Latino advocates hold first statewide meeting
BREWSTER, Wash. – There is no question why the League of United Latin American Citizens chose this remote agricultural town in Okanogan County as the venue for its first state meeting.
Brewster has become the focus of Latino rights issues since Hispanic parents here protested what they saw as unequal treatment of their children in the schools. The Brewster School District is currently engaged in a federal civil rights lawsuit brought against it by some of those parents.
“The meeting was held here to support the parents,” said Jorge Chacon, president of the Wenatchee chapter of LULAC, “to show them that there is an organization very much in support of what is happening here.”
LULAC chapters have formed across the state since Maria Rodriguez-Salazar, now national vice president for the Northwest region, first organized the Brewster parents. Their representatives gathered here Saturday for lectures and training by the civil rights organization’s national leadership.
Representatives came from Seattle, Bellevue, Monroe, Pasco and Wenatchee.
Washington is seen as ripe for recruitment, especially in the central part of the state, where traditionally Anglo farming communities have seen Latino populations swell in the past 20 years.
“Many people are resistant to cultural change,” said Brent Wilkes, LULAC’s national executive director. “We need to make sure the Latino population in Washington is willing to stand up for itself.”
Changing the state’s educational system, in which half of Latino students never graduate, is seen as central to the civil rights struggle.
Heading the list of topics on LULAC’s agenda Saturday were the Washington Assessment of Student Learning exams, which many in the group see as discriminatory; cultural insensitivity in the schools; lack of quality career counseling; and unequal discipline.
Graciela Lange, president of the Bellevue council, cited school bans on “gang clothing” as an excuse for racial profiling. What constitutes gang attire, she said, should not be left to arbitrary discretion of school administrators.
She cited the example of a Bellevue student with a 3.5 grade point average who was suspended for wearing blue shoelaces – blue supposedly being a gang color. It is also one of the school colors.
Latino students, Lange said, “are not getting the resources they need to succeed. They’re not passing WASL. They’re not getting career counseling.”
After introductions and a prayer Saturday, the groups broke up into classes at the Rio Theater in Brewster. One group learned about LULAC’s history since it was formed in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1929. Its first major anti-discrimination case, Mendez v. Westminster in 1946, predated the landmark Brown v. Board of Education.
Downstairs, members were instructed in finances and fund raising.
Later, Javier Montanez, of San Antonio, national vice president for youth, instructed members on how to form LULAC youth chapters to perform community service and steer teenagers away from gangs.
On Friday Montanez, accompanied by youth leaders from Arizona and Texas, conducted training courses in Quincy, Wash. The conditions he saw in central Washington, he said, reminded him of Latino struggles against substandard housing, lack of sanitation and pesticides in Texas and California during the 1960s.
Montanez, a retired Air Force sergeant who spent time in Iraq in 2003, said he teaches young Latinos that preserving their culture and heritage in Anglo society does not have to be confrontational.
“They are not here to destroy your way of life,” he said. “They are here to make a life of their own.”