David Martinez Interview    March 5, 2011

‹Back to Interview Biography List

David Martinez

David Martinez

TABLE OF CONTENTS – click topic to read

*This portion of the interview can be seen as a video clip.

JOSUE: My name is Josue and I’m a student from West High School. The rest of the students will introduce themselves. [Students introduce themselves Brennan is from AMES academy; Adrianna, Blanca, Louis, and Richie are all from West High School.]

JOSUE: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you immigrated to the USA?

DAVID: My name is David Martinez. We crossed the border in 1955. I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, which is in the northern region of Mexico. I don’t know if you guys know much about itthose of you who are Mexican or who know a little bit about the region of Monterrey, but we are a very distinctive recognition [grabs his elbow]. You guys know what that means, right? [Laughter] You all know what it means? So that’s your assignment[to find out what the gesture means]. We came over in 1955 and ended up in Fresno, Californiathat’s where I grew up and spent my elementary and high school years. [I] came to Utah in 1972 or 1971. I don’t even remember [the year].

KENT: You graduated from high school when?

DAVID: 1967.

LOUIS: How did you come here? Did you come illegally or with papers?

DAVID: No, we had papers. Back then it wasn’t as hard as it is today. Obviously lots of things have changed. You know I was asked that question a couple of timesand, in fact, my dad has talked to us a little bit about the process of getting papers. The way he tells us, back then he was well connected with local leaders, government leaders. I shouldn’t say he was well connected, because he wasn’t in government. They were just friends, comarades, and so they were able to put you, you know, up to the front of the line, and we just emigrated, came over. But [it was] nothing like today.

BRENNAN: What did your family do in Mexico for work?

DAVID: My dad well, you do what you can to survive in Mexico. You know, I was five when the decision was made [to leave], but I remember some of the things we would do. I have two older brothers, so they would be seven and nine [at the time], and I remember what they would do. I remember they would shine shoes, sell candy and newspapersyou know whatever you did, you hustled, even back at that age just to help the family income. My dad was, he worked in a gas station, you know just did an odd little business to get by.

BRENNAN: And what were the reasons you came?

DAVID: Well, the reason I came I asked that question when I was thirteen or fourteen to my dad living in California. And I asked himI must have been in the seventh or eighth gradeI asked him why the hell did you bring us to this country? You know, things weren’t going well back then. You started to see how things changing. You started to see at that age that life wasn’t equal. It was tougher being a Mexican and growing up in California. You could see some of the realities, and I remember his answer like if it was yesterday. He said, “Well, I just thought there would be more opportunities here for my family than back in Mexico,” so the decision was based on my parents’ belief that the US would give us, would give his family more opportunities. And I don’t think that’s changed today. I think that’s still the same for many other people who are here and followed us. I mean, I think every group of people from back in the immigration, the statue of liberty, the waves of Europeans, the waves of Italians, the waves of Dutch, I think it’s the same thing. I don’t think it’s changed. I think, you know, that’s the major reason people still come over here, for more opportunities.

KENT: Do you think his expectations were fulfilled?

DAVID: I think this is a wonderful land. I think there are many opportunities here. I think you just have to be able to navigate the system, be able to navigate the culture, the realities, but there are tons of opportunities here. So what you want [to do], if you want to make sure that you don’t miss out on those opportunities, because they’re here for the taking, is hard work and push forward and understand that life is not always the same for everybody, but the opportunities and the goals are to be met and those are there for everyone.

RICHIE: How was it living over in California?

