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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

2007 Dream Act

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, is a United States legislative proposal to grant temporary conditional residency, with the right to work, to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as minors—and, if they later satisfy further qualifications, they would attain permanent residency. In April 2001, United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) first introduced the bill in the Senate as S. 1291, but it did not pass. The proposal has since been reintroduced several times, but has not been approved by majorities in either house of the United States Congress.[1][2]

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1. 2000 woke up the world to election administration issues Voters demonstrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2000 presidential election. “2000 woke up the world to election administration issues,” says one elections policy expert. (Photo: Elvert Barnes via Wikipedia) In fact, the presidential elections of 2000 and last year put election administration front of mind for lawmakers and the public alike. But the issues at hand couldn’t be more different. As Bob Bauer, co-chair of the PCEA and equally distinguished expert from the Democratic side, explains, most partisan disagreement in the 2000 contest focused on how to resolve who won the presidential election, George W. Bush or Al Gore. In 2020, though, “the battle [is] right at the source—about how the rules are drawn, the role of courts in changing the rules, the role of state executive officials in implementing the rules. It’s a very different fight.” Indeed, “fight” is an apt word. One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation with these election veterans is that election-related litigation has been on the rise since 2000. (We wrote about that in the September 2020 Canvass, and you can check out the case tracker here.)
2. 2000: Election problems spotlight need for reform A judge on the the Broward County Canvassing Board uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot during a vote recount in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after the contested 2000 presidential election. (Photo: Robert King/Newsmakers/Getty Images) The extremely close Bush-Gore Presidential race led to a recount in the state of Florida that highlighted many of the problems plaguing U.S. elections, from faulty equipment and bad ballot design to inconsistent rules and procedures across local jurisdictions and states. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately intervened to stop the Florida recount and effectively ensuring the election of George W. Bush.
3. 2000s Immigrant Voices Calling for Change Immigrant electoral politics was bevvied by a number of immigrant rights organizations that combined demands for immigrant rights with gains at the workplace—often outside of a traditional union structure. They included the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Association (KIWA), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the South Asian Network (SAN), and the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN). Activist groups like these made sure that immigrants were not simply providing “boots on the ground” for a newly mobilized labor movement and its electoral ambitions. Rather, their members helped shift the stance of organized labor both locally and nationally. In 1999, breaking from organized labor’s historically anti-immigrant stance, the AFL-CIO, with heavy influence from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, officially adopted a platform supportive of immigrant rights and comprehensive immigration reform. The following year, a labor-sponsored hearing to demonstrate support for the importance of immigration reform—one of a series of forums across the nation—drew an overflow crowd of about 20,000 at the L.A. Sports Arena. “If someone had told me three or four years ago that we’d be taking this position today,” John Wilhelm (then president of HERE) told the L.A. Weekly of the AFL-CIO’s reversal on immigrant politics, “I’d have thought they were out of their minds.” Meanwhile, the immigrant rights groups themselves jumped into direct electoral work when in 2003, a statewide bill repealed the right of undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. The next year, a new statewide multiethnic collaborative called Mobilize the Immigrant Vote (MIV) began registering, educating, and mobilizing residents to vote and became part of a larger set of efforts to encourage infrequent voters to cast their ballots. MIV’s impact extends beyond Los Angeles County. Yet the real “coming out” of immigrant organizers occurred on May 1, 2006. Across America, immigrant activists and their allies in labor, the left, and faith communities (most prominently, the Catholic Church) came together to protest the proposal of the Sensenbrenner-King bill in Congress. Among its other draconian provisions, this bill would have criminalized any assistance to undocumented immigrants. While the turnout was dramatic all over the country, the largest crowd gathered in Los Angeles: here, half a million people clogged downtown streets. And unlike in 1994, this time—and at the insistence of immigrant organizers themselves—many marchers waved American flags and encouraged one another to become citizens and to vote. Indeed, a popular chant in that May Day march was “Hoy Marchamos, Mañana Votamos” (“Today, We March; Tomorrow, We Vote”). A surge of naturalizations did occur, as lawful permanent immigrants realized the best way to defend their relatives was to show up on election day. Soon, Republican office-holders became as scarce in Los Angeles as a rainy day in August. The multiethnic nature of this organizing showed that this was a movement and not a special interest group. Groups like the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (since renamed Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a telling switch) was critical to showing that this was not a matter of Latino politics. Other organizations like the Pilipino Workers Center helped Asian immigrants engage with the labor movement, particularly since their members were (and are) low-wage, often undocumented workers in homecare and other exploited occupations. African-American politics in L.A. changed too. While the aforementioned Latinization of South Central fueled certain conflicts and fed into some nationalist impulses, the most successful organizations in the new landscape were committed to—indeed, had to be committed to—black-brown coalition building, including around issues of education, neighborhood quality of life, jobs, and immigrant rights. In return, the largely Latino (and often immigrant) SEIU deliberately organized a largely black security guard sector while a similarly Latino-dominated union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), secured provisions in new contracts to ensure outreach to and hiring of black workers who were once so prominent in the sector but had since been eclipsed by Latino numbers.
