Daniel Lopez: I attended Lincoln High School and graduated in 1971.

NS: Looking back at your schooling, did adults at your school demonstrate respect for all the students at the school?

DL: Not everybody. I would say the majority of the teachers did show respect for us. But there were some who just didn’t. One time I was playing basketball during lunchtime and we had to use the gym, which is right next to the boys P.E. office. And I remember speaking to a friend of mine, Julio. We were playing basketball and I said in Spanish, “Damela, damela, pasamela!”(“Pass me the ball!”) And before I knew it my head was on the ground, on the floor. I looked up and I heard this man screaming and yelling at me. I see the spit and the veins popping from his forehead and his neck. He was saying to me, “Don’t ever-ever speak that T.J. language again.” And he was a Chicano.

NS: So it was not only verbal disrespect, but also physical.

DL: It was also physical, and I was scared to death. But back then you really never did anything against teachers. It was unfortunate that it was a Chicano himself who was telling me not to speak Spanish.

NS: And why do you think that is?

DL: I’m not sure. Some people say that they grew up in a different generation and at that time Spanish was not the language to speak unless you knew you were going to be a janitor for the rest of your life. Everybody who was cleaning up the banks, or picking up the trash in streets (in our area), were all Chicanos. But I don’t see that as an excuse.

NS: And what do you think that kind of treatment was based upon?

DL: I think they had very little respect for undocumented immigrants, which is what I was. Now, let me remind you, this was right in 1968. This happened about a week and a half before the blowouts and the 1968 walkouts, after that things changed. Now you hear the word "wetback," but back then we didn’t have Salvadoreños, Guatemaltecos, or even South Americans. It was mainly Mexicanos, Mexicans – “dumb Mexicans and T.J.’s,” that’s what they used to call us, and it was mainly the Chicanos themselves calling us that, it wasn’t the White population.

NS: Did you ever see any instances where other students were treated in the same way?

DL: I saw that not so much from teachers, but mainly from police – police on our way home. We were often stopped for no reason at all. We had dances at school and they would end at eleven thirty or eleven o’clock, and practically everybody walked home, no one had cars. On the way home we would just be stopped, even though we were just walking without causing any noise or anything. Immediately they searched us, made us go against the wall, spread out. They would search us for weapons and keep us there for a good thirty minutes. Then they would yell at us and tell us to go home. And those were the White officers.

NS: Okay. Did adults at your school demonstrate that they valued the students from different cultural backgrounds, and did they demonstrate that they valued students whose families spoke languages other than English?

DL: Before 1968, no. Before the walkouts, honestly it never happened. We were treated just like students. But after the walkouts things did change a lot; we had our ballet folklorico group and we didn’t have that before. We had a mariachi group. And for the first time we actually heard counselors calling us to talk about college, and taking entrance exams, such as, the SAT. Honestly we hadn’t even heard about these tests before. I was fortunate enough that when I graduated I had heard about SAT’s, and college applications, because it was after the walkouts.

NS: Did your school’s curriculum encourage students to draw upon knowledge that they learned at home and in their community?

DL: No, I don’t think so. Even after the walkouts, the main concern was about respecting us as students. But as far as bringing the culture from our home, and our background, I don’t think so.

NS: How did teachers or other adults respond when students shared this type of knowledge with each other?

DL: We had MeCha, which before was called UMAS. We had sponsors who would talk to us about the importance of an education. They would mention to us Chicano leaders of the past and we were encouraged to go along with leaders like Cesar Chavez. We used to go and picket SafeWay markets and picket the grapes and lettuce. Cesar Chavez was the first actual leader we heard about, and then also Ruben Salazar – the writer for the L.A. Times who was killed by the Sheriff’s department. He used to live here on Whittier Boulevard. But in those meetings we would share ideas about how to get financial aid, how to get into college, because none of us had parents who had ever gone to school, and our parents had no idea. Because of the walkouts we realized that there was a university after high school.

NS: So you had teacher sponsors?

DL: Yes, Mr. Castro was the main one, and he had two assistants, Mr. Cruz and Ms. Lopez. They were all young teachers. They were maybe in their mid-twenties. And I remember there was one Anglo teacher, Mr. Gordon, who taught social studies, who was also part of that group, and he walked-out with us. And they were all part of getting a ballet folklorico going, and getting speakers to talk to us about the importance of an education, and how to get into a university, and how to get good grades, even tutoring.

NS: And was there any opposition to these types of organizations?

DL: No. The only opposition that I remember was during the walkouts, because we had these clandestine meetings at night to organize the walkouts. People heard that we were going to walk out, so we were threatened that if we did, we would be kicked-out of school and our parents would have to come for parent conferences, that it was a crime. But nothing like that ever happened even though we walked out.

NS: What was the basis for those walkouts?

DL: The main basis was that we didn’t really get any respect. I was either in ninth or a tenth grade. I don’t remember being disrespected by teachers, except for that incident on the basketball court. But as far as people who actually knew what was going on… the importance of an education. We didn’t really know much about what it was about to really go to school and understand and learn, and become prepared for the future. But the people who knew, they felt that the fact that we were in a high school that was predominantly Mexican-American where there was only three Chicano teachers, and there was no Latino administrator, that it just wasn’t right. Something had to be done. There was no tutoring provided for any of us, and we lacked the skills of reading and writing, so we needed a lot of help. Our counselors were not Spanish-speaking counselors, nobody was bilingual. So we would either sink or swim. We were being prepared to go to the Vietnam War. College was not really in our plans because we were not aware of it. And our parents were definitely not aware of it. But the war was definitely in our plans – the army, the military. If you go back and look at our year book, at the bottom of everybody’s picture for the senior class is the question: "What are your plans for the future?" If you look at all the girls' answers, they wrote, “To be a secretary, to get married, to be a bank teller,” and those were the most important ones. For the guys, the answers read, “To go to the military, to go to the army, to go to navy, to go to the marines, to get a good job, to be in construction, to be a truck driver.” Very few say, “To go to college.”