DAVID: I mean, it’s beautiful weather. It’s a beautiful climate. You know you have everything at your fingertips. I grew up in Fresno, which is right in central California, so we were, you know, an hour and a half from the city to the north, and then two hours to the south was L.A., you got Pismo, you got Santa Monica. Yosemite was 90 miles from me. Sequoias, King’s Canyon, the Sierras, you know, so [it was a] wonderful place to grow up in. I don’t think that’s your question… [Laughs] No, it was tough; it was hard. You know, you’re poor; you come over to this country; your parents don’t speak English; there’s eight of you. You’re living in labor camps, and so all you can do, I mean, I still remember that, actually I remember I had just turned six and I remember that we got there on a Saturday night, slept Sunday, woke up Monday and I was picking blackberries the very next day. So I was a six-year-old kid picking blackberries. Have you ever picked blackberries? No, anybody picked blackberries? Kent, you pick blackberries? Okay. So, you know that the berries have stickers, and so you’d pick as many as you could, as fast as you could, because it was based on production. You know, our fingertips are very sensitive [laughs], so you would get to the point where you would develop calluses and stuff, but it was tough. And that’s the way it was, from that day `til I was 19, 18, you know. It was always farm work, it was always field-work. It was always grapes, peaches, whatever the season was, that’s what you’d do. You’d travel to San Jose to pick strawberries and green beans and apricots and peaches, plums, you know, finish up and then go back to school. And then you start doing the pruning of trees and the grapevines, you know, so it was a cycle. Every year that’s what we’d do.

RICHIE: Did you ever have any spare time?

DAVID: Oh yeah, yeah, lots of spare time, lots of spare time.

RICHIE: What’d you do in your spare time mostly?

DAVID: We read, we read a lot. We read in Spanish and English, so my parents demanded that we speak Spanish, read Spanish, write Spanish. We didn’t go to school, obviously, in a Spanish-speaking school, but that happened at home. So we’d do a lot of that, a lot of sports. My family was very active in sports, my dad was, so it was filled with that. A lot of movies, early on that’s how you’d learn English for the most part, you’d go to the, I don’t know, in Fresno there’s an area, section called Chinatown. A lot of California cities have those places, so I grew up in Chinatown. My dad, my family, my parents would go to the Mexican movies or Mexican show theaters, and we’d go over to the English movies, pay 10 cents, 25 cents to get in. We’d watch Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, The Cisco Kid…. They don’t know this, yeah. But that’s what we did, so a lot of academics and a lot of sports.

JOSUE: What other sports did you play?

DAVID: We played baseball, a lot of baseball in California, because of the weather. Track, basketball. So, not football, my mother never allowed us to play football. She didn’t like it; it was too rough. And I don’t understand why, because we also boxed.

KENT: It was okay to box [Laughs].

DAVID: Well, no, it wasn’t okay to box, she did not like, her family, my mom’s brothers were fighters in Mexico. In fact, her brother was the welterweight champion of Mexico, number five in the world back in the day. So she knew first hand how tough that sport is, but we love it, we love the sports. I don’t know if you guys boxed or have you done Golden Gloves, any of you? You do? Used to? It’s great, but it hurts when you get hit. So that’s what we’d do, I mean, we did school, education, work. After school then during the summers on Saturdays, and then sports. That usually entailed it all

ADRIANNA: Can you share a particular bad memory you have of high school? Like with your legal status?

DAVID: Well, I wasn’t illegal but I’m hoping that this answer will reflect the intent of your question. In high school, I thought it was very odd that all of the cheerleaders and student body officers were Anglo, and we had a school population, you know, basically sixty to seventy percent Mexican with about thirty percent African-American and a very small percentage of Anglo and Asian and Czechoslovakians. And so I remember questioning that. Why is this the case? Why do we only have white cheerleaders, or why are there only white student body officers? I found out that it was because of the constitution, how it was written. And I don’t remember the details, this is 45 years ago, but I remember that there was a clause that would say that you had to have a, there were grades and behavior conditions, which is fineI think, those were the criteria. But there was a small paragraph that said that you had to have the Dean of Students’ signature in order to participate in that. And so basically what that became was that became the gate as to who could participate and who couldn’t participate. And so we tried to change that. I mean, and this was my junior/senior year, so I was pretty much on my way out. But I remember that these were the things that were questioned, that were being brought up to the forefront. I mean, I questioned why aren’t there any Latino teachers? Why aren’t there any African-American teachers? Why don’t we have social workers that are Latino? And so I was, I had a real good coach, my baseball coach was real good, and he became a counselor, so we had a close relationship. And I became friends with the student body officers, because all of them played sports, all of them were active in sports, so we’d develop a relationship. So that allowed obviously for these conversations to take place and for the issues to be brought up.