4. "The Resurrection of Watts" by Ras Ammar Nsoroma (2001) Located at the Watts Labor Community Action Center (WLCAC) 10950 S Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90059 - The Resurrection of Watts by Ras Ammar Nsoroma (There has been a long history of social, racial, economic and political injustices for African American communities in Los Angeles. Fifty years ago, in the neighborhood of Watts—on August 11, 1965—these injustices erupted into the six-day Watts Riots/Rebellion. The Riots/Rebellion served as a crucial turning point in LA’s Civil Rights Movement and is now recognized as one of the most severe civil unrests in the history of the City.)
5. 2001 First Rolling Blackout in California
6. 2003 Statewide bill repealed the right of undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses California Repeals Law On Licenses for Immigrants - California lawmakers gave Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) his first legislative victory Monday by repealing a controversial law that would have granted illegal immigrants in the state the right to obtain a driver's license. In a swift and stark political reversal, the state Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats, voted 64 to 9, with seven abstentions, to abolish the measure. The state Senate took the same step late last month. The law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, would have granted driver's license privileges to nearly 2 million illegal immigrants, many of them working in California's vast farming fields. It has been a political priority for Latino leaders across the state. Similar laws are under debate across the country. But Schwarzenegger had demanded the law's repeal even before his resounding victory this fall in California's recall election. He said the measure, which was approved during the summer by then-Gov. Gray Davis (D), posed too many security risks in a time of heightened national concern over terrorism.
7. 2001 September 11th World Trade Center Attack
8. 2003 Governor Davis is Recalled and Arnold Schwarzenegger Wins
9. 2005 Hurricane Katrina
10. 2005 - 2013 Villaraigosa, who lost to Hahn four years ago, was elected as the city's first Hispanic mayor in more than a century as voters embraced the promise of change in a metropolis troubled by gridlock, gangs and failing schools. Tuesday's election confirms the rising political power of Latinos in the nation's second-largest city. In a victory speech before thousands of supporters in downtown Los Angeles, Villaraigosa, 52, paid tribute to his heritage while promising to bring the city's diverse racial and ethnic groups together. "I stand here today because people believed in me. I want you to know I believe in you as well," he said amid chants of "Si, se puede," Spanish for "Yes, we can." "Our purpose is to bring this great city together." At another appearance Wednesday, he praised Hahn, calling him "a good man. He's provided two decades of public service to the city. We share a love of the city." The election was a resounding defeat for Hahn, who was unable to keep his campaign focused on Los Angeles' falling crime rate and rising job growth. After a lackluster term tainted by corruption allegations at City Hall, Hahn was turned out of office in favor of a high school dropout who turned his life around to become speaker of the California Assembly and then a member of the Los Angeles City Council.
11. 2006 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act Senator Feinstein voted in support of the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” (S. 2611) when it came before the Senate for a vote (5/25/06). This bill was comprehensive immigration reform legislation that included provisions on border security, interior enforcement, unlawful employment of aliens, nonimmigrant and immigrant visa reform, backlog reduction, agricultural workers, citizenship assistance for members of the armed services, and family humanitarian relief. Reflection written in 2017: WASHINGTON — President Trump embraced a proposal on Wednesday to slash legal immigration to the United States in half within a decade by sharply curtailing the ability of American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country. The plan would enact the most far-reaching changes to the system of legal immigration in decades and represents the president’s latest effort to stem the flow of newcomers to the United States. Since taking office, he has barred many visitors from select Muslim-majority countries, limited the influx of refugees, increased immigration arrests and pressed to build a wall along the southern border. In asking Congress to curb legal immigration, Mr. Trump intensified a debate about national identity, economic growth, worker fairness and American values that animated his campaign last year. Critics said the proposal would undercut the fundamental vision of the United States as a haven for the poor and huddled masses, while the president and his allies said the country had taken in too many low-skilled immigrants for too long to the detriment of American workers. “This legislation will not only restore our competitive edge in the 21st century, but it will restore the sacred bonds of trust between America and its citizens,” Mr. Trump said at a White House event alongside two Republican senators sponsoring the bill. “This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.”
