Relentless Pursuit (33 page)

He and his sisters left City Hall at around two on Saturday afternoon. He had to go to work. It was his duty. He was one of five children born to immigrant parents from Michoacán, Mexico. In his family, the children contributed to the family income. Roberto had begun bagging groceries two years before, in tenth grade. He made $6.75 an hour and worked twenty-two hours a week—usually on the weekends and one day during the week.

When Roberto awoke at six-thirty for school on Monday, he felt unusually calm. To him, the calm had always been a sign of something. He wondered what was up:
Something is about to occur. Something is about to cause chaos in my world.
At that point, his world was full of possibility. With a 3.7 GPA, he was waiting to hear which UC he would be attending in the fall. He was a big man on campus—a track star, actor, poet, and political activist. People knew him. Thin, with an angular face, dark, piercing eyes, and a goatee, he had an intensity that made him stand out from his peers. When he spoke, people listened.

At Locke that Monday, he went straight to his AP statistics class and then on to AP physics with Mr. Hartford. It was in his third-period economics class—his favorite class that semester—that he heard something. It sounded like a rush of air or wind, and it stopped him cold. Then a voice came on over the loudspeaker. The school was on lockdown. All students were to remain in their classrooms; no restroom passes were to be issued. Now Roberto could make out words that seemed to be carried along by the draft of morning air. It was the same chant he had heard on Saturday:
Sí se puede, sí se puede.
We can do it. We can do it. It was faint but getting closer. Roberto was thinking:
Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.
All of a sudden, everyone in the classroom, even his teacher Mr. Crumrine, was looking at him. And then Emilio, a friend, said: “Hey, are we gonna walk?” Roberto didn't respond, but the minute he had heard
Sí se puede
he had pictured how it all would unfold. Maybe it was a flashback to pictures he had seen of 1968, when Chicanos had last made newspaper headlines with a historic march: in his head he had an image of students just walking down the street. It was like a bomb went off in him:
You have to walk. You have to walk for your mom, for your parents, for your pride, for your
patria.
Lead your people.
But they were on lockdown. Frustrated, Roberto said to Mr. Crumrine: “Did we really scare society that bad?”

Crumrine wouldn't engage. He told Roberto and the rest of the class to finish the test they were taking. Roberto returned to his work and, when he was done, sat back and looked at the clock. He could feel the blood rushing through his veins, stopping at his temples and pulsing. Something was telling him:
The time, the time, get up and walk, join your people.
And he looked at all his fellow students and wondered:
Who will walk? How many truly know what we are standing up for? How many have pride?
When five minutes were left till the bell would ring, he held up his five fingers; when a minute passed, he held up four. Just as the period was about to end, when Roberto held only two fingers up in a victory sign, the administration announced that the lockdown was over. Students were free to go to lunch.

Roberto got up, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and headed for the quad. On his way, a friend filled him in on what was happening at other campuses all over Los Angeles. What should Locke do? Without even thinking, Roberto replied: “If you have pride for your culture, you will get on the stage.” Then, before he knew it, he was onstage, in the center, looking out and pointing to those Latinos who had not yet joined him. By then, others had taken up the refrain: “If you have pride for your culture, you will get onstage.” Someone thrust a big Mexican flag into Roberto's hands, and he stood there, solemnly waving it before the kids standing in the quad looking up at him. Within minutes the stage was filled.

Beside him, Roberto's best friend, Alonzo, said: “Now what do we do?”

Roberto said: “We walk.”

And so they did. Hundreds of students formed a column behind Roberto, who, like a twenty-first-century Pied Piper, led them along Saint Street, the internal campus road, to the school gates. To those who wavered or started to head back toward the stage, he said: “If you have pride for your culture, walk with me.” The column got longer and thicker. When they finally reached the perimeter, the gates were locked. Roberto announced: “Wait. They will open.” In the crowd, approaching him, was Dr. Wells.

