Communication the Cornerstone of Mothers of East L.A. : JUANA GUTIERREZ

At first we started in the school for our kids to get a sports program because I was the PTA president and we organized the parents. The reason I started was because of my kids. I have nine kids--the youngest is 20 and the oldest is 34. Not only for my kids but for the community kids. This was 28 years ago.

We started in grammar schools and worked to organize parents in high school because we fought against the archdiocese when the monsignor wanted to close Cathedral High. We had meetings with the bishop and the people in the archdiocese and it was a victory.

I’ve worked for 12 years in the neighborhood watch program and the same people in the neighborhood watch program are in Mothers of East L.A. We all talk with, and have meetings with, families and with the police, but we don’t need that much police protection because we police the area, especially the playground across the street.

When you work together, when the community works together, you have more security. Sometimes we need the police, but sometimes the people, the captains for the neighborhood, provide the security. I have the telephone numbers for all my neighbors and my neighbors have my number. We have a lot of communication with the Hollenbeck (Division). The gangs know we have this program and I don’t have problems with them. Everyone knows Juana Gutierrez. On Whittier Boulevard some kids do some things, but not on my block.

We ask the people what we need in our community and yes, it’s important to clean the streets and get rid of the graffiti and the robbers, but the most important thing, people said, was unemployment. . . . There are families that live underneath the bridges because they have nowhere else to go because they don’t have a job. You see the footage of people in other parts of the world where people are hungry and have no homes, yet no one comes here to film the people under the bridges.