KENT: Can I do a follow-up to that one before Blanca has a question? What I don’t think most of us realize is what was going on with the Civil Rights movement during the ’60s, and did that have an impact? What did you see as that was going on, and the offshoot of the Civil Rights movement, which was the Farm Workers Movement?

DAVID: Oh, yeah, it was very real, very tangible. I mean, you could cut it. A lot I remember, Kent, help me out, that the Civil Rights movement was in ’65, with Johnson’s…

KENT: Well, yeah, the Voting Rights Act, yeah, it was ’65.

DAVID: Was that in 1965? Do you remember? And what was thatthat everybody would be?

KENT: Well, that states could not create regulations to keep minority people from registering. They couldn’t have statutes that would keep people from registering to vote.

DAVID: Did you just hear what he said? This is in my lifetime, I’m in high school, and at that time in this country there were statutes, they were just like the cheerleaders, there was a constitution in the high school bylaws that basically said, “We can stop whoever is going to be determined for this,” and that was the same thing with the Voting Act.

KENT: There were states that had those laws and regulations.

DAVID: I mean, I remember going to Texas, traveling to Texas, you know, when I was a kid, maybe eight, nine. I remember signs that would say, “Mexicans can’t drink water here. Whites can drink water here.” I mean, in my lifetime. So the Civil Rights Movement was a very real and very amazing thing. I say now, today, to our students here, my, and from what Kent is saying, our era was the Civil Rights Era. Your era is the Immigration Era. And it’s just as strong and just as realso, yeah, very much so. And the Chicano movement was a part of it. The Farm Worker movement was a part of that, as was the Black Panther movement, as was the Brown Beret. I mean, you had pockets throughout the country: You had Reies Tijerina and the Tierra Amarilla in New Mexico; you had Corky Gonzales in Denver; [and] you had Cesar Chavez, who became basically our patron saint in terms of the movement, and obviously that raised a lot of issues, and still today there are problems with that. So, yeah, so very good question, all of these questions. Thank you.

BLANCA: What was your college experience like?

DAVID: My college experience? It was great [laughs]. I don’t think anybody does not have a great college experience, and I say that very honestly. I think if all of you get the opportunity to go to school, however you do it, make sure it happens. And the reason is that, I mean, it’s great. You’re able to talk to people that are basically, in this country, it’s in every country but in this country what happens is there’s like a screening process that takes place. And you can start with the Ivy League schools and filter all the way down to the JCs. And like in California a lot of junior colleges, here we have SLCC, I think. And that’s about it. But what happens is that I can’t get into the Ivy League schools. I don’t have the money. The grades are the common denominator, but money talks. But you get here and most of the kids there are focused. They’re driven; they have great goals. They understand that they have to have a degree, they understand they have to have an education to get to the next level. And so it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet new friends, to be able to talk with professors, to be able to share ideas, to be able to battle with them in the classroom and talk about issues and realities and expectations, and so you just get as much information as you can from them. The only thing about college that I wish I had done more of is that like every class has the expectations of the class grades, percentage, and then they have a whole list of, a reading list, at least they did in my time, I don’t know if they have that now. They give a whole list of books and stuff that you should read. I didn’t do as much as I wish I had done. I really wish I had read all the stuff that they had recommended. Back then you’re young, you’re 18, 19, 20 years old and all you want to do is go out and have a good time on weekends. But I guess the only warning I would have is make sure you’re focused. Don’t get lost in the partying, because it’s there as well. Don’t forget the purpose of that education. So college was fun. I guess the only [other] thing I wish I had done, the other thing, is I wish I had prepared more in high school. I think I wish I had done that a little more. I wish I had taken harder classes. I wish I had focused a little more on my studies. I think that would have helped me prepare a little more. I still remember a paper that I turned into an English class. My ideas were brilliant, they were on that paper, and I blew the professor out of the water. But I still remember the red line comment at the bottom. He said, “Much poor writing.” Great ideas, great support for your hypotheses, but much poor writing. And so that was probably an eye-opener for me. So in high school I wish I spent a little more attention to the education.

