The Bay Area Third World Strikes, 1968–1969: Coalitional Activism and Chicanx Campus Politics

ABSTRACT

The Bay Area Third World Strikes, 1968–1969: Coalitional Activism and Chicanx Campus Politics. This essay looks at the 1968–1969 Third World Strikes at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley through the lens of coalitional politics and activism. While the paper looks closely at Chicanx campus politics, the goal is to move away from a nationalist or Maoist reading of the two strikes. During these two events, Chicanx activism has to be read in conjunction with African American, Asian American, Native American, and white campus politics. This coalitional politics represented a temporary rupture of U.S. political behavior and manifested a utopic moment when an alternative political possibility was glimpsed. The essay ends exploring the limits of coalitional politics and activism, especially as nationalism and identity politics came to the fore.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• curriculum
• Post-secondary education
• Race/racialization
• chicano(a) student movement
• third world strike

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In this essay, I will be using Chicano, Chicanx, and Latinx. Current academic usage of Chicanx and Latinx, more than gender neutral usage of Chicano and Chicana, is a comprehensive identity for women, men, non-binary people and those who are gender non-conforming. Moreover, the term is rooted in social justice movements that seek to empower Mexican American, Chicano/a/x and Latina/o/x communities in the US. When I use Chicano its usage reflects the gendered politics and epistemology of the Chicano movements in that time period. However I use Chicanx and Latinx when I refer to activists. While one could argue that to retain a distinction between Chicanx and Latinx might not serve us in today’s U.S., I think that for the Bay Area this difference remains important.

² For the radical possibilities in the Free Speech Movement, see, Ziza Joy Delgado (2016), 88–89.

³ Bae argues that the Free Huey Movement was a prior example of multi-racial alliances that linked the Black Panther Party with radicals that also favored coalition building (715).

⁴ While my essay focuses on these two campuses, there were other endeavors to form Third World alliances in California.

⁵ Elbaum (2002) reads too much Marxist-Leninism in this initial expression of TW politics. But more research is needed around the numerous strands of Marxism, the various ethnic and national organizations, and campus activists.

⁶ In this essay, I will shift between white and Anglo. This is not an endeavor to erase differences and complexities in this community.

⁷ What is missing from the literature of coalitional politics during the TW strikes is the role of gender. Given the patriarchal nature of the strike, I believe this partially explains the strikes political and ideological limitations. I try to address some of this in the concluding section.

⁸ For an interesting discussion of “Third Worldism” and nationalism see Kannan, 2018, pp. 41–50, 57–62; for an overview see Berger (2004), Nash (2003).

⁹ There is a minor theme that runs through this essay. I hope in future work to develop this point. The coalitional politics of the TW strikes challenges a nationalist reading of a Chicano campus politics that smudges regional, gender, ideological, and other differences permitting one to speak of a “Chicano student movement.”

¹⁰ I use the Daily Gater, San Francisco State campus paper, for my information about events on the campus.

¹¹ The demand for self-determination was the central project of the Third World strikes. All other demands “stem from the notion that third world people needed to have control over third world spaces” (Ziza Joy Delgado, 2016, p. 91).

¹² Meyerhoff feels that we often underestimate the radical possibilities that the Tutorial Program, Community Improvement Program, and in particular the Experimental College brought to the campus. He recalls: “The creation of the Experimental College was itself a practice of radical imagination, and it created space-times for its participants to engage in expansive imaginative practices, most famously with the Black Student Union’s development of a black studies curriculum … They sought out and supported courses with revolutionary content, and they fostered modes of study that were alternative and politically opposed to the normal, education-based mode of study at SF State … ” (2019, p. 318).

¹³ BSU at SFS and UC Berkeley were greatly influenced by the Black Panther Party. Many of the BSU members were associated with the Party (Hope, 2014, p. 58). For a detailed history of the Panther’s revolutionary nationalism and Maoism see Kelley and Esch (1999); Ziza Joy Delgado (2016), 85–87.

¹⁴ “San Francisco State College is unique in that the Latin student population unlike other areas of California is not predominantly Mexican-American, but is composed of many students of Central and South American heritage as well as Mexican-American” (Cuellar). Ziza Delgado has a different view for UC Berkeley. “I need to clarify that in 1969 at UC Berkeley the majority of the Latin@ population was of Mexican descent with a small population from Puerto Rico” (p. 38).

¹⁵ For Ryan “It is this concept of Ethnic Studies as both the antidote to racism, and the antidote to hegemonic epistemology that marks the proposals for the new discipline” (Angela Ryan, 2015, p. 426).

