Seeing How Deep Grass Roots Have Grown

The organizers of the Latino march and rally in Washington, who were told it couldn’t be done, are pretty satisfied with themselves. Getting 20,000 to 30,000 people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American and Cuban descent together for the march--and wide media coverage--was no easy task.

“It was an unprecedented success,” says Juan Jose Gutierrez of Los Angeles, the lead coordinator of the event that drew thousands of participants from across Southern California.

But there’s little time to savor the moment, because the activists who made it happen now face a bigger challenge: How do they keep up the momentum created by the Oct. 12 march and rally?

And perhaps more important, can these grass-roots types in Coordinadora ‘96, led by Gutierrez, become players in the national debate on immigration and other issues that affect Latinos?

The answers to these questions will take some time to emerge, of course.

So far, Latino political leaders say the march coordinators are welcomed as a new national voice for immigrants, workers and civil rights, although some are cool to various elements of their seven-point plan. For others, the march and the organizers’ agenda are seen with some confusion and mistrust.

Part of the anxiety stems from the emphasis on immigrants and the presence of foreign flags at the Oct. 12 events. But Gutierrez says that Coordinadora leaders advocate a broader civil rights agenda, including retention of affirmative action, citizen review boards of police departments and a $7-an-hour minimum wage.

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Also in the organizers’ seven-point platform are expansion of health services, an extended amnesty program for illegal immigrants, free public education for all, and human and constitutional rights for all.

Gutierrez and other like-minded activists are exploring plans to establish a Washington-based advocacy and lobbying organization to push the interests of Latinos and, in particular, immigrants. It’s a group whose time has come, Gutierrez says.

“We are going to continue the work we began three years ago when planning for the Washington event started,” Gutierrez said. “We want to take part in the democratic process and have access as full partners in the nation’s decision-making. When it comes to immigration policy, for example, we expect to have our views represented.”

Feeling that these concerns haven’t had a full airing in Washington, Gutierrez said Coordinadora leaders have asked for a meeting with President Clinton. The White House has not responded.

There had also been talk of a meeting with Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, but that seemed to peter out as organizers concentrated on staging the event in Washington.

In the last year, Congress has cut benefits for both illegal and legal immigrants, and in recent days Dole has launched renewed attacks on illegal immigration.

The new Latino immigrants advocacy organization--so far unnamed--would also plan to continue Coordinadora work in adult citizenship classes, naturalization campaigns and voter registration efforts.

Leaders of some Latino national organizations, who seemingly took a cautious approach to the Latino march, welcomed the formation of the immigrants advocacy group in Washington.

“We’ve been kind of lonely voices here in Washington,” said Lisa Navarrette, spokeswoman for the Washington-based National Council of La Raza. “This new group would bring something to the table because we don’t have people to spare in this battle.”

Arturo Vargas, executive director of a national association of 5,400 elected and appointed Latino officials based in Los Angeles, thinks a national immigrants rights organization can apply needed pressure on crucial issues.

“The element of mobilizing the grass roots in our family [of Latino organizations] is missing,” Vargas said. “We as officeholders can work pulling on the agenda on the inside, but we also need someone on the outside who is pushing.”

Vargas referred to the 1991 redrawing of boundaries of legislative districts in California to illustrate this point. While Latino politicos in Sacramento negotiated for more favorable boundaries for potential Latino candidates--in line with court decisions--community meetings on the issue were sometimes dominated by Latino activists who argued for the same thing.

The combination helped persuade the powers that be that Latinos were a growing population entitled to more representation.

Largely because of those changes in voting districts, the number of Latinos in the state Legislature increased from seven in 1991 to 13 today.

A new organization must clear some major hurdles in order to be a player on the national stage. Among them are money and leadership.

Coordinadora ’96 staged the 2 1/2-mile march and the rally at the Ellipse, south of the White House, on a shoestring. The electrical and electronics workers union provided an office for Gutierrez and others to use to plan the event. Other unions also provided help.

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In a telephone interview from Washington, Gutierrez acknowledged last week that it could take millions of dollars to firmly establish the new group, and no detailed plan yet exists of how to raise the money.

Gutierrez, 39, said he does not want to be personally involved in raising the funds for the new group, but he did not rule out returning to Washington to head it.

He took a two-month leave from his post as executive director of One Stop Immigration and Educational Center on Los Angeles’ Eastside to head the effort in Washington. He said he is returning to Los Angeles this week to continue his work at One Stop.

Several of the 27 Coordinadora executive board members are from Los Angeles, and they may have a say on who would lead the new organization. Among the L.A. leaders are Jose Jacques Medina, a subordinate of Gutierrez’s at One Stop; UCLA history professor Juan Gomez-Quinones; John Fernandez of the Los Angeles school district’s Mexican-American Education Commission, and John Perez, the Los Angeles metro director for the Mexican-American Political Assn.

Although some Latino politicians--primarily those from the East Coast--went to the Washington event, practically all of those from Southern California stayed away. Gutierrez, however, went out of his way not to criticize them.

“We would have liked our elected officials to stand with our community,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Their reasons were valid as reasons go. We have the great respect for them, but we must continue to do our work of mass mobilization.”

Whatever hesitation local Latino politicians may have had about the march, two prominent officeholders contacted by The Times were effusive in praising the Washington demonstration and Gutierrez.

“Its time has come,” said state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles). “I applaud Juan Jose Gutierrez.”

Added Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who admitted he might not agree with all seven demands of the new group:

“But I’ll support it. You gotta hand it to Juan Jose. He’s one of the few to organize a march like the one in Washington.”

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Perhaps the biggest barrier for this new group is the vexing notion that Latinos in this country still hold allegiances to another country. During the 1994 anti-Proposition 187 rally that Gutierrez helped organize in downtown Los Angeles, the numerous Mexican flags seen in the crowd of 70,000 turned off many people, including some Latino politicians who accused Gutierrez of playing into the hands of those seeking to pass the measure.

Some observers, such as conservative columnist and prominent Latina Republican Linda Chavez, watched the Washington event on C-SPAN and said they were bothered by the number of foreign flags at the demonstration.

Independent political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe had much the same reaction. “I saw the picture of the march in the L.A. Times [where the Mexican flag was clearly visible], and I just question whether that would resonate with the large electorate,” she said.

Gutierrez, who along with Chavez was on a recent program reviewing the march on Santa Monica public radio station KCRW-FM, retorted that that was a simplistic reaction.

“We are not separatists,” he said later. “We are Americans. We aren’t going anywhere.”

Gutierrez said the appearance of foreign flags at the Washington march was more a statement of ethnic pride in where marchers or their ancestors came from, rather than a statement of allegiance to that country.

“There were more Puerto Rican flags than Mexican flags at the march and Puerto Rico isn’t a foreign land,” Gutierrez added. “It’s part of the United States.”

Some advocates of stricter U.S. immigration laws roll their eyes at the notion of a new Latino advocacy group lobbying Congress and federal officials with the idea that illegal immigrants have rights too.

That position is out of sync with the prevailing mood in this country, argues Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It will create, like in ancient Rome, a nation within a nation,” Stein said.

On a personal level, however, those comments carry little weight with folks like Alvin Sanchez, 48, a postal supervisor from Rosemead who thinks the struggle on behalf of immigrants, as well as for himself, has just begun.

“I think we should go forward from this and not let this die out,” he said upon his return from Washington. “Some people say 30 years of affirmative action is enough. But hey, 30 years is nothing compared to what we’ve gone through for hundreds of years.”