KENT: Was part of your question about how he decided to go to college and what got him to here in college?

DAVID: Or were you thinking that college was hard because of the racial stuff, or, which one?

BLANCA: I don’t know it’d be hard [to adjust] because you don’t know anything [about it].

DAVID: Yeah, it is, it is a major adjustment. No, serious, that’s a wonderful question. It’s a major, major adjustment. I mean, here I am, a farm worker, picking grapes. You know, I’m not in that world. My parents don’t speak English, my parents, and so all of a sudden I’m taken from my culture, from my world, and I’m over in this world. So, yeah, there’s some major adjustments. I’m dressedthey’re dressed to the nines and they have the support, they have their slide rulersand I didn’t have one, I had a little ruler, plastic ruler. So, yeah, that’s a very, very real question. And in fact, today we have, for example, at this school, there’s a scholarship endowment fund that we have. That’s almost a quarter of a million dollars, here at Horizonte. And a lot of our students are first-time high school graduates in their family, first time in college, and a lot of them don’t make it. A lot of them drop out, because of the question you asked. They don’t know how to navigate past the first speed bump. They’ll go to classes [and say], “Professor Richie, I’m one day late to enroll in your class. Is there a chance that I can get in?” And you say, “No, it’s full.” Okay, and then that’s it, you stop. Instead of coming back the next day [and saying], “Professor Richie, I’d like to sign my name to see if anybody drops from your class if you could add me to that.” You know, all of these little things are part of a game that has to be played and has to be learned, and we didn’t know that. I mean, for me it was easier because my older brothers had kinda set the stage, and so they told us about these things. They told us about when to sign up for classes, who the best professors were, how to schedule your day so that you could work and not have to bother about transportation issues, or housing issues, and all of that stuff. So that’s a very, very good question. It’s a very, very real thing to make sure you’re aware. So yeah, un pobre Méxicano, man, I didn’t know what was going on. You know what I’m saying? So, anyway.

JOSUE: What college did you go to?

DAVID: Fresno State University.

JOSUE: What kind of views do you have from the kids that you got before and now? Are they different or are they the same? The kids that come into Horizontelike, they’re not making it at a regular high school, so they have to come over here. Back in like, when did you start here?

DAVID: Thirty years ago.

JOSUE: Like 30 years ago, were they the same from now, or are they different?

DAVID: Good question. I hope you have an open mind to my answer, okay? [Laughing] I don’t think it’s changed much, in one way. I mean, I think the type of students we get are basically the same profile. But Salt Lake City has changed quite a bit to when I started to what it is today. There are a lot of different factors that play into it. I’ll give you an example. I think technology plays a tremendous, was not there when I started in education. I think the fact that you guys can access the internet and get whatever through Googling, whatever you can get, that you can send text messages, some not very good, on bullying and sexting, I mean all that stuff. You can, so it’s good for both. I think the population, the neighborhood’s changedI don’t know if these numbers are correct, but I think there are like two hundred and fifteen thousand more Latinos in the valley now than there were 10 years ago. So it’s huge. And there are some schools in this district that are eight to ninety percent minority. At this school we have over 65 languages spoken here. So that has tended to change a little bit. But the bottom line is that the students that are sent over here continue to be students that were not successful at the home school, for the most part. We do get some self-referrals, but for the most part they’re either struggling with attendance, with academics, or social issues, okay. What is the same though is that these students from thirty years ago to now have that same potential, the same abilities, and the same dreams and desires as the ones from thirty years ago. And these students, as an example, given the right attention, are going to rise to the occasion. And I’ll give you facts; I’ll give you statistics to prove my point. In this district, I guess in the state, a couple of years ago the state legislature required that all students be given the UBSCT Test, I don’t know if you guys took that or, ’cause I don’t think we’re offering this year. So all the students, just generally speaking, I’ll use one hundred, 100 students from the outside schools come to Horizonte, 100 students have failed the UBSCT. They come to Horizonte, and you know that every student has the ability and the chance to retake the test, is that correct? Okay, now, these same students, of all the students that failed and retook the test, Horizonte scored higher than any other school in the districthigher than East, higher than West, higher than Highland. And these were the same students that failed over here. So the potential is there; the drive is thereall they need is the opportunity to be given a chance.