12. 2006 MAY Day Rally
13. 2006 Los Angeles Immigrant Rights March Back in 2006, tough immigration legislation introduced by US Rep. James Sensenbrenner sparked massive protests. The legislation, the Wisconsin Republican said, was a necessary response to rampant illegal immigration. Sensenbrenner’s legislation mandated faster and easier deportations, increased fines for those employing people in the country illegally — and possibly prosecuting people if they assisted the undocumented. “It not only cracked down and tried to demonize immigrants themselves, but anyone who helped,” says Matt Barreto, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who participated in the 2006 marches. “Anyone who even gave a ride, or helped in anyway, an undocumented immigrant just try to have a better life would be in violation of federal law, so it was very extreme in what it was trying to do.” After the Sensenbrenner bill passed in the House, and awaited a vote in the Senate, Latino activists began to organize. “I said we have to move,” says Armando Navarro, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, and a veteran immigration rights advocate. He organized some of the first strategy sessions in Southern California to oppose the Sensenbrenner bill, sessions where big public protests were seen as the best option. “The only political avenue that we had available to us was to take to the politics of the street. We had to show our power, our capability manifested by our numbers.” And those numbers showed up to oppose the Sensenbrenner bill, starting with a 100,000 strong protest in Chicago. But the largest demonstration was held in Los Angeles on March 25th of 2006. On that day, half a million people marched in the streets of downtown Los Angeles, making it the biggest mass gathering in the city’s history. On May 1st, organizers increased pressure by staging a day “without an immigrant” demonstrations, urging undocumented workers, from nannies to janitors to cooks, to march in the streets instead of showing up at their jobs. “We combined the power of the streets with the power of the pocketbook, meaning we would organize so that our economic power was felt, not only our political power of the streets. But our economic power of denying people profit,” says Navarro. Protesters claimed victory when the Sensenbrenner bill was defeated in the Senate. But in the decade since the 2006 marches, immigration rights advocates have spent a lot of time debating the demonstrations’ legacy. Barreto says the marches were crucial in creating an opening for initiatives such as as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows many undocumented individuals who were brought to the United States as minors to stay in the country.
14. 2006 California Heat Wave: 115 Degrees for Two Weeks
15. 2007 Dream Act The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, is a United States legislative proposal to grant temporary conditional residency, with the right to work, to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as minors—and, if they later satisfy further qualifications, they would attain permanent residency. In April 2001, United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) first introduced the bill in the Senate as S. 1291, but it did not pass. The proposal has since been reintroduced several times, but has not been approved by majorities in either house of the United States Congress.[1][2]

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8. 1970 2nd Chicano Moratorium: Las Adelitas de Aztlán join protest “After leaving the Brown Berets, Arellanes — along with Jensen and her sister, Grace; Andrea and Esther Sánchez; Lorraine Escalante; Yolanda Solis; and Arlene Sánchez — founded Las Adelitas de Aztlán. The name referred to the soldaderas who fought alongside the men during the Mexican Revolution. They invited members of the community to join them and on Feb. 28, 1970, they made their public debut at the second anti-war moratorium in East Los Angeles.” Members of Las Adelitas de Aztlán at the second Chicano Moratorium protest against the Vietnam War on Feb. 28, 1970. At right is Hilda Reyes. They marched in the rain under a banner made by Gloria Arellanes and other members of the group. Las Adelitas dissolved later that year.
