archives of global protestsReigniting a call to action
by Juan Gonzalez | www.nydailynews.comWhen a movie called "Walkout" premiered on HBO two weeks ago, no one had any idea it would inspire hundreds of thousands of Hispanics across the country to march in the streets and end up altering a major debate in Congress over immigration reform.
But that's precisely what happened with a new movie by Edward James Olmos and Moctesuma Esparza, two of Hollywood's biggest Latino filmmakers.
Directed by Olmos and produced by Esparza, the film recreates a spontaneous school walkout against ethnic discrimination by more than 20,000 Chicano high school students in Los Angeles back in March 1968.
The conflict became a turning point in the civil rights battle of California's Mexican-American community. Several of the student rebels went on to become respected figures in Los Angeles, including Vicky Castro, the former school board president, and filmmaker Esparza himself.
Even Antonio Villaraigosa, the current mayor, has said he was influenced by the walkout.
In the decades since, Esparza, who later studied film at UCLA, produced such acclaimed movies as "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez," "The Milagro Beanfield War," "Selena" and "Gettysburg."
But with the recent rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in the country, Esparza and Olmos were determined to resurrect the lessons of that nearly forgotten 1968 strike for a new generation of Latinos.
"We made this movie to be an actual manual on how to organize," Esparza told me yesterday.
In the month before the film's official March 18 premiere on HBO, Esparza and Olmos conducted a whirlwind tour of 20 cities where they showed the film to thousands of Latinos.
By sheer coincidence, their tour came only weeks after Republicans in the House passed a sweeping bill to crack down on illegal immigration. Under that bill, undocumented workers could be prosecuted as felons and immediately deported. Even religious or social workers who provided humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants could be prosecuted.
The deportation threat is felt most strongly by Mexican immigrants, who comprise the majority of our nation's undocumented workers but who face disproportionate targeting by immigration officials.
While Mexicans represent about 57% of of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants, they comprise more than 80% of the people deported by the federal government between 1996 and 2002.
Even worse, there are now more than 3 million Latino children who were born in this county and are U.S. citizens, but whose parents remain undocumented. Those children face possible separation from their parents.
That's why so many Latinos have poured into the streets of America's big cities during the past few weeks. And that's why tens of thousands of high school students in Los Angeles and across the Southwest resorted to a new wave of walkouts during the past week.
"Many young people have seen this film and have been inspired by its message," Esparza said proudly, calling it "rebirth of social consciousness in my community."
Back in Washington, few Republicans will openly admit it, but the massive protests already have had an impact on the debate in Congress.
"This issue has got the attention of Hispanics like no other issue in history," said Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.). He and other moderate Republicans are bucking their party's extreme wing and are backing a compromise passed by the Judiciary Committee late Monday night. That bill offers undocumented workers a way to achieve temporary legal status and even citizenship after 11 years, by paying a stiff fine for breaking immigration laws and remaining law-abiding.
The Senate debate over the contending bills is expected to stretch into next week. Meanwhile, the timely movie by Esparza and Olmos, like most cable films, will be repeated several times over the next month. So will, I suspect, the wave of protests it has inspired.
Originally published on March 30, 2006