ADRIANNA: How important do you think parental involvement is for kids growing up? Do you see a difference now than it was then?

DAVID: I think parental involvement is key, to families, to a child’s success. I think that’s where the foundation is laid, that’s where the values are learned, that’s where you establish that cement, that centered life. And as you grow, as you get older and as you reach independence and puberty and adolescence, you start breaking away from the home, but that’s when your values are tested. That’s when the friends come in and the peer pressure, and all that comes in. I still remember my mother telling me when I was 15, and I was starting to go this way, she basically said, “You know, David, you have the choice of friends. And you can choose good friends or you can choose bad friends, because both are out there. And it’s your decision as to what it is that you want to do.” So those are the set of values that we have. Now, in our culture, family is extremely, I mean, that’s our culture, that’s who we are, we’re extended, we’re not nuclear, we’re not independent. So everything revolves around that [family]. And so I’ve always considered parental involvement a key element in our lives.

ADRIANNA: And what advice would you give parents who aren’t as close to their kids?

K-DAVID: It’s never too late. And as children, with this extended culture, one of the things that we don’t really celebrate is the fact that we, as a culture, and I’m speaking, I hope it’s okay, Kent, that we, there’s so much strength and so many things that we do. For example, we don’t hire nannies to raise our kids. It’s the older brother or the older sister, and it trickles on down. It’s the aunts and the uncles, it’s the primos, the cousins, all of that plays into the wonderful richness of who we are, and we can never lose that. At times we tend to compare ourselves to this because we don’t have nannies and somehow that’s bad. I mean, that’s totally wrong. I mean, I remember talking once to an elementary school PTA invited me over there, and I remember one of the things I hated as my girls were growing up, is this thing they called sleepovers. I don’t know what the heck, everybody, my daughter wanted to go to a sleepover. What’s a sleepover? So then they told me about it, and I said, “I’m gonna let you, the most precious thing in my life, go to a house full of strangers, not knowing them and have them sleep over?” You know? I mean, some of these things just, you know, so celebrate who you are and recognize the tremendous, tremendous beauty of our culture, and use those for positive things, as you combat society’s pressures out there.

LUIS: Did you ever get any kids here that impacted youtheir stories?

DAVID: Oh, yes! You know, we have medical doctors, business leaders, bankers, mechanics, teachers, nurses, businessmen. You know, we have students at M.I.T. that came here, through here? You know that, yeah, so it’s just amazing. Just amazing how you’re able to just be blessed by seeing the results of a small effortnot a small effort in a sense of the district, the district should be commended for what they’ve done in terms of understanding that there are different ways to educate them, besides the traditional cookie cutter thing. I’ve always recognized that. So, yeah, you see the growth, the individual growth, maybe not judge or determine by that, but just the individual self worth and self esteem and value, to see them walk around proud of who they are, and what they can becomethose are the joys of being a teacher. I remember a kid from East. Who’s from East, anybody from East?

KENT: Well, I went to East.

