centuries later with the rise of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada in the coast. The eastern seaboard retains its colonial heritage; English and Jamaican Patois are commonly spoken and the culture in the Atlantic region identifies as being more Caribbean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua]
Coming to Golden Gate Elementary was a turning point in my life, it was pretty much a preview of what life had in store for me in the United States; and that was, I had to fight my way to school every morning and I had to fight my way home every day.

'''Why?'''

Racism is incredibly strong in this country. One of my first obstacles was having to deal with children that didn’t know anything about social studies; or the world at large, they didn’t know where I was from or who I was, all they knew was that I wasn’t like them; so they wanted to kick my butt.

'''What ethnicity were they?'''

This story will wind up into that subject later on. As we speak you will know. [It’s very clear where we are going here]

'''What year were you at Mission High?'''

(I) arrived at mission high school after graduating from Horace Mann Middle School [middle schools were then called junior high schools] in 1966 that was the 9th grade. I was expected to graduate in 1969.

'''Give a little background of conditions in the school, social, ethnic, as well as the halls?'''

(We were) a group of students that were reluctant to accept what this society had to offer. In plain terms we would be called rebels (but) it was a misunderstanding of society. They [the school and society] didn’t understand where we came from and we didn’t understand this place, we had been brought to, we were only children. Just to remind you that most of those children aren’t here anymore because of the misunderstanding. It was pretty much the tail of the fox [what is that—author] that I had already lived through in my elementary and my junior high school years. It was survival of the fittest. It was racism and social standards (that) had a lot to do with it. It was a misunderstanding with the schools back in those days.

'''Can you be more particular? Like what happened in the hallways?'''

Back in those days everybody was in a different group, if you were from a different country you had to look for someone from your country to be your friend. You were not accepted by any other group, so when you walked down the hallway you pretty much looked for faces that you recognize and stick to that. You kept away, if you tried to communicate, you were going to be put down, so it was a matter of holding your pride. We were proud of who we were; so we kept to ourselves. You were proud who you were; you didn’t want to be put down [there was an evident strong emotion in Edgar’s voice]. Back in those days it was a natural thing between periods to look for a person who had a little bit of popularity and social understanding [meaning is unclear here it is either social awareness or social standing] to go hang out in front of his locker while the periods changed spoke to your friends and (made a plan to meet later) . . . .
I don’t want to get into politics, [author encourages Edgar to address social and political issues] what I notice is that Black people have been taught to be aggressive so they can get their way. If you were a newcomer that is pretty much you started to deal with. You would notice that when they were in a bunch they were aggressive. If you met them by themselves they had a little more open mind. If you met them in a group they had a crowd [emphasis by Edgar] mentality. One could set them all off.

'''Let’s talk about what happened in the stairway? We were having lunch and Edy came running up?'''

We used to get free lunch, all the Latinos, as a matter of fact; [author comment: I was not enrolled in the free lunch program, it must have appeared to Edgar that “all” Latinos were “in” on it, having known Edgar for a good deal of his life I know that he was a born hustler and natural leader early on] I was one of the ones of the instigators that tried to get everyone to try to get a free lunch. I had found out you could get free lunch, the idea was to get lunch. It so happened that all the African Americans also got a free lunch. The whole idea was get to the café first, have your lunch, and get the hell out of there and go hang out by the park. So we would all rush to the cafeteria as soon as the bell rang. We started to notice that the black kids, if one got there before us, he would let everyone cut ahead of him. You see this; I’ve been to penitentiary, I’ve been (to) free food lunch programs, that is the way they work it. If I’m ahead then all my brothers [sarcastically] are ahead with me. So we started to learn, we (would) have to see how to deal with this, we figured out that the person closest to the cafeteria would have to get out of class a minute before the bell rang and had to be in line before everyone got there so that we could cut in front of him, so we had it down as a plan that someone would show up and be in line one minute before the bell rang, we would always be first in line. So the African Americans noticed . . . and began . . . and started getting frustrated . . . they didn’t know how to deal with it, so they would get so mad that they would want to pick a fight. They knew that together they were aggressive, single they were calm. If they got in a group they were aggressive. One day, when we were in front of the line, my younger brother Edy began walking down the line trying to get ahead of the line and one of the young guys who was there pushed him, so he reacted the way everyone reacted back then, and he called him “stupid Niger,” to the young black kid it was like someone had stabbed his mother. [Author: I wouldn’t say everyone reacts like that all the time] He was like, “Come on outside were going to fight right now.” My brother came to me and he said, “Hey I’m going to go outside fight this guy.” I said, “If it is one-on-one go kick his ass.” I told Edy, “Go kick his ass I’m in line, I’m going to eat.” No sooner had he walked out he came back in, he said “I kicked his ass.” He said “He brought out a knife and I broke the bottle and said, ‘You want to deal with it like this come on.’ The kid backed off.”
Edy came back (and) got in line. We all had lunch and went outside to the stairway on Dolores at 18th. Now it has an iron gate, back then you could go sit on the stairways and have lunch as long as you didn’t make a mess. [The interview was at the bell at Dolores Park we looked across the street and saw all the stairways had iron gates] that was 1966/67/68 there were no iron gates. So that day we went out and we were all sitting there. It was a few guys, a few girls, just as the way we always did. We were probably discussing what had gone earlier when I saw a group of kids walking across the street. I recognized them right away. Now, Francisco Flores, who is right here [I am the interviewer, we laugh], and Henry Menjivar was there, may he rest in peace, Oscar Coronado was there, Jose Barraza was there, my brother Edy, and I and a few young women. As I saw them approach us I recognized the young kid who my brother had just smacked. And they came up to, us, but now, he had his two older brothers with him, they were inclined to be more aggressive. They wanted my brother to fight the oldest brother, they had, actually it was (the) middle brother. As the middle brother was saying, “I want to fight you.” I felt compelled to stick up for my brother I said “Hey, he fought your brother, I will fight you.” So then, his older brother stepped in and he said, “No, I will fight you.” And my brother here, Francisco Flores stepped in, which I thank god to the day, and said, ‘No I’ll fight you.’ It was pretty cool. When you said that at the same time Henry said, “What the hell are we talking about,” but he said it in Spanish, “Let’s just kick ass.” There!, that’s when we just jumped on them and started fighting, we came out to them, [we were sitting holed up inside the stairwell]. It just became a rumble, hit who you can while you can, there were more of them than there were of us, it was a little frightening. The defense we had (was) to step forward or we were gonna get caught stuck inside the stairway. It ended up us chasing them outside. Pretty much it was what came down.
[Author: I didn’t manage to get out of the stairway, I and someone else faced them in the stairway, luckily they couldn’t surround us, only two of them could come at us at a time as we traded punches until they retreated chased off.]