For Frank Wells, deciding to open the gates was just part of the plan. In the morning, he and his administrators had discussed their strategy for handling a walkout. They had agreed that they would stop any individual student who tried to ditch or jump the fence. But in the event that a group of kids was organized and decided to leave, they would let them go.

Wells started getting calls from the police and other principals soon after school opened. Students had left other schools and were marching to neighboring LAUSD campuses to rally support. When Wells got word that a group of kids was headed toward Locke, he immediately put the school on lockdown. Soon, students from Fremont stood outside Locke chanting, urging their compatriots to join them in a show of strength. But the Locke kids were penned in and locked down. Stuck.

Wells lifted the lockdown about an hour later, after the Fremont marchers were long gone. Without others inciting them, Wells thought it unlikely that the Locke kids would walk out. Besides, he knew it was going to be tough to keep his kids on lockdown during the lunch periods. They would be hungry and antsy—a bad combination in teenagers. Lunch would proceed; the school would use the student protest as a teaching moment. Students would be encouraged to assemble at the center stage to discuss the politics of immigration.

For a few minutes it looked as if that's how things would go. Until Roberto mounted the stage and started waving the Mexican flag over his head. Wells had assigned his security team to their usual lunchtime positions so that the entire campus would be monitored. Now there weren't enough guards in the quad to stop Roberto once he started walking. When he reached the gate, it was open sesame. It was a matter of safety. If Wells refused to open the gate, he risked setting off a riot. It was not a risk he was prepared to take. As the gates opened, kids rushed to escape.

“We don't have to run today,” Roberto said, speaking in both English and Spanish. “Today we walk.” As kids poured out onto the street, Wells was right behind him, speaking into his ear: “Control them,” he ordered. “Control them.”

Roberto wasn't going to promise anything. He would try, but he wasn't sure that anyone could really control what was happening. He stopped, waited for the students at the far gate to be released, and said: “Okay, we start marching.”

Zeus Cubias had been at La Gran Marcha on Saturday. He'd supported that protest. But he was against walking out of school. He had already been told that the Latino students planned to meet at the stage during lunch. He had promised to be there to make sure the administration allowed them to hold a peaceful rally. When Roberto began to lead them down Saint Street toward the gate, Cubias tried to dissuade the kids from following him. He walked along with them, urging them to turn around. When he got to the gate, he saw Wells ahead of him.

“Cubias,” said Wells, turning to greet him. “Aren't you coming?” Cubias couldn't believe it. He had assumed the principal would have wanted him to get the kids back to their classrooms. Suddenly, his estimation of Frank Wells changed. Wells had done what a movie principal would have. This was like
Stand and Deliver.
Cubias understood the role Wells expected him to play that day. Cubias had to keep the kids safe. Soon other Latino staff joined the parade in a show of solidarity with their students. Mrs. Jauregui was walking, and so was Elissa Salas, one of the TFA resource teachers in special ed. Most important, Dr. Wells was marching, too.

The Locke contingent continued along San Pedro Street. Cubias marched in front with Roberto; Wells stayed in the middle of the pack. Cubias advised Roberto to turn around at Manchester Avenue, a big boulevard about twenty blocks from Locke. Roberto jogged back to consult with Wells. The principal was adamant: Roberto should turn around. The students had made their point, Wells said; now it was time to get back to school. Besides, Wells didn't want Locke students making trouble at Fremont, another big LAUSD high school up ahead. Roberto had led them out of school; now it was his responsibility to lead them back in. Cubias kept the pressure on Roberto. He was afraid things were getting out of control; Roberto had to get a better grip on the kids.

Roberto started to stress. When he got to Manchester he paused and thought:
All right, what should I do? Should I keep going toward Fremont and break trust with my principal and a really good teacher? Or should I keep going?
The answer formed instantly:
You have the whole school behind you. Keep going, keep going.