9. 1967 Century City Protestor removed by Police In retrospect, the Century Plaza demonstration was one of the earliest battlegrounds. The original idea was to stage a march from Rancho Park, up Pico Boulevard and past the hotel on Avenue of the Stars, then turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard and go home. But as the marchers reached the hotel, a vanguard of radicals ignored the terms of the police permit and sat down in the street. The march halted. Police said they issued a dispersal order several times on a powerful loudspeaker, but many demonstrators said that in all the noise and chants they failed to hear it. Then hundreds of officers moved in, their nightsticks held in front of them, pushing the demonstrators away. Some of the people fought back. Some photographs show police swinging their nightsticks at marchers who were not resisting. A particularly bitter clash took place under the Olympic Boulevard bridge. …June 23, 1967: A protester is removed from Century Plaza during a speech by President Lyndon Johnson.(Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times Archive/UCLA)
13. 1968 Oakland High School at funeral for Black Panther Bobby Hutton PHOTO BY NIKKI ARAI - Oakland High School students participated in the funeral for Black Panther Bobby Hutton, killed by Oakland Police in 1968. The Black Power movement, led by various groups including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party, emerged in the latter half of the sixties. Coined by Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, the Black Power movement inspired racial pride and advocated for local community control, self-determination and economic development. At the same time, other social movements challenged the existing social order. At UC Berkeley, students engaged in civil disobedience over a university ban on political activity and initiated the Free Speech movement. The women’s liberation movement emerged in the late ‘60s as organizations formed to confront society’s sexism and to promote women’s equality. Likewise, activists organized the environmental movement to protect the earth, stop pollution, and clean-up toxic environmental hazards in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Each of these movements, as well as their militancy, informed the Asian American movement.
14. 2012 California voters approved a ballot measure that would amend the state’s highly controversial Three Strikes law. https://blackyouthproject.com/ca-voters-approve-ballot-measure-reforming-three-strikes-law/ The revised law would require that the third offense be of a serious or violent nature–not something as minor as writing a bad check or, in a much-cited example, stealing a pair of socks. “Tonight’s vote on Proposition 36 sends a powerful message to policymakers in California and across the country that taxpayers are ready for a new direction in criminal justice,” Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, told the San Jose Mercury News. “States that have already made some changes to their sentencing laws may be inspired to take a second look, and states that haven’t made significant changes yet may start.” In addition to altering the sentencing guidelines for future convicts, Prop 36 also creates a pathway for nearly 3,000 inmates currently serving life sentences under the Three Strikes Law to petition for a reduced term.
17. 1970 3rd Chicano Moratorium: Rosalio Munoz speaks at Laguna Park
20. 1974 The Great Wall of Los Angeles 1974 The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of Los Angeles’ true cultural landmarks and one of the country’s most respected and largest monuments to inter-racial harmony. SPARC’s first public art project and its true signature piece, the Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s, conceived by SPARC’S artistic director and founder Judy Baca. Begun in 1974 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.
21. 1967 The Bloody March - America at War with Itself
23. 1960s/1970s GIDRA Staff photo Murase, who completed his undergraduate degree in 1970, said he had few opportunities to learn about Asian Americans in the classroom. In response, he and five other UCLA students established Gidra in 1969, a monthly newspaper that highlighted and commented on Asian American issues while also enabling local artists and writers to share their work. Gidra was initially established at Campbell Hall as an Asian American student publication, Murase said. As Gidra’s influence began to extend beyond UCLA following its early publications, Murase said he and his peers moved their operations to a rented office on Jefferson Boulevard – about five and a half miles from UCLA – and accepted submissions from the larger community, including those who lived outside of Los Angeles or were not of Asian descent. Through the work of its volunteer staff and contributors, Gidra produced a total of 60 issues before its closure in 1974, Murase added. Coming of age in the 1960s, Asian American students at universities developed a new, distinct consciousness as Asian Americans shaped by the racial and international context of the time. By 1968, when the Asian American population numbered about 1.3 million, 80 percent of Japanese Americans and about 50 percent of Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans, respectively, were born in the United States. Asian Americans had come to reach the same educational attainment as whites, but still earned substantially less because of racial discrimination. For example, in 1960 Filipinos earned only 61 percent of the income of whites with comparable educations. Japanese and Chinese also earned less than their white counterparts, making 77 percent and 87 percent, respectively. Among the 107,366 Asian American college students on university campuses in 1970, Chinese and Japanese made up the vast majority, with over eight out of ten Asian American students being of either Japanese or Chinese American descent.
