|
SCitizen Projects
From Student Walkouts to Mass Marches:
How Chicano Student Activists Forged a Lifelong Commitment to Civic Engagement
Facilitators: Dr. Felix Gutierrez, Reverend Will Wauters, and Rocio Zamora
Please note: This program will have commitments on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday from 8:30am-12pm and Sunday from 8:30am to 7pm.
Abstract:
This program will bring participants to The Church of the Epiphany to engage in conversations with community and professional leaders whose activism began when they were high school or college students participating in activities associated with the church or the organizations that met there. Community members will share first-hand experiences of ways they confronted issues on and off campus, proposed bold solutions to long-standing barriers to equal rights, and confronted racist and discriminatory treatment by institutions meant to serve them. Many programs now taken for granted on university campuses, such as ethnically targeted student and faculty recruitment initiatives, Latina/o and Chicana/o studies programs, Latina/o student organizations, and Latina/o campus centers were first created because of the demands made by 1960s and 1970s Chicano students. These college students were also participants in off-campus political and social activism in protesting the Vietnam War, supporting the United Farmworkers Union, organizing the 1968 Chicano high school walkouts, and other community activities. They will share first-hand experiences of how their student activism led to advocacy and leadership in their professions, communities and families. Special attention will be paid to the recent and continuing marches, strikes and boycotts associated with the efforts to secure equal rights for immigrants coming to work in the United States and other social justice movements.
Summary of the Organization:
For more than 40 years the historic Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Lincoln Heights has served as a meeting place, office, and advocacy base for those advocating for equal rights for all people. During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s the church and its pastors provided a base for organizing Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers efforts, acted as the founding home of La Raza newspaper, became a meeting place for the group that became the Brown Berets, and served as a rallying point for many progressive social, educational and political gatherings. The valuable role the Church of the Epiphany played then continues today. In recognition of its importance, the city has declared the architecturally significant 1886 church building a City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Site, and the California Council of the Humanities has funded The Oral Histories Project of the Church of the Epiphany and the Chicano Movement.
Facilitator Bioraphies:
 |
Félix F. Gutiérrez, professor of Journalism and Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication and Affiliate Professor in the Program in American Studies & Ethnicity, grew up in East Los Angeles and attended public schools in Lincoln Heights into his teenage years. After earning a bachelor’s from Cal State University, Los Angeles, in 1965 and masters in journalism from Northwestern University in 1967, he worked for Educational Participation in Communities (EPIC) at Cal State LA, a forerunner to USC’s JEP program. He soon became co-advisor to the new United Mexican American Students (UMAS) organization that was taking an active role in advocating full participation of Chicanos on campus and in the community. In this position, and later with Los Angeles’ anti-poverty program, he worked with Chicano student and community organizations and also served as media liaison for activist groups to bring accurate news of the Chicano movement to general audiences, Spanish-language and underground media from 1967 to 1969. In 1969, Gutierrez was appointed Assistant Dean of Students at Stanford University and worked with students active in the new MEChA organization and other Chicano student activities. He has continued working with MEChA while earning his Ph.D. at Stanford, as a faculty member at California State University Northridge, and as a professor at USC since 1979. He currently is co-advisor to the Annenberg Latino Students Association (ALSA). He is the co-author of five books and more than 50 journal articles and book chapters, nearly all of which deal with racial and ethnic diversity in the news media.
|
| |
Fr. Will Wauters graduated from Stanford University and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He is currently an Episcopal priest at the Church of the Epiphany in East Los Angeles in the Diocese of Los Angeles. He is a leader for the large community organization One LA-IAF which is affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. His background activities in One LA include health care and education reform, employment development, and alternatives for juvenile justice. Fr. Wauters has had churches in Jersey City, New Jersey, San Francisco, Ca. and San Antonio, Texas. While in Texas as a leader in the IAF organizations COPS/METRO ALLIANCE, he helped to found Project Quest, a pioneering job training program, that won an Innovations in Government Award from the Ford Foundation/Kennedy School at Harvard. Fr. Wauters was also appointed by Governor Ann Richards to the Texas Workforce and Economic Development Commission. He has previously been the Director of the Huelga School in Delano, Ca. with Cesar Chavez and The United Farmworkers. He has also worked for over three decades with immigrants and refugees from Mexico and Central America. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of La Clinica del Monsignor Oscar Romero.
|
| |
Rocio Zamora is a second-year graduate student in print journalism in USC's Annenberg School for Communication. She grew up in the Boyle Heights section of East Los Angeles and graduated from Roosevelt High School before earning her bachelor's degree at UCLA. This past spring semester she was an intern for the Eastern Group newspapers in East Los Angeles and this summer is working for a newspaper in South Africa as part of a USC international program. She is fully bilingual in Spanish and English and hopes to use these skills and her knowledge of Latinos in the United States when she begins her career as a print or broadcast reporter. |
|