He kept going. By now, people were coming out of their homes, some offering the kids food and water, others joining the march. Banners popped up out of nowhere. The Mexican flag floated above their heads. Eventually the TV cameras caught up with them. That's how Roberto's mother came to find out where he was: she saw him on TV. His older sister phoned him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm leading this march,” he replied. Soon groups of students from other schools joined up with the Locke kids. By then, Wells had returned to campus. Zeus decided to peel off, too. He had done his thing on Saturday. This was their thing. He needed to let them do it. He felt like crying. He had forgotten what these wonderful kids are capable of when they are motivated.

When the marchers from the various campuses converged south of downtown, Roberto discovered that two rival OGs (Original Gangsters) were at the front of the march. He knew them from their tattoos. They were probably in their thirties. And here they were, walking together for a common cause. Roberto was astounded.
They fucked up. The senators and the politicians, they fucked up because they are trying to pass a bill that affects all these gangs, and now they are uniting them. They are uniting all of us. We are walking as one people.

“I'm the leader from Locke,” he announced to the old-school gangstas. Then out of his mouth came “We're gonna go to city hall.” The OGs were headed that way, too. The march swelled, filling up the streets curb to curb. The paced quickened as they got closer to downtown. Immigrant workers came out of their shops to cheer the marchers on.

“You are walking for us!” they cried. Now Roberto was thinking of Exodus:
My people are walking toward significance…

When Roberto actually spoke into the microphone at city hall, the crowd quieted. It seemed impossible. “We have accomplished what our parents and ancestors gave us the will to do,” he said into the mike. “To walk for them with all our heart and strength to prove a point. We are the future. We have shown great pride, and that will lead us to even greater strength.”

Back at Locke, very few students were in class. And the hallways, usually home to the ditchers not caught in the hourly tardy sweeps, were curiously empty. Most Latino students had walked out; quite a few African Americans had, too. Some marched with the Latinos. “I'm down with my homeys,” one black student told Cubias. “I don't want them to send you guys back!” Others saw a golden opportunity to skip school and took it.

Taylor, Hrag, and Mackey missed the walkout. Taylor had thrown herself a birthday bash over the weekend at her Marina del Rey condo. A lot of the Locke contingent had joined in the celebration, which ended only when the cops came to write Taylor up for disturbing the peace with all the noise. Later in the weekend, still in the party mood, she and Hrag had hightailed it up to San Francisco on the spur of the moment. Once there, they decided to take Monday off as a mental-health day. Normally, both would have felt guilty about ditching. But Vanessa Morris was a great believer in mental-health days. She encouraged her teachers to take a day off at least once a month to recharge their emotional batteries. It was something she herself did routinely. It was one of the things that kept her sane and teaching at Locke.

Mackey didn't go to San Francisco, but he took Monday off, too. He felt bad that they had missed being a part of what could have been a turning point in the national discourse about immigration. Hrag had no regrets at all. He didn't think experiencing four kids in his classroom, instead of thirty, would have made him feel a part of anything. He was glad he wasn't there. It was a lost day.

Rachelle didn't teach biology the day of the walkout. Instead she ran off some questions about immigration and public protests and gave them to her students to help stimulate a classroom conversation. But many of them, black and brown, had joined the march.

The walkout came as a total surprise to Phillip. The first he heard of it was when he received a text message from a teacher at a neighboring school. “Is everything okay at your school? Are you on lockdown?” No sooner had Phillip read the message than the announcement of the lockdown came over the PA system. The kids seemed unfazed, and Phillip taught until his third period was over and the lockdown was lifted. But moments after the kids filed out, he heard chanting and loud talking. When he looked down onto Saint Street from his third-floor window, he saw kids running by the side of the building. He strained to see where they were going and what they were saying.

Curious, he joined others in a colleague's room with a better view. He was shocked. Below him in the parking lot were probably a thousand students. The ones on the perimeter were banging on the locked gates. It was hard to imagine how this show was going to end. Suddenly, the walkie-talkie of a security guard standing nearby crackled with instructions: “Go to San Pedro! Open the gate!” It was Dr. Wells. The next thing Phillip knew, the principal and a number of teachers had joined the students as they poured out of the campus and onto the street. Phillip was shocked.
Why? Why would he open the gate?