THEY'VE GOT THE POWER HBO'S `WALKOUT' AIMS TO KEEP LESSONS OF L.A.'S 1968 STUDENT PROTESTS ALIVE AND RELEVANT TODAY.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

On a recent hot Sunday afternoon, a thousand people swarmed the steps of Los Angeles City Hall, chanting ``Chicano power!'' and carrying hand-lettered signs reading ``Viva la raza'' and ``Viva la causa.'' Among them were militant Black Panthers and Brown Berets.

They were re-enacting a piece of Los Angeles history - one that, at the time, news accounts underreported and now school texts barely acknowledge - for director Edward James Olmos' HBO film ``Walkout.''

The film, airing next year, aims to capture the frustration, the anger and, ultimately, the burst of brown power that gave rise to and followed the 1968 Chicano student walkouts. And while it looks at the past, it may draw attention to the present and future regarding the continuing high dropout rate and other problems plaguing Latino students today.

Some of those students were among the Latino extras milling around City Hall, which was doubling as a city jail. Dressed in 1968 attire and hairdos, they were re-creating the protest of the jailing of the ``East L.A. 13'' - a young history teacher named Sal Castro (played by Michael Pena) and a dozen students who had organized the walkout of thousands of Mexican-American high school students.

It was an important day for director Olmos and for executive producer Moctezuma Esparza (``Selena''), who 37 years ago was one of the ``13,'' helping to lead the walkouts and going to jail for it.

``I've been crying,'' Esparza said. ``When I saw the (old Chevy Impala) police cars pull up a little while ago and the kids running up, I almost fainted. It's been a tremendously emotional experience for me.''

The walkout arose because in the 1960s, Mexican-American students in Los Angeles objected to what they saw as oppressive treatment by predominantly white teachers, counselors and administrators. They were punished for speaking Spanish at school, and even the brightest were steered into trade classes like shop and home economics rather than college preparatory courses before they were pushed out the door. Only one in four graduated.

A number of activists surveyed and collected petitions from other students to illustrate the scope of the problem and turned over the findings to the Los Angeles City School Board, but nothing changed.

``It came to a boiling point in 1968, which was a year in which people all over the world were looking to transform the world into a better place,'' Esparza said. ``Cesar Chavez had just gone into a 25-day fast, Malcolm X had been killed. ... The peace movement was at its height, the civil rights movement was at its height, and these students knew that if they were going to get educational justice, they had to act and seek it on their own.''

One morning in mid-March, a large number of students at Roosevelt, Garfield and other high schools walked out in protest. Word spread until 22,000 students marched out of campuses around the district. They also staged a sit-in at the school board offices.

Some among the ``student'' protesters turned out to be FBI agents and police officers. In the 1996 KCET/Galan Productions documentary, ``Chicano! Taking Back the Schools,'' organizers recalled learning that, in some cases, those who proposed violent measures were really law-enforcement officers.

Olmos said he was stunned when he first saw news footage used in the ``Chicano!'' documentary, film that had been shot and processed by local stations and then deliberately shelved.

``It is brutal - brutal - when you see what happened to them,'' Olmos said. ``You simply go, `Wait a minute - this was not shown to anyone?' ''

As the demonstrations settled down, school officials responded with strong words but leniency for students who merely participated (including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at Roosevelt High) and expressed intentions to hire more minority teachers and principals. Authorities, however, arrested dozens of suspected instigators, two months later charging 13 of them with ``conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor,'' a felony that could have meant a prison term. The charges were thrown out on appeal.

On the City Hall steps as lights and microphones were put in place, extra Joel Gomez, 18, who will study computer science at Cal Poly, reclined in a Brown Beret costume. He said he'd studied Cesar Chavez at his LaVerne high school but knew little about the walkouts before working on the film.

``It's just an experience to be here,'' Gomez said. ``I mean, to read it in a book is something, but to re-enact it is another.''

In the scene filmed that Sunday, the protesters at the jail greet Castro, who comes out on bail. Many are clutching yellow college application forms - a symbol of a hopeful future. Alexa Vega (``Spy Kids''), as walkout leader Paula Crisostomo, holds hers up and says, ``Sal, thank you.'' The crowd echoes her in a chant.

The real Castro, who now works for the nonprofit Chicano Youth Leadership Conference, had arrived at the set a few minutes earlier. As he heard their chant, his eyes welled up. Esparza smiled and patted his shoulder.

Olmos told the extras that in 1968 there were only 40 Latino students enrolled at UCLA, but the following year there were 1,250.

``The only thing I can tell you, if you're of college age and you're holding (an application) up, if you don't go to college after doing this picture, I'm going to be very depressed,'' he told them. ``So I want everybody who's holding one up to graduate from college. That's the whole idea of the movie.''

The school district is taking steps toward improving the quality of education and graduation rate for Latinos. Jose Huizar, president of the school board, told the extras during a break that many new schools are being built to ease overcrowding.

``Beginning in the year 2008, every