24. 1971 Asian Americans not only called for peace in order to bring troops home, but also protested U.S. intervention and imperialism in Vietnam As a newly-formed group identity, Asian American consciousness was rooted in the communities from which they came. Actively seeking to reclaim their histories and to find their own voices, they sought out narratives from their ancestors and elders. They became engaged with their home neighborhoods, creating local programs to “serve the people” and to rally the masses. They also sought to forge solidarities across ethnicity, race, and national boundaries as they identified with other “Third World” peoples. This term recognized the exploitative relations in the global hierarchy where the least developed nations faced oppressive histories and conditions similar to historically marginalized communities in the U.S. Through the practice of supporting one another’s movements and struggles, Asian American students built a collective identity and common cause to address racial injustices. Additionally, Asian American students were deeply influenced by major international developments of the 1960s. The anti-war movement against U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia reached its apex on campuses in early 1968; the success of North Vietnam’s Tet offensive demonstrated that despite the onslaught of U.S. military might, the war could not be easily won. Asian American war protestors realized their paradoxical position. On one hand, they knew they were Americans, but they were being sent to fight an enemy that not only looked like them, but were in a subordinate position in the world order like they found themselves to be within boundaries of their own country
25. 1969 1st Chicano Moratorium: Outside recruiting center
26. 1968 Los Angeles high school walkout protesters in their car: "Get Cops Out of Schools" This March 1968 photo provided by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, protesters in a car drive by with a sign that reads "Get the Cops Out of the Schools Now!" during a walkout by students at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles. Participants of a 1968 Los Angeles high school walkout over dropout rates, paddle beatings for speaking Spanish and other issues . (Devra Weber/La Raza Photograph collection/UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center via AP)
28. 1971 Student and barrio youth lead protest march in Belvedere Park.
29. 2007 Dream Act The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, is a United States legislative proposal to grant temporary conditional residency, with the right to work, to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as minors—and, if they later satisfy further qualifications, they would attain permanent residency. In April 2001, United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) first introduced the bill in the Senate as S. 1291, but it did not pass. The proposal has since been reintroduced several times, but has not been approved by majorities in either house of the United States Congress.[1][2]
31. 1992 Chinese Student Protection Act
32. 1970 After Chicano Moratoriums: After moratorium demonstration Chicano Moratorium Committee anti-war demonstrators gather in East L.A. "The biggest, bloodiest disturbance in Los Angeles since Watts five years earlier lasted several hours. When it was over, Los Angeles Times columnist Ruben Salazar was dead and two others mortally wounded, about 200 people were under arrest, 75 law enforcement officers and untold numbers of demonstrators were injured, 95 county vehicles were destroyed or damaged, 44 buildings were pillaged and eight major fires had been set.” “After the Chicano Moratorium, I said no way am I going to put myself in jeopardy ever again,” Jensen says. “Because that’s how scared I was.” Jensen stopped organizing
33. 1966 Youth being searched by police during crackdown on the Sunset Strip
34. 1970 After Chicano Moratoriums: 1974 ASCO First Supper After a Major Riot Harry Gamboa Jr.: LA County sheriffs open fired on innocent students and protestors, and wounded and killed many people who were protesting against the war in Vietnam, and were also protesting against police violence, which was followed by a two to three-and-a-half year crackdown on young people gathering on the streets of East Los Angeles. At the time that we shot [First Supper After a Major Riot], we felt that it had been long enough. It was time for it to be extinguished. And so, we declared it to be a celebration. Willie Herrón: At the time of the Moratorium, I was in high school. I remember the procession originating at Belvedere Park, protesting the Vietnam War and all the Chicanos that lost their lives. The police brutality was incredible. It affected me quite a bit and I think it affected all of us. So that's why Whittier Boulevard became such an important street, and a place for us to conduct our performances and connect them to our community and the way society viewed us at the time.
35. 1960s/1970s Asian American protest Community and Place Mao told his followers to “serve the people,” and Movement activists took the call to heart. In the context of Los Angeles, they found their calling in historic Japanese, Filipino and Chinese American communities. Often neglected by government agencies and limited by language access and social stigma, these neighborhoods needed jobs, health services, and education access. As these younger, college-educated, radicalized Asian Americans worked in the community, they built intergenerational bridges and emphasized the importance of place. Their battles against eviction and redevelopment took on a double urgency: both protecting historical communities and the new Movement centers that shared spaces with them.