'''It was a minute or two?'''

Seconds, seconds was pretty much, just at the spur of the moment, only moments. I remember running with two of them after me. Yea, two after me, I remember it had been raining around that time. I remember smacking one of them with my umbrella, they had umbrellas, too, I remember I was afraid I was gonna get stabbed. Considering the odds and the situation we were under, we were able to get back to where it all started, and laugh at it. Saying, “Hey we all defended ourselves the way we expected”, we were not going to get beat down for no reason.

'''I remember more guys, Latinos coming to help us?'''

I remember people running over to see what was going on because the girls were screaming too. It was a commotion, on that side of the particular block where we sat, it was always very calm, and we were at the other side of the park. [Between 18th and 19th opposite the park next to today’s Dolores Park Café] Everybody used to sit at the park; it was noticeable what was going on. By the time everybody gets there it was all over, as fast as it started it was over. Some white guys came to offer help. [The Whiteshoes, as we called them, students who hung out by the lunch store called Dine-a-Mite, on the corner of 18th and Church, kitty-corner from the boy’s gym.]
What I’ve been trying to remember is, if it happened before Martin Luther King got killed, or after Martin Luther King got killed, because if it happened after the young African American kids had gone up the hill and had attacked the young white kids (and) they retaliated, which I thought it was pretty stupid because here they were these guys they had nothing to do with what Martin Luther King got killed for or where he got killed. He got killed somewhere in the south, Alabama or something and here we are in San Francisco. Who you are retaliating against are just innocent people. If it happened after, the reason would be we had gotten some people who used to hang out up the hill they came down and said “We’ll help you." If it happened before, it would be that the black kids were very aggressive, it wasn’t just against the people who stood in line for lunch it was against everyone, they weren’t specific about who they were going to target, they didn’t like nobody, they were going to attack anyone.
It was in the newspaper as “Racial Tension at Mission High School.” When the police came, they had riot gear on when they showed up. It had been publicized as a racial riot the next day. End of story goes (that) you [interviewer] went to fight (the) older brother. I think (that if) back then (if) the principal had been told on [reported], he probably would have been prosecuted, whooped, tarred, and feathered. The principal took the stand (that) if we’re going to have a riot here and it’s only because two people fought, let’s just let two people fight it out. And, that will end the whole situation. They took Francisco Flores [points at me] here and the young man, the oldest brother . . . the principal took them up to Twin Peaks. [Actuality the principal and community activists, Alberto Martinet, Jimmy Queen, an officer who was the police-community representative and others took us to Diamond Heights]. It was the idea of the principal who took you. All I remember (is) you coming back saying I kicked his ass it’s over. It must have been the (same) day (when) they got together (to discuss it). [Actually I didn’t really kick his ass what really happened is that we wound up wrapped around each other]
After the fight they thought there was going to be tension. It never materialized as a riot. [Note: as an afterthought Edgar said, “As they were wishing for . . . a riot the next day.” [Author: Edgar assumes that the authorities wanted to see blacks and browns fighting each other, the old adages at play being “divide and conquer” and “let them kill eat other”]. Everybody (was) ready for a fight. It didn’t happen. It would have been to the disadvantage of the African American kids. The, it felt (like the) whole school was behind our group although they didn’t identify . . . us, they didn’t know us, but they knew the group that had defended themselves against the African American kids, they were right. It was the icing on the cake the suds on the beer just spilling over. [Edgar laughs.]
We came back and laughed right there, we came back to the stairs and didn’t go back to school. The whole school was expecting something that day that’s why the next day the riot police was out there. The same day, everyone lined up; Latinos and African Americans. The reason it was happening . . . it wasn’t that serious, I don’t think the people knew why. It was all a surprise to us. To me . . . the young kid was disrespectful and annoying, I wish someone had told him you had it coming sucker. It helps someone a lot more if you tell him the truth, “You know what, you got a big mouth, you go around picking fights now live with it, and you got your ass kicked.”
The next day when you went back to classes what happened?
That there only made me wearier of the whole educational process. There is NO way can you learn feeling a threat. Whether it be from another student or the police or the system. After that day a lot of us, I must say, I didn’t feel comfortable in the classroom, we felt safer in the park surrounded by people that we knew instead of being in the hallway where we didn’t know if someone was going to do something or walk up . . .

