This story was produced under The LA Local’s Youth Journalism Program. To learn more or to get involved, click here.
Students piled onto a flatbed in front of City Hall and chanted, “ICE OUT OF LA!”
Rain poured down, soaking students who shielded themselves with flags and posters calling for an end to the ongoing federal immigration raids nationwide.
Over the past school year, LAUSD students have exercised their First Amendment right to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In 1968, Chicano students used similar tactics to fight back against systematic inequalities in their schools.
Victoria “Vickie” Castro, one of the few women who helped organize the 1968 East LA Walkouts, still remembers the route she took to pick up fellow student activists across Eastside neighborhoods. They met at local parks and the Church of Epiphany, known for being used by leaders of the United Farm Workers as a base.
Together, organizers mobilized as many as 22,000 students to protest educational inequality.
Castro said she learned to navigate “machismo” within the movement early on. “If there was a meeting or a rally, you were expected to be the secretary,” she said.
Castro once served as the president of Young Chicanos for Community Action, an organization that later developed into the Brown Berets after her departure. She is now an active participant with the East Los Angeles chapter of the Association of Mexican Educators.
As Latino activists grapple with revelations from a recent New York Times investigation into one of the movement’s prominent figures, Castro recalls her own experience organizing in a male-dominated space.
Student reporter Maya Everhart Sanchez spoke with Castro about organizing walkouts, navigating family pressure and hiding from a cousin who worked as an East Los Angeles Sheriff during demonstrations.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
What were some of the ways organizers met during the 1968 walkouts?
“We started meeting at Laguna Park, which is now Salazar Park, and we met there for a long time. Then we started meeting at the Church of the Epiphany. Father Luce was the pastor there, and he offered a meeting place. We had the downstairs, and La Raza newspaper came out of there. That was like our center.
Then I think it was David Sanchez that came up with the idea of us opening up a coffee house. There were no coffee houses in East LA. So we established La Piranha, which was on Olympic and Goodrich, which is now the Tamayo restaurant. I always remember that I was the only one over 21, so I signed the lease. But Father Luce and David Sanchez had received some grant to pay the rent, and so that’s how we started.”
In what ways do your experiences with police as a student organizer mirror those of other student activists today?
“I don’t remember personally experiencing anything until the actual day of the multiple school walkouts. That was the first time I witnessed violence. I was on the outside of the school, seeing kids having to jump the fence, getting squashed, and then seeing some of the Hollenbeck police, I assume LAPD, telling kids to get back in school, and using their batons to hit people. That’s the first time I witnessed anything like that. And after that, it was very scary and ugly.”
How were student activists able to travel from school to school during the 1968 walkouts?
“I was one of the few that owned a car. I was the Uber of the times. In fact, I even had a route when we had meetings. A lot of it was depending on each other. I remember I used to pick up David Sanchez, and then I would go to Moctesuma, because he lived right off of Brooklyn. And then I would go up to Soto, Moctesuma Esparza lived right there and then Paula Crisostomo lived in El Sereno. So I had a route. I was the only one with a car for a long time. I was a college student. They were all still high school students. We just depended on who was going, where, and who had a ride.”
What conversations did you have around safety while organizing? Or what conversations did you wish you had?
“We were very naive. We never thought we were doing anything that was illegal … More of our talk was ‘how can the Brown Berets protect the students from the sheriffs or the police?’ It was never emergency-oriented. In fact, when arrests were made, it was quite shocking, because we were just voicing our concerns and our right to voice those concerns.”
When you walked out, do you remember being supported by your community? And what did that support look like?
“Being Chicana, being Mexican American, it was a little hard, because we’re brought up to respect schools. One of the things that we did as we were encouraging kids to walk out when we would meet with a group, especially at team posts or at schools, we always wanted them to know why they were walking out. At first we were called communists, this and that, but we had been trying to do things in the proper channels, politely, that respectful way, and it wasn’t getting us anywhere.”
What led you back to school reform, and eventually to serving on the LAUSD Board of Education?
“I was selected to be a principal at Belvedere Junior High. I’m back in my neighborhood. I was having a lot of fun there. Then we started a mariachi. I’m just having a blast, a good time at Belvedere except violence escalated. That year was one of my last years there that I was principal. We lost five kids to gang violence, all junior high school kids. I was very lucky because that East LA Sheriff that I used to avoid during the walkouts was now captain of the East LA sheriffs. So I could call him. I had his support, but I didn’t have the support of the school district.
When it came time for me to be evaluated, they were going to demote me. Instead, I had all those I had made friends with. I was calling and asking for advice, and [they] told me, run for the board. That’s the only way you’re going to change things. So I ran, and I got elected, and the first thing I did is put school police in uniforms and have marked cars. I was there for eight years.”
Is there anything I didn’t ask that you think is worth mentioning as it pertains to student organizing?
“I worry more today because the things I see now that are struggles are more serious. Not that our issues weren’t serious, but we’ve had victories that are being taken away from us, ethnic studies, this whole thing about taking them out of the schools, renaming them. Do we really, truly need a revolution now? I’m more frightened now than I was at any other [point] in my career. But what I do enjoy now is there’s so many articulate, focused young individuals that are taking college seriously, and that’s my hope.”