Bersamin: Brown Berets Were "Thin Brown Line" That Kept The Peace

April 9, 2006

Manuel Bersamin: Protests a proper response to HR 4437

The negative press and rumors about the Watsonville-based Brown Berets being at the center of the recent student-led marches are not true. Students who heard the Spanish-speaking media, which issued a call several weeks ago, organized them.

This call for an organized and disciplined show of concern in the Latino community over HR 4437 occurred all over the United States. Anyone who frequently listens to the Spanish media could know that HR 4437 has been a hot topic of discussion for at least two weeks before the student walk-outs. The call for peaceful organized marches began with the Spanish-speaking media in Southern California on radio and the Latino media then picked up these calls across the entire state and nation. But these calls by the media were not the only calls that demanded action against HR 4437.

Although the first march against HR 4437 was well publicized, neither I, as vice mayor, nor the mayor, had advance warning of the first student walkouts and marches.

However, the mayor and I did have advance advisement of Friday's march. Mayor Rivas and I were determined that no violence would occur this day.

Because of an organized Brown Beret presence, no violence did occur during 9 a.m. march and noon rally this day. The entire march and rally were a success as the students expressed themselves as they have been impassioned to do by the proponents of HR 4437.

This group was a student-led organization with the leaders being Pajaro Valley Unified School District students.

WPD kept a low-key approach, but were out in force at the command center at Fire 1.

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A few fights occurred once everything was over at 1:30 p.m. WPD, under the experienced hand of Terry Medina, responded with controlled force.

By my observation on this day, the Brown Berets marshals are to be commended as the main peacekeepers this day. I did not witness any other group of volunteers acting as marshals this day from any other organization that perhaps could have sent some people to monitor the march.

These marchers were mostly PVUSD students from middle and high schools. Whether the PVUSD agrees with the validity of the march or not, the threat to these young PVUSD students was real and PVUSD staff should have been released to help monitor the large crowd without running any risk of liability themselves.

Out of necessity, the Brown Berets acted alone to keep the peace.

They literally placed their bodies between Nortenos and Surenos to keep the peace when tensions escalated. I was part of this peacemaker role and I saw the Berets stand shoulder-to-shoulder as a living wall. They acted like law enforcement to set up a physical barrier between antagonized groups.

The Berets were concerned with possible violence between gang members, but they did not hesitate to place themselves in harm's way to separate the two sides.

I am now hearing from teachers within the PVUSD that in faculty meetings, school administrators are accusing the Brown Berets as agitators. These school leaders who want to label this group as the instigators of the walkouts are obviously not in tune with the real concerns of the community, which they are hired to educate. Judging from the comments I have read about the student marches, many of our citizens are just as blind to the realities of living in Watsonville.

So for their edification, I will put on my own old tattered teacher's hat. The PVUSD serves the Watsonville area, which is an agricultural area. The major crop in this area is strawberries, which is about a $400-plus million crop. The area is also known for raspberries, cut flowers, row crops and the product that my own father made his living for 50 years producing and harvesting, salad letter. Altogether, these crops and all the related services needed in an agricultural city of Watsonville produce an additional profit in the hundreds of millions for Santa Cruz County.

This discussion won't even mention the local Latino labor force in construction, beach tourist trade, UCSC and Cal State Monetery Bay janitors, Santa Cruz restaurants, etc.

Now, this is the key lesson: it is an ugly truth that most of the people doing this hard, difficult, unacknowledged work in the fields, nurseries, canneries, packing sheds, etc. in the city of Watsonville and its area of influence are undocumented workers.

It never ceases to amaze me, as the son of farmworkers who have lived in Watsonville since 1946, that many people who live in this city think that native-born citizens want to do this back-breaking ill-paid non-benefited work. No, they don't aspire in Mexico to become low-paid farmworkers. However, there is no work in Mexico and when the farmers of this valley cut all the low manual-labor orchards down and planted high manual-labor strawberries, they created a labor vacuum, which they now need to fill and the people of Mexico will fill. Except now, because of the militarization of the border, the lone men who worked with my father are now bringing their wives and children with them.

Which brings me full circle to the lesson. If, in 2006, these men now are running risks such as crossing a Sonoran Desert and risking death to return to Watsonville to pick strawberries, they are now going to bring their families here to end that risk.

And their children are going to be attending the local PVUSD schools. These undocumented children and their friends, who are citizens and legal residents, are not ignorant and they understand that HR 4437, if passed, will make their parents, and themselves, criminals.

If trying to gain attention to the cause of trying to prevent your hard-working mom and dad from becoming a criminal is not worth walking out of school and marching in the time-honored American tradition of civil disobedience, then you must already be brain dead.

If my knowledge of history serves me correctly, young African American youth marched as well to help protect their parents from persecution and intolerance in the first civil rights movement. This first civil rights movement started peacefully, but grew militant as some white Americans continued to want to oppress the African American community. Their fight for equality continues to this day as the Latino fight for respect and justice begins anew with these marches.

On the local level, our local PVUSD students directed themselves and the Brown Berets decided to follow the student marchers and attempt to prepare the streets to keep our most important resource safe and sound.

The Berets did not lead these marches and they adjusted their roles as needed under the constantly changing circumstances.

They were not the only adults present at these marches, but they were the only volunteers to solely handle any threats to possible violence.

I, along with the mayor, want to commend the Brown Berets for their peacemaker role this day. They made the difference between a disorganized march and an orderly march and rally.

No other organized volunteer group was present to coordinate the actions of these youth, who were, for the most part, PVUSD students, except for the Brown Berets.

The charges of the Brown Berets as instigators of the earlier marches that are being passed around by PVUSD staff should be addressed by PVUSD administrators and ended.

The rumors of the negative role of the Berets need to be looked at closely. From what I saw, they acted as marshals to keep the peace and they served the youth well that day as role models.

To borrow a phrase, they were the "thin Brown line" that kept the peace.

They should be consulted and worked with as we approach the planned student "action" on Monday.

Manuel Bersamin is the mayor pro tempore of Watsonville.