DAVID: East, here we go, a Leopard! I remember a kid. This was about 15 years ago, 17 years ago. I still remember his name; I shouldn’t use it. But he was a hard-core kid. He was a gang banger. What was it back then, QVO? I don’t remember. He came over, kicked over from East and did real well here, did real well. I mean, [he was] just outstanding. He had a mind that was like that [snaps his fingers]. And so it was towards the end of the year and the counselors and the administration from his school came over, and they bumped into him. In fact, it was here on this floor ’cause it was in the computer lab. And they said to him, “Oh, it’s so great to see you! It’s wonderful! How are you doing here?” And he’d say, “I’m doing great. I just aced the,” whatever test it was, ACT back then, “I’m a straight-A student. I got a full-ride scholarship to,” whatever school, the U or Weber, I don’t remember. And he said, “I’m so proud of you. I’m so glad you changed. You were able to change and benefit from coming over here.” And I still remember what he answered. This 17-year-old kid, 16, 17-year-old kid answered these professional educated teachers, administrators, and counselors, he said, “I’m the same person here that I was over there. And, you know, the problem,” he went on to say, “you put me in the basement over there. You put all of the cheerleader lockers next to the administration offices. I never saw parents or PTA members or my neighborhood over there. I never saw people from my church over there.” I mean, the message was just powerful, powerful. Do you think these guys got it? No, they didn’t. It went over their head, you know. So yeah, yeah, it’s been a wonderful ride, a tremendous ride.

BRENNAN: Going back to your education, like did you find school easy to get good grades? Or how did you get to college? Did you get scholarships or did your family help you out?

DAVID: No, we, I didn’t get great grades; I had a great batting average. I mean my record still holds. I think my average was .385 in baseball, so it was good. But we were expected to do well in school. So you couldn’t slack. You had to perform, but like I said earlier, same thing in college, I mean I was not the best college student. But I was a great graduate student! [Laughs] I made the Dean’s List in graduate school. I mean I just, so the ability is there, it’s just the effort. So there was a minimum standard where you had to perform because of my mother and my dad. So I would say I was an average to above-average student, but could have been, or should have been an above-average student.

BRENNAN: So would you say that your role models were your parents, or….?

DAVID: Oh, yeah, there’s no question about that. Yeah, there’s no question there.

BRENNAN: Do you still have role models that you look up to?

DAVID: I look up to my wife now. She’s my role model. She’s amazing. You look for wisdom. There’s intellect, and you want bothyou want intelligence, raw intelligence, but you also want the ability to be wise and be just in your opportunities that come in front of you as you interact with people. So, yeah, so it’s just been a wonderful, I’ve learned to just appreciate people. It really doesn’t matter. I’m totally touched by students, the stories of their lives as they come through my office, and you’re like, “Wow, who am I?” as they start telling some of the stuff that is happening in their lives, so, yeah, it’s cool.

MELISSA: I have a question about your grad school. You went to BYU. How was it, the transition from California to BYU?

DAVID: It was a major transition. It was a major transition. BYU is a very good school. By the way, I think it’s an excellent school. I think, to me, it’s one of the top schools in the country. And so it was difficult. The reason for that is because the culture was so unique. I was going to say limited but I want to say unique because it’s a private school, so you’re basically are saying, “I’m asking to be a guest at your private institution.” But I found the coursework challenging and exciting. I found the, especially because they gave me the opportunity of interacting with a much broader base, because that university draws from throughout the world. It’s not just California, Central California, or California, but the world. And so you started to interact with people from throughout the United States, from different countries, so you always are challenged. So that was wonderful. It was a great opportunity for me ’cause at that school I was probably the only minority in my classes, maybe one or two. But, I mean, that was dramatic there, ’cause that was it, you were, out of a group of 30 students and you’re the only Mexican or only minority there. You know, it was tough. But you adjusted and then you moved on.

MELISSA: How did you navigate through that?

DAVID: Well, that’s a good question, and my answer is that I always navigated through that because I knew who I was. I’ve never wanted to be a part of the Anglo culturedon’t misinterpret! I never, I was raised not to assimilate, I was raised neverthat was not our dream. I don’t want to be a Mexican becoming a white person. That’s why like in California I remember my neighbors, the parents would tell them [their kids] not to speak Spanish because if they learned English then it would be easier for them. I grew up with just the opposite. My grandkids now, all of them born in Utah, all my kids are born in Utah, and all of them speak Spanish, write Spanish, and my grandkids speak Spanish and write Spanish. So that’s been passed on. And so, I mean, after a while, I mean I saw them for what they were, you know, just like me, with the same drive and the same expectations and the same goals. So it really wasn’t that big a dealit still isn’t. And I’ve tried to transfer that to the students here. I say, “Hey, yeah, but this is the goal, this is just a bump, don’t make a big deal out of it because it really isn’t. You just learn to navigate and go from there.”