¹⁶ Bunzel implies that African Americans did not participate in the demonstrations because the College had appointed Nathan Hare to develop and coordinate the black studies curriculum (Bunzel, 1969, p. 23). At the same time, the nascent TWLF worked with SDS on a series of anti-ROTC protests to gain influence within student government (William Barlow & Shapiro, 1971).

¹⁷ This did not mean that nationalism was not beneath the surface. Manuel Delgado for instance, writes that within TWLF, Latinx voice predominated (Manuel Delgado, N.d.). Hayakawa adds: “Since its formation on our campus last April, the TW has been dominated by a handful of Spanish speaking students who claim to represent the much larger Latin and Oriental population of the campus and the community” (1969c, p. 3).

¹⁸ For a history of African American and Asian community organizations in the Bay Area see Hope (2014).

¹⁹ “Many faculty members felt that students had legitimate demands and deserved support. I think the students were both grateful for the support, as well as suspicious” (Whitson and Reynes).

²⁰ I do not want to suggest that faculty agreed with the students’ demands. Most recognized that there existed certain limits that could not be crossed (Jerry).

²¹ I use the Daily Californian, the Berkeley campus paper for my information about events on the campus. Unfortunately unlike SFS, not much has been written about the Muscatine report, the Board of Educational Development, the Center for Participatory Education, and the Experimental College (Ziza Joy Delgado, 2016, pp. 88–89).

²² AASU rejected the endeavors to strike over the Cleaver course because they felt that white radicals wanted to dictate the pace of the protest (AASU, 1).

²³ Chicanx were active at Cal at least since 1966 when Quinto Sol/Mexican American Student Organization registered as a Berkeley organization in the summer and organized a joint conference with Lino Lopez’s Mexican American Youth Organization (Quinto Sol 1966a, 1966b).

²⁴ “AAPA consisted of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese Americans, many of them previously involved in the Civil Rights, Black Power, antiwar, and farmworkers’ union movements … Leaders from campus social clubs such as the CSC (American born), the Chinese Students Association (foreign born), and the NSC (second generation) became AAPA leaders” (Dong, 2009b, p. 98). Maybe because women played a key role in the organization, AAPA adopted an egalitarian and shared democratic model that limited hierarchical leadership, reminiscent of Ella Baker and SNCC (Hope, 2014, p. 108).

²⁵ Hope writes that AAPA held it first public rally on the Berkeley campus in July 1968. Aoki and Bobby Seale were speakers (2014, p. 71).

²⁶ For more on the Symposium and its larger impact see, Dong (2009b). Some of the tactical approaches adopted at the Symposium paralleled those that would appear in El Plan de Santa Barbara.

²⁷ According to Dong – “Native American Students United (NASU), the fourth organization to become part of the TWLF, was the smallest group, with five members. NASU was still in its formative stages and was attempting to locate the few Native Americans present at the campus. It was not until the beginning of January 1969 that NASU formally became a part of the TWLF” (2009b, p. 101). During this time, Native Americans from UCB and SFS meet regularly (Jack). Some Native Americans, like Ricard Oakes who was part of SFS TWLF, began to think about a symbolic takeover of Alcatraz as a way to get their issues and concerns voiced (Ziza Joy Delgado, 2016, p. 25, Boyer, 1994).

²⁸ Hernandez recalls that there was much debate in MASC about joining the strike (Hernandez, 2019).

²⁹ Not unlike SFS, the institution turned to authoritarian practices to “manage” the students (Ziza Joy Delgado, 2016, p. 101).

³⁰ The TWLF was strongly influenced by the Free Huey Movement and the Black Panther Party’s position on alliances with white radicals. From different ideological directions, Stokely Carmichael and Maulana Karenga rejected the Panther’s approach (Bae, 704). As Bae points out, such divisions also existed among white radicals as evidenced by tension within the Peace and Freedom Party about working with the Panthers who some felt might take over the political agenda of the Party (706).

³¹ For the sake of simplicity I have used nationalism as a singular noun. However, it is important to keep in mind that Chicano activists used a variety of nationalisms (Garcia 1994, pp. 248–262; Marsical, 2005). We further need to accept that nationalism within different racial/ethnic communities was understood differently (Kidwell, 2009). For African Americans see Harris, 2000, pp. 163–164. TWLF folks hoped to focus political action away from only an identity focus. Ryan writes “In addition, these students refuted the idea of fractious nationalism that pitted ethnic and racial minorities against one another. Thus, they rejected the narrow focus on individual ethnicities, and eschewed cultural nationalism” (2010, p. 7).