NS: So, you can say, in short, that the walkouts were trying to open the doors of awareness, to show people other options.

DL: Yes.

NS: And did adults at your school send unspoken messages that communicated whether or not they cared about equal schooling?

DL: I feel that the adults at the school site had good intentions, but now that I am an educator myself I can see that the administration in general, the board of education, the school system, did not provide an equal education. There were three worlds. The Watts area, the Chicano area, and the White area. The White area was really being educated properly.

NS: And were you able to see that by the college numbers?

DL: I can see by my experience now as an educator because I’m still in a school that is overcrowded, where we have year-round school programs that are not in the White areas, because they wouldn’t put up with it. When we had bussing, it was forced bussing, really. We weren’t getting White students from the valley coming to the East L.A. area, and the African-American communities, it was the other way around. We were being bused to those areas with White students. And it’s still the same today.

NS: How do adults at your school demonstrate respect for all students?

DL: I say the primary show of respect would be that we really try the best we can to cope with the situation, as bad as it is. Because overcrowding is really bad, and working year-round is really terrible. I think everybody is trying to do their best. We really try to teach the kids. We follow the structures. We follow the standards. We are hardly ever absent. And we try to make the students feel at home. But as far as showing disrespect, it’s hard to say.

NS: I was a student here at Garfield from 1997 to 2001. We had a lot of teachers who were Latino. Are there more Latino teachers now that can relate to the experiences of the students that they are teaching? Can that be a reason?

DL: I think that could be a good reason. We have students who have graduated from here, who have attended the same schools, lived in the same community within the last ten to twenty years, same teachers, same textbooks, same curriculum and, yet, some of them are at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, the UC schools, and have become very successful in life. But on the other hand, we have some students who never really made it, and some of them are even in jail, some are criminals, some are lost. So we have both extremes, and I don’t really think we are at fault as teachers. I think it’s an issue of poverty.

NS: And the outside experiences that we have because of that poverty?

DL: Well, it’s just the fact that the families of these students don’t have the educational background. The parents don’t have the means that other parents in other economical communities have. For instance, at our school the average student has never had anybody in their family go to college, and, yet, you have other kids whose parents have been doctors and attorneys. I mean their exposure to life and the future is like years ahead of our kids. They are going to be the first ones, hopefully, and that’s pretty tough. They need a lot more understanding, a lot more guidance. We need a lot more programs. And being in an overcrowded school where we lack textbooks, we lack space; it just makes it even more difficult.

NS: Speaking of those conditions, can you explain in detail what they are?

DL: Number one to me is over-crowdedness. We are in classrooms that have forty students, and if there’s a student who needs a lot of help, a lot of one-on-one individual attention, it’s going to be really difficult to provide that, especially when we don’t have any T.As. Then students don't have enough time to eat lunch because by the time they get their lunch it’s already time to go to their next period. The library is always packed, there’s not enough space for everybody to go to the library, for the students to do research. We don’t have enough computers. We don’t have enough of everything that is necessary for these kids to really succeed. And other schools have twenty students to twenty-five students per class and it’s so much easier to take care of them, especially when they are so far ahead in their writing and reading skills.

NS: Does your school’s curriculum encourage students to draw upon knowledge that they learn at home and in their community?

DL: The textbooks that our kids read for their English classes don’t reflect the kind of background and culture that they need to have to be aware about themselves. We used to have a Chicano Studies class but it’s not offered anymore.

NS: Do adults at your school send unspoken messages that tell you whether or not they care about equal schooling?

DL: I think teachers do. I think we do send that message, because we all complain about the fact that our schools are overcrowded, we don’t have enough textbooks, we don’t have enough computers, we don’t have enough of the tools necessary to keep up with the rest of the world. And it’s one of the things we emphasize every time we talk to or through our union contract.

NS: So then these are actual things that you guys talk about everyday.

DL: Yes, at faculty meetings we talk about how to address the problems that we are facing today, including discipline. Discipline becomes a big problem due to the over-crowdedness, attendance, and drop-out rates.

NS: And through this dialogue, is anything accomplished?

DL: I think little by little it’s helping out. For instance, I know that about six years ago we started talking about the fact that a lot of our kids are probably bad readers because they need glasses. Even if they know that their eyesight is poor, they don’t have the insurance to afford prescription glasses. A lot of our students don’t even go to the doctor because they don’t have medical insurance. So we have programs now, we have clinics; we have a health person at school to provide that assistance for students, and we didn’t have that six years ago. We also have tutoring after school, now, everyday, and we even have it on Saturdays for kids that are lacking in certain skills. And we have the double English classes for the ninth graders who come in, who are lacking even more than the other. And this was pushed by both teachers and local site administrators.

NS: How would you know that schools are doing everything that they can to respect and validate their students’ culture, language, and community knowledge?

DL: You know if the school has activities that relate to the students’ roots and background. Like celebration of Cinco de Mayo, el 16 de Septiembre. Also, having successful alumni come back and speak to our kids, to motivate them to continue studying. Oscar de La Hoya came about a month ago, and there was a big rally. We had probably the best assembly we’ve had in many, many years. And by reading about people from our own community, people of our own roots who have been successful: business people, politicians, even athletes, actors in the movie industry. We need to celebrate the fact that we are who we are.

NS: What actions would you recommend to students or parents interested in joining the struggle for equality and educational justice?

DL: Just to get involved with school right now, to speak up and voice their concerns. To attend our bilingual advisory council meetings, back-to-school night, parent conferences. To be aware of what the students need to learn. But the only way that happens is if they come to school and find out.