David Sanchez | |
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 Sanchez in 1983 | |
| Born | David John Sanchez January 3, 1948 |
| Known for | Civil rights activist |
David Sanchez (born January 3, 1948) is an American civil rights activist, and founding member of the Brown Berets. In the 1960s and 70s he was heavily involved in the Chicano civil rights and political movements.
An accomplished student in high school, in 1966 Sanchez chaired Mayor Sam Yorty's youth council. However personal experiences with police brutality from the LAPD radicalized his politics and world view. [1] With other high school students, Sanchez helped found the Young Chicanos for Community Action. [2] With his leadership, the Young Chicanos For Community Action eventually became the Brown Berets. [3] The Brown Berets advocated for better schools and the fair treatment of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles. [3] The organization also worked on farmworkers' rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, and organizing against police brutality. [4]
Known as the "Prime Minister," Sanchez played a key role in the organization of the Chicano Moratorium and the East L.A. walkouts. [5] [6] In 1969, Sanchez and the Brown Berets established the East LA Free Clinic on Whittier Boulevard. [7] He was at the National Chicano Moratorium March on August 29, 1970, and was friends with journalist Ruben Salazar who was killed that day. [8]
In 1972, Sanchez led the Occupation of Catalina Island, which was meant to draw attention on the continuing struggles of Mexican-Americans in the United States. [9]
After disbanding the Brown Berets, Sanchez went to work for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, and taught Mexican American Studies at several community colleges in Los Angeles county. [10] In 2005, Sanchez ran for the Los Angeles City Council District 14 seat, losing to José Huizar, and in 2012 he ran in the race for California's 40th congressional district, losing to Lucille Roybal-Allard. [11]
Chicano or Chicana is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans who have a non-Anglo self-image, embracing their Mexican Native ancestry. Chicano was originally a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture. In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of indigenous descent. Chicano developed its own meaning separate from Mexican American identity. Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into the mainstream American culture and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance. The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement.
M.E.Ch.A. is a US-based organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through political action. The acronym of the organization's name is the Chicano word mecha, which is the Chicano pronunciation of the English word match and therefore symbolic of a fire or spark; mecha in Spanish means fuse or wick. The motto of MEChA is 'La Union Hace La Fuerza'.
The Revolt of the Cockroach People is a novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta. It tells the story of a Chicano lawyer, "Buffalo Zeta Brown", fictionalizing events from Oscar Acosta's own life, including the East L.A. walkouts at Garfield High School, the founding of the Brown Berets, the Christmas protests at St. Basil's church, the Castro v. Superior Court decision of 1970, Acosta's run for sheriff of Los Angeles County later that year, the Chicano National Moratorium, and the death of Ruben Salazar, who is referred to as "Roland Zanzibar" in the novel. Acosta uses the historical events of the late 1960s and early 1970s "as the context for the construction of a Chicano identity and the realization of a revolutionary class consciousness."
The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War. Led by activists from local colleges and members of the Brown Berets, a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, the coalition peaked with a August 29, 1970 march in East Los Angeles that drew 30,000 demonstrators. The march was described by scholar Lorena Oropeza as "one of the largest assemblages of Mexican Americans ever." It was the largest anti-war action taken by any single ethnic group in the USA. It was second in size only to the massive U.S. immigration reform protests of 2006.
The Brown Berets is a pro-Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Party. The Brown Berets was part of the Third World Liberation Front. It worked for educational reform, farmworkers' rights, and against police brutality and the Vietnam War. It also sought to separate the American Southwest from the control of the United States government.
Ruben Salazar was a civil rights activist and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the first Mexican journalist from mainstream media to cover the Chicano community, in the US.
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Chicanos also expressed solidarity and defined their culture through the development of Chicano art during El Movimiento, and stood firm in preserving their religion.
Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community.
The East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were a series of 1968 protests by Chicano students against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. The students who organized and carried out the protests were primarily concerned with the quality of their education. This movement, which involved thousands of students in the Los Angeles area, was identified as "the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States".