³² One cannot underestimate the roles of individuals like Richard Aoki, Victoria Wong, Emma Gee, and Yugi Ichioka (Fujino, 2014; Wong, 2019). While they came from different political orientation and intellectual traditions, they understood the need for multiracial coalition building (Dong, 2009a, 2009b). As Dong responded to the controversy about the role of Aoki as a possible FBI informant: “In life, Richard Aoki provided important leadership, bringing into reality Afro-Asian unity, TW solidarity and internationalism” (Dong, 2013, p. 102). As for Gee and Ichioka, Dong notes their building of “an Asian American caucus within the Peace and Freedom Party [that] became the foundational building block for AAPA and the idea of Asian American panethnicity” (Harvey C. Dong, 2002, p. 42). Both understood the confluence of internationalist, antiracist, and anti-imperialist practices that domestically and internationally exploited all people, but especially nonwhites.

³³ During the Matriarchs interview, Victoria Wong (2019) reports the conflict between Black and Chicano activists during the strike at UCB. Both groups shared stereotypes of each other. She emphasizes that it was hard work to build and sustain solidarity.

³⁴ Tensions mounted between Bay Area Black and Chicanx/Latinx organizations (Bae, 714).

³⁵ An interesting example of this sectarian nationalism was the essay “On the Black or White Revolutionary’s Relation to the Chicano Struggle” in La Causa of 1971. F. Chris Garcia notes that the Mexican American Study Project out of UCLA records that three-quarter of Chicanx respondents rejected a political coalition with Blacks (1972, p. 129). A reviewer for Latinos and Education read the comments in this paragraph as an example of anti-blackness in the Chicanx and Latinx communities. There is no denying that anti-blackness, as well as anti-Asianess and rejection of non-Mexicans, existed and exists in the Mexican American communities; just like similar prejudices existed and exists in the Black and Asian communities. What I hoped to suggest in the essay is that nationalism allowed these attitudes and behaviors to manifest themselves.

³⁶ Bae further notes that Chicanx/Latinx were also divided by the increasingly acrimonious battle between nationalists and Marxists (714).

³⁷ Unfortunately, some rethought the role of nationalism in the strike and the various organizations. Thus T’Shaka contends that BSU at San Francisco State was always a nationalist organization and reads the history of that period through that lens.

³⁸ See Ian F. Haney López (2019) for one possibility.

³⁹ Hope writes about the United Front Against Fascism (UFAF) conference from July 18–21, 1969. The Panthers wanted to see itself as the “vanguard” organization of the local Third World movement (2014, p. 104). Hope adds that the women’s panel at the conference was eagerly anticipated, especially Roberta Alexander’s speech that clarified the Party’s position on women and the earlier Party’s sexism (2014, p. 106).

⁴⁰ In the interview, the women stressed how none of them felt disrespected by the males in MASC. But as one of the interviewees stated, the males were old school. But the women recognize that they were not yet at the point to question their own critique of machismo. As some noted, maybe they were naïve. Though it was pointed out that at the Zoom presentation, 50 years later, no men were present.

⁴¹ After the strike, Tamayo worked to develop the Asian American Studies Department. “The idea of Third World Studies, across time and space, was big and inclusive. Moreover, the curriculum, research, and fieldwork would be interdisciplinary, developed by people from the communities we represented, with particular attention to the needs, experiences, and perspectives of low income and under-represented peoples whose labor and intellect built the nations that often excluded them” (Tamayo).

⁴² However Hope contests Maeda. “While patriarchy and sexism are epidemic across all races and ethnic groups, the hyper masculinity Black men exuded during the Black Power movement was very seldom witnessed within Asian and Asian American communities” (2014, p. 92). Of course, she later adds that this did not mean that “Asian American women did not experience sexism or were not repressed within the broader Asian American movement” (2014, p. 111).

⁴³ “Born from the civil rights and ethnic nationalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Chicana feminist thought, like Black feminist thought, represented the failure of ‘radical’ movements to address the multiple layers of oppression existing within their communities” (Ziza Joy Delgado, 2016, p. 40).

⁴⁴ Some worked on the new programs like Tamayo at SFS or at UCB Chicano Studies Nina Genera, Myrtha Chabran, Norma Chapa, Roberta Klor, and Angelina Rodarte.