Who is brown berets

The mid-to-late s were plagued by police brutality, profiling, and class injustices, and led to the Watts Riots in Los Angeles , and the Detroit Riots in For Dr.

Sanchez, launching the Brown Berets had also been a response to the discrimination he faced because of his ethnicity. Sanchez tells Teen Vogue. Sanchez says that, back in the s, young Mexican-Americans had no one to turn to for support with issues that plagued their community. This was roughly the same time that the Black Panther Party had established their organization. For decades, building up to the initiation of the Brown Berets, Latinx people in California endured so much discrimination at the hands of authority, from the Mexican-Americans that were illegally deported during the Great Depression to the Zoot Suit Riots of , which resulted in the wrongful arrests of young Latino men.

But when it came to the younger generation, they were basically left to advocate for themselves. Sanchez remembers. A couple of years later, when he 15, Dr. Some teachers and school leaders discouraged students from interacting with the Berets, and local newspapers conveyed a general fear and distrust.

Some depicted them as a street gang. Local police frequently harassed and pulled over Brown Beret members, a practice that intensified an already common experience for many Mexican Americans. This repression led to the St. By then, many members were involved in other West Side and Chicano Movement organizations. Paul, —," in box Paul Collections. Brown Beret Guide Book My People First! Berkeley: University of California Press, Paul Dispatch , May 12, Saucedo Jr, Rudolph.

Oral history interview, August 9, Austin: University of Texas Press, De La O, Gilberto co-founder of St. Paul Brown Berets. Interview with Lorena Duarte, March 29, Mexican American Community in St. Paul Description: Church records, invitations, news clippings, printed materials and related papers compiled by a number of Mexican American religious, educational, and community organizations in St.

Paul Description: Recordings and transcriptions of seventy-four oral history interviews with Mexican American Minnesotans. Montes, Carlos, co-founder of the Brown Berets. Interview with David P. Cline, June 27, Library of Congress. Paul Description: Minutes, reports, budgets, correspondence, lists, surveys, newsletters, subject files, and ephemera of a settlement house located on St.

Paul's West Side, traditionally one of the enclaves of recent immigrants to the city. Oakland would be one of the first chapters outside of Los Angeles. Based out of the Fruitvale district , they began forming an Oakland chapter made up of students and community youth. The Brown Berets also taught self defense against police brutality and patrolled the streets like the Panthers and the Chicano Revolutionary Party to make sure Chicanos were not harassed by the Oakland Police.

The Oakland chapter of the Brown Berets also worked very closely with a Chicano Theater Group called Teatro Triste which was a theater group that did Chicano political theater.

The Brown Berets also had a community newspaper called La Causa which they sold on the streets of Oakland and at college campuses. Protests, marches, and violence would result from this widening rift between the young militant Chicanos and the local police.

The research gathered and presented in this paper allows one to dissect the effects of this hateful relationship and conclude that police harassment, brutality, and infiltration ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Berets, but not before it helped propel the overall Chicano movement.

These relationships will all be examined within the context of police and legal harassment, brutality, and infiltration tactics put into practice by these institutions against the Chicanos.