Man of Fire: Selected Writings

Personal Manifesto

Personal Manifesto In Ernesto Galarza, The Burning Light: Action and Organizing in the Mexican Community in California, interviews conducted by Gabrielle Morris and Timothy Beard in 1977, 1978 and 1981 (Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Libraries, University of California, 1982), 107–112. Date of interview: December 7, 1978. In this interview Galarza offers a detailed account of the models he used in labor organizing and economic and social justice campaigns. As a public intellectual , he vigorously championed meticulous research and documentation as part of comprehensive strategies that exposed economic, social, and political injustice. The research then acts as an agent of social change and keeps the issue alive because it is made part of the public record and thus can no longer be denied by the larger society. Galarza often critiqued public and private K–12 educational systems and universities for their roles in perpetuating and reproducing inequalities. For this reason he chose not to enjoy the comfort of a formal academic position even though he had the academic pedigree to do so (degrees from Occidental College, Stanford, and Columbia). He instead chose a career path that included the roles of organizer, author, researcher, teacher, and poet. In this sense, he was a true renaissance man. Notable life events during this era: • 1979: Galarza is the first Mexican American to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for his his autobiography, his poetry, and his children’s books. • 1980: Galarza receives the Friends of the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) award for exceptional service and work to end poverty. President John F. Kennedy championed the VISTA program in the 1960s; it was later institutionalized in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. The program provided funding for volunteers from all walks of life to enter poor communities to help reduce poverty and improve the quality of life in those communities. 66 part 3. action research in defense of the barrio Ernesto Galarza, circa 1970. Courtesy of Henry P. Anderson, photograph by George Ballis. Transcribers: Ann Enkoji, Marie Herold Final Typist: Matthew Schneider Galarza: There is a limit to what you can ask one individual to do, and I think that limit has been reached with me. Fortunately, we have taken the precaution of leaving a record in various places—in Alviso, in San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz. So I don’t feel that these are blank pages that still have to be written by me. In fact, the whole theory on which I operated for years is that if I wrote books in detail, with documentation listed, and bibliographies, that that would be my contribution to the history of my time. But I keep getting calls from people who keep saying to me, “Come and teach. Come and give us a lecture. Teach us this. Fill in these gaps.” With all the young Chicanos who are in this now, who are taking courses, who are going into graduate school, who are looking for things to do, I’m saying to them, “The system is still there. If you’re young and en- Personal Manifesto 67 ergetic and if you agree that something’s got to be done, go do it! You have enough of a background in the records I’ve left behind to give you a start.” But this is a tough assignment! The idea of reading the past in order to do something about the present and the future, is not something that you learn in institutions. Morris: The kind of energy and dedication you’ve put in it is probably a little terrifying to some people who haven’t— Galarza: That’s right, and I want to keep them terrified. Morris: They may wonder if they can put in it what you have. Galarza: That’s right. Experiencing that terror is part of their education. Because it is a terrible thing to have spent most of your life working with people—with children, with adults, with parents—coming to a peak of experience as we did in the Consortium and the Studio Lab, and to be forced by circumstances to realistically analyze a social system that’s there in front of you—it’s terrible! It takes a kind of grit that the schools of education—graduate schools—don’t tell you anything about. You have to experience the awfulness of a stratified social system that will not...