36. 1970 After Chicano Moratoriums: 1971 ASCO Stations of the Cross Stations of the Cross was a walking “ritual of resistance” against what the performance group Asco considered the “useless deaths” taking place in Vietnam. The male members of the group (which originally comprised Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón III, and Patssi Valdez) paraded down Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, with Herrón as a Christ/death figure bearing a large cardboard cross. The quasi-Passion Play ended with the trio blocking a U.S. Marines recruiting office with the cross, symbolically halting military recruitment from their Mexican American neighborhood.
37. 1960s Brown Berets members When he 15, Dr. Sanchez started the Young Chicanos for Community Action in Monterey Park, California. He later changed the name to the Brown Berets, because he had actually purchased one, by chance, and wore it often. From then on, the grassroots group met at various locations, including the Boy’s and Girl’s Club and coffee shops, because they didn’t want police to know their whereabouts. Dr. Sanchez, along with Carlos Montes, another organizer with the Brown Berets, began to take up causes such as police brutality, better education, and discrimination against the Latinx community. Their first protest was in 1967, when they picketed the sheriff's office in East L.A. to protest the killing of Latino men.
38. 1960s Brown Beret member Gloria Arellenas and others Undated photo strips show Gloria Arellanes, at left, and at center, with fellow Brown Beret members including, from clockwise: Lorraine Escalante, Hilda Reyes and Arlene Sánchez. (Special Collections & Archives, John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Cal State LA, Gloria Arellanes Papers) Arrellanes became the minister of Finance & Correspondence after being apoitned by David Sánchez, the group’s founder. She was the only woman on the leadership team.
40. 1971 Anti-War demonstration on Wilshire Blvd Politicized by War For many young Asian Americans in the 1960s, the War in Vietnam was a brutal and urgent politicization. Watching the war unfold on the nightly news, a common sentiment was that America “killing people who looked like us.” Unlike the mainstream anti-war movement, many Asian Americans saw the Vietnam War as genocidal, or at least imperialist. They placed the war within the larger history of anti-Asian racism in America and imperialist expansion into the Third World.
41. 1970 East L.A. picketing to protest conditions at the school
46. 1968 SFSU Mass Strike Called THE CALL FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES ON WEST COAST CAMPUSES, As students became involved with both international and local issues, they began to call for a relevant education that could address these concerns. However, as Irene Dea expressed, they found a system of higher education that largely excluded students of color from admission and whose courses showed little reflection of their histories and experiences
47. 1976 - The Great Wall of Los Angeles The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of Los Angeles’ true cultural landmarks and one of the country’s most respected and largest monuments to inter-racial harmony. SPARC’s first public art project and its true signature piece, the Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s, conceived by SPARC’s artistic director and founder Judith F. Baca. Begun in 1974 and completed over six summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.
50. 1960s/1970s Student protesting for Asian Studies classes Students had to keep fighting for Asian American and ethnic studies courses to be offered every year in the early period of the ethnic studies centers.After the TWLF strikes at SF State and UC Berkeley and the creation of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, the struggle to establish Asian American studies continued as students sought to develop the curriculum that was relevant to their communities
51. 1969 Portrait of Brown Beret member Hilda Jensen Rodriguez took this portrait of a Chicana demonstrator in the neighborhood of Lincoln Heights in 1969 Hilda’s Jenson’s photos has graced the covers of books, films etc, but often the names of her and her fellow women organizers have often gone unrecognized. In 2003 she wrote to filmmaker Jesús Salvador Treviño who had included her image in his memoir to identify her by name and include her maiden name: Hilda Reyes.
54. 1968 Wilson High School student protester Peter Rodriguez at LAUSD Board of Education meeting Wilson High School student protester Peter Rodriguez at LAUSD Board of Education meeting. Photo by Los Angeles Public Library. In 1967, Mexican American students throughout the Southwest held a 60% high school dropout rate. If they did graduate, they averaged an 8th-grade reading level. Due to Anglo-centric internal school policies many Chicano students were fielded to vocational training or classes for the mentally disabled. Prejudice from teachers and administrators instigated stereotypes of Mexican Americans that discouraged the students from higher learning. These inequalities in education led to the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts, also known as the "Blowouts," which displayed the largest mobilization of Chicano youth leaders in Los Angeles history.
55. 1970 Official Resignation of all women in the Brown Berets LA chapter
56. 1970 - Marching for peace-rally through through the streets of Little Tokyo For many young Asian Americans in the 1960s, the War in Vietnam was a brutal and urgent politicization. Watching the war unfold on the nightly news, a common sentiment was that America “killing people who looked like us.” Unlike the mainstream anti-war movement, many Asian Americans saw the Vietnam War as genocidal, or at least imperialist. They placed the war within the larger history of anti-Asian racism in America and imperialist expansion into the Third World. In 1969, Asians Americans for Peace was founded in Los Angeles. Groups like the Thai Binh and Van Troi Brigades (named after Vietnamese freedom fighters) formed to mobilize youth. Meanwhile, Asian Movement for Military Outreach
59. 1967 Police Raid Silverlake's Black Cat "As the Rhythm Queens, a trio of black women, sang a rock version of "Auld Lang Syne," balloons fell from the ceiling and gay men exchanged the traditional midnight kiss. That was when uniformed police, who had been alerted by the undercover officers, rushed in and began to swing billy clubs, tear down leftover Christmas ornaments, break furnishings, and beat men brutally. Sixteen customers and employees were arrested and forced to lie face down on the sidewalk until squad cars came to take them away."- GAY L.A.
60. 1972 JoAnne/Nobuko Miyamoto and Chris Iijima perform at the Third World Storefront organization Art and Communication The Movement marked the first time Asian people collectively owned and created their own images in this country. Culture—musical, visual, written, performed—was a way to exorcise and subvert dominant American narratives. Young artists had to cut against the stereotypes and caricatures they had been fed since youth. Art was “for the people”: and there was little differentiation between it and activism, and it infused the new identity of Asian America with anti-imperialist and multiethnic critiques. Los Angeles became home to the first Asian American films ever made. Community-based and politically-charged, they showed Asian struggles, families, and histories in a way Hollywood never imagined. A plethora of newspapers got out the word. From personal essays to reports on U.S. militarism and Asian communities, the concerns and goals of the Movement took shape in those worn and circulated pages.
62. 1973 three young activists in New York City recorded A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America The Movement marked the first time Asian people collectively owned and created their own images in this country. It was no small feat: young artists had to cut against the stereotypes and caricatures they had been fed since youth. These lines from “We Are the Children” on the seminal album A Grain of Sand capture this tension: Foster children of the Pepsi generation Cowboys and Indians ride, red man, ride! Watching war movies with the next-door neighbor Secretly rooting for the other side Culture—musical, visual, written, performed—was a way to exorcise and subvert dominant American narratives. It infused the new identity of Asian America with anti-imperialist and multiethnic critiques. The verse above both names a dominant paradigm then re-appropriates the image of the heroic cowboy and soldier by actually identifying with the ‘villain’—in this case, the indigenous and Asian combatants.
63. 1968 Walkouts at Venice High School
64. 1967 Century City Antiwar Protest Far more powerfully, the Century Plaza confrontation foreshadowed the explosive growth of the national antiwar movement and its inevitable confrontations with police. It shaped the movement’s rising militancy, particularly among the sizable number of middle-class protesters who expected to do nothing more than chant against Johnson outside the $1,000-a-plate Democratic Party fundraising dinner and were outraged by the LAPD’s hard-line tactics. Johnson rarely campaigned in public again, except for appearances at safe places like military bases. Within nine months, opposition to the war grew so strong that he shelved his reelection campaign. White liberals in Los Angeles, meanwhile, began to complain about excessive force by the LAPD, a subject traditionally raised only by black and Latino residents. By the next summer, when Chicago police beat demonstrators in the street outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the country was at war with itself. In retrospect, the Century Plaza demonstration was one of the earliest battlegrounds. …
65. Free Huey Huey P. Newton, in full Huey Percy Newton, (born February 17, 1942, Monroe, Louisiana, U.S.—died August 22, 1989, Oakland, California), American political activist, cofounder (with Bobby Seale) of the Black Panther Party (originally called Black Panther Party for Self-Defense). An illiterate high-school graduate, Newton taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law. While at Merritt he met Seale. In Oakland in 1966 they formed the Black Panther group in response to incidents of alleged police brutality and racism and as an illustration of the need for Black self-reliance. At the height of its popularity during the late 1960s, the party had 2,000 members in chapters in several cities. In 1967 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of a police officer. His imprisonment sparked protests—and the popular rallying cry “Free Huey.” His conviction was overturned in 1970, and he was released from prison. In 1971 he announced that the party would adopt a nonviolent manifesto and dedicate itself to providing social services to the Black community, which included free meals for children and health clinics. In 1974 Newton was accused of another murder and fled to Cuba for three years before returning to face charges; two trials resulted in hung juries.
66. 1969 UCLA philosophy department hired Angela Davis
67. 1968 Female student being arrested at Venice High School Walkout LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 12: Image originally published on March 13, 1968--Police struggle to arrest a female student at Venice High School during a clash with 1,000 students. She was accused of using obscene and abusive language. Eight people were arrested. March 1, 1968: Over 15,000 Chicanos, students, faculty, and community members, walk out of seven East L.A. high schools. Those schools included: Garfield, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Belmont, Wilson, Venice, and Jefferson High School. Some students from East L.A. junior high schools join the protests, as well
68. 1971 “Liberation,” January 1971 issue of Gidra Though Gidra included women on its staff and women’s issues in its pages, a series of “rap sessions” led to a special women’s issue in 1971 with the word “Liberation” and a large Venus symbol on the cover. The issue linked international questions to those at home, from war brides and G.I.s to struggles of women within the Asian American Movement. The focus on the global and the local was also present in the popular International Women’s Day celebrations. Beginning in 1974, the festival united many of the different Movement groups in a common recognition of women’s struggles.
69. 1966 Riots on the Sunset Strip
70. Chicana Feminists Chicana feminists in Southern California engaged in a range of groups and activities, both on college campuses and in their communities - often both. Regardless of the specifics of their politics or focus, most were initially politicized in the Chicano movement of the late 1960s; and most developed their feminist consciousness as a result of their direct experience with sexism in that movement. The six individual narrators in this series reflect this common background. The four activists in Hijas de Cuauhtemoc (Anna NietoGomez, Corinne Sanchez, Leticia Hernandez and Sylvia Castillo) cut their political eye teeth in the Chicano student group, UMAS/MEChA, at CSULB. In fact, it was their experiences in MEChA that motivated them to form the Hijas group (which published a newspaper by the same name). They were also involved in community groups and continued this activism after they left college, particularly in the Chicana Service Action Center. Yolanda Nava , who was one of the founding members of Comision Femenil Mexicana (CFM) and later served a term as president, was also introduced to the Chicano movement through MEChA. Although more than a decade older than these activists, Consuelo Nieto had similar experiences with sexism. Her introduction to the Chicano movement came while she was teaching in the schools in ELA, where high school students had organized to demand better education. A word about language in this series: While the term Anglo came to be used later, during the heyday of the Chicana feminist movement - and particularly in the debate and conflict with those who excoriated the feminists - White was the term most often used. In their interviews, the women themselves used the term White. It should also be noted that Cuauhtemoc is sometimes spelled "Cuahtemoc." NOTE: The interviews with the founders and former members of Hijas de Cuauhtemoc were conducted by Maylei Blackwell for what became her larger research project. As a courtesy to her, the audio recordings of these interviews will not be available until 2006. Until then, they can be used on-site at CSULB with her permission. See also her essay, "Contested histories: las hijas de Cuauhtâemoc, Chicana feminisms, and print culture in the Chicano movement, 1968-1973" in Gabriela Arredondo et al., Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) and the response by Anna NietoGomez. See also the writings of Anna NietoGomez, and other femenista pioneers in Alma Garcia, ed., Chicana Feminist Thought: Basic Historical Writings. New York: Routledge, 1997.
71. 1960s/1970s GIDRA sisters
72. March 1968 Sal Castro with walkout students at Lincoln High School Image courtesy of LA Times Photographic Archive, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. Set the Night on Fire: "Castro, a high school teacher long active in liberal and Mexican-American causes, was a key force in organizing student walkouts to protest school conditions in East L.A. The "Blowouts", as they were soon called, were genesis events in the emergence of a new, militant "Chicano" identity.