KENT: Take us back to the ’60s around Fresno. That’s the heart of the United Farm Workers movement, and you were there in the middle of it and know. You mentioned in the pre-interview that your brother was an accountant in the United Farm Workers movement. What was your experience with it? What did you see happening in the United Farm Workers movement at that time? And what change did it make in our society?

DAVID: I remember the overwhelming sense of identity. I remember the overwhelming sense of power, to be able to bring to the forefront the issues of the era.

KENT: What were the issues?

DAVID: Discrimination, poor pay, we’d go pick grapes where there was nowe’d get no restroom facilities, no water. We’d be paid, you guys probably don’t know this, but you pick raisins, and rows areI don’t know if you’ve seen them, rows are grapes and then you cut the grapes and then there’s a furrow in between the rows and you get up some paper and then you dump the pan of grapes on that paper, and it becomes a tray. And that’s, the natural sunlight dries them and they become raisins. So I remember working, getting paid five cents for that tray, for that one tray. I remember when Chavez came inyou know, the farmers were starting to give a little sweat because of boycotts, if you remember that. And so I remember like from one year to the next, and I’m older now, I’m 13, 14, 15, but I remember that they started paying us 12 cents a tray because of that, so for me that was dramatic. And so these are some of the stuff that was going on. At Fresno State, when my oldest brother was there, there were 500 Latinos at Fresno State University. Five hundred, and Fresno is a city of, let’s say 500,000 back at that day with maybe 300,000 Latinos. I mean, kind of like University of Utah when I first came over here, they had like 500. Andy Valdez, Judge Valdez and that group, Solomon and that group, they were Archie and Frank and Cordova and Chacon and all those guys. They were kind of similar things here in Salt Lake. So that all of those things started coming out of the closet, and saying, this isn’t just, it’s not right. And so they pushed for reform. And that continues. And my brother, my oldest brother was pretty active in the Chicano movement. In fact, he was quite active. I remember, I hope this is true, because this might be lore, okay. Close enough. But he’s dead now so I guess it doesn’t matter. But I remember that he actually threw, or allegedly threw, a tomato at [Ronald] Reagan, who was Governor Reagan back at the time, at one of the protests. He being one of the leaders, he actually got a tomato andPow!threw it at Reagan. And I remember the Secret Service of California, whatever, is coming to our house and looking for him. He went underground. I shouldn’t be telling you this! Guillermo, sorry, but you’re gone! [Laughing] Well, he’s above; he’s in Heaven. So, yeah, it was very powerful.

KENT: Who were the people really lobbying for the changewas it old people, was it young people?

DAVID: It was young people. The young people were out there in the forefront; they were the ones. Guillermo and his group, they actually fasted. They set camp at Fresno State and they shut the school downoh, man, this is coming now. They basicallywhere does this go, ’cause I want to say a couple of things here. There were Molotov cocktails, I mean they had sit-ins. They actually fasted for like seven, eight days, very similar to what Cesar was doing, one of the role models, with Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy and the Kennedy clan. So it was a wide [open time], plus they were in the hippie movement of the time, the [anti] Vietnam War [era] after that. It was an exciting time, and some changes took place all throughout the country. I mean, even as I speak about the Vietnam War, I mean, I think the anti-war movement led to a quicker resolution of that, so along the way that’s continued. So, yeah, Civil Rights movement, Immigration movementnot much change, but that’s where it is. And although this is tougheryou guys in a lot of ways have it a lot tougher. There’s a rally today at 1:00 p.m, by the way. [Laughing] No, no, not at all. Any other questions? That’s it?

KENT: Well, thank you very much.