'''What was your participation afterwards, when we united with the African American students and presented the demands when we united as a political group with the black students?'''

(I did) to an extent, not very deeply participated, didn’t believe much was going to change. (It seemed the) demands, it was little silly kids demands. I know it had to do (with) the way the school was being run. In the 60s the (the schools were run) in the style of the 50s. It was a different crowd of people (the administration and the students). So the demands were pretty much acceptance. Now I understand what the demands were about.
[The demands were; more Latino teachers, Raza history classes, relevant education, and Latino food in cafeteria.]

'''I remember Fridays after lunch no one would come back to class we would go back to school and party in the hallways? The whole school it seemed to me?'''

If you go back to those days, a lot of those kids were talking about ended up in the penitentiary, many . . . as we now know, I didn’t know then, that the penitentiaries of California, the prison industry, the biggest industry California has, we were all being prepared to work in the biggest industry that California has. That is (getting); an A number; and a B number; a C number; and a D number, it was a way of life. If you don’t want to go along with the program . . . (societies response is) “we already got a program for you.” You are going to end up in San Quentin, Soledad, and Folsom prison.

'''Remember the hall guards?'''

That was the system, those ladies were married to white folk, they didn’t want you to even talk Spanish, they felt it was disrespect, I don’t know to who or to what. I think we were rebels but there were methods of communication that they failed to use. It was their way or no way.

'''What about the reds and acid? I dealt reds, and then I took them.'''

Never touch the merchandise Frankie; I have a saying, that I tell many people, that I use now, “It was easier to get drugs than it was to see your school counselor.” I could come to the park and get drugs and I didn’t need an appointment. I didn’t have to find my counselor in the office, didn’t (have) to be reprimanded or talked (to) bad! to me. It was easier to get drugs than it was to speak to a teacher . . . as that is why it was so easy for all of us to get involved with drugs.

'''Did you graduate?'''

I never thought that I was going to drop out, that I would end up in the situation where I ended up by my eighteenth birthday. But I struggled with society . . . drugs and . . . with my family. Why did I do what I was doing? I did go back to John Adams and graduated from high school. Graduated . . . mechanic technician . . . body and fender. (Afterwards) I went to a trade school (for the skills)[so did the author] but I went to John Adams Adult High School up in the Haight for my diploma, while I was strung out on heroin, I struggled but I went and got to my high school diploma.

'''Have you got any last comments, anything more to say?'''

Not just one, I got a dozen things to say [laughs], but whatever you write out of this . . . that some understanding comes out of it because . . . because the problem is still here, the misunderstanding doesn’t go away, it’s gonna be around, kids are running in more danger than we ever did. We sort of killed ourselves with drugs and now kids are killing themselves with guns, it hasn’t really changed much. In some way . . . this story . . . whatever . . . can shed some light on the problem on the subject . . . that would be god’s way. Good Luck Franqui.

'''Conclusion or summary:'''

This is a small part of a larger history that began months before and ended much later than the two days that are described here. That history began and continued when a few Latino students began organizing and developed a set of four demands. After this incident the demands expanded to seventeen when we united with the African American at the urging of striking students from SFSU by “raising our level of consciousness” about necessary unity between oppressed peoples—Latinos and Blacks. In the short run the history continues when the demands were attempted to be implemented. But that story is in progress for later . . .

Figure 6 bottom-unknown, Choco, top unknown, Francisco Reyes, Julian, behind Oscar Coronado, Neftali with girlfriend, Rigo, standing unknown.

File:Scan0012.jpg

2011-09-30T02:04:46Z

Fflores124: uploaded a new version of "File:Scan0012.jpg": Ivan Vanengs AKA El Pelon, Francisco Flores (author), Edgar Morales (interviwee), others unknown

Ivan Vanengs AKA El Pelon, Francisco Flores (author), Edgar Morales (interviwee), others unknown

File:Scan0012.jpg

2011-09-30T02:04:12Z

Fflores124: Ivan Vanengs AKA El Pelon, Francisco Flores (author), Edgar Morales (interviwee), others unknown

Ivan Vanengs AKA El Pelon, Francisco Flores (author), Edgar Morales (interviwee), others unknown