Salvador B. Castro was a Mexican-American educator and activist. He was most well known for his role in the 1968 East Los Angeles high school walkouts, a series of protests against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) schools. After he retired from teaching, he continued to lecture about his experiences and the importance of education, especially for Mexican Americans.
Carlos Montes is a nationally respected leader in the Chicano, immigrant rights, and anti-war movements. He was a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano working class youth organization in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Brown Berets were inspired by and often compared to the Black Panther Party. Montes was one of the leaders of the Chicano Blowouts, a series of walkouts of East Los Angeles high schools to protest against racism and inequality in Los Angeles-area high schools. He is portrayed by Fidel Gomez in the 2006 HBO movie Walkout.
Chicano poetry is a subgenre of Chicano literature that stems from the cultural consciousness developed in the Chicano Movement. Chicano poetry has its roots in the reclamation of Chicana/o as an identity of empowerment rather than denigration. As a literary field, Chicano poetry emerged in the 1960s and formed its own independent literary current and voice.
Las Adelitas de Aztlán was a short-lived Mexican American female civil rights organization that was created by Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes in 1970. Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes were all former members of the Brown Berets, another Mexican American Civil rights organization that had operated concurrently during the 1960s and 1970s in the California area. The founders left the Brown Berets due to enlarging gender discrepancies and disagreements that caused much alienation amongst their female members. The Las Adelitas De Aztlan advocated for Mexican-American Civil rights, better conditions for workers, protested police brutality and advocated for women's rights for the Latino community. The name of the organization was a tribute to Mexican female soldiers or soldaderas that fought during the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century.
The Chicano Art Movement represents groundbreaking movements by Mexican-American artists to establish a unique artistic identity in the United States. Much of the art and the artists creating Chicano Art were heavily influenced by Chicano Movement which began in the 1960s.
Gloria Arellanes is a political activist known for her involvement with the Brown Berets during the Chicano Movement and has been influential in the development of Chicana feminism. As the first female Prime Minister of the Brown Berets, Arellanes worked to include the Chicana perspective in fighting for Mexican rights in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Conflicts of covert "macho attitude" within the delegation of labor in the Brown Berets led Gloria Arellanes along with other female Brown Berets to leave the organization and create Las Adelitas de Aztlán. Similar to the Brown Berets, Las Adelitas de Aztlán strived to assist its community members in creating awareness for better bilingual education in Los Angeles as well as protesting against the Vietnam War. Arellanes was also a prominent figure in the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, leading Las Adelitas de Aztlán to participate in marches against the violence of the Vietnam War.
La Memoria De Nuestra Tierra: California 1996 is a 10 ft x 30 ft rectangular mural, currently located in the University of Southern California's Graduate Student Lounge within the Ronald Tutor Campus Center. The mural was painted by artist Judy Baca in collaboration with students from the University's Roski School of Art and Design. This piece shows the Chicano history of Southern California through the depiction of various images inspired by the native history of the land and the more modern conflicts and issues Latinos have suffered.
Rosalio Muñoz is a Chicano activist who is most recognized for his anti-war and anti-police brutality organizing with the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. On August 29, 1970, Muñoz and fellow Chicano activist Ramses Noriega organized a peaceful march in East Los Angeles, California in which over 30,000 Mexican Americans were in attendance to protest the war in Vietnam. The event became a site of police brutality after sheriffs attacked and tear gassed the crowd, leading to the deaths of three people, including Muñoz's friend and Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar.
A Mexican American is a resident of the United States who is of Mexican descent. Mexican American-related topics include the following:
Victoria "Vickie" Castro is an American educator and political activist known for her work with the Young Citizens for Community Action, Brown Berets, and the East L.A. walkouts. Castro went on to work for the Los Angeles Unified School District, and eventually ran for office becoming a member of the LA School Board.
The Occupation of Catalina Island began on August 30, 1972, when the Brown Berets, a Chicano-rights organization, occupied Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles, for three weeks. The Berets, led by their "Prime Minister" David Sanchez, claimed the territory rightfully belonged to Mexico and demanded that its 42,000 acres of undeveloped land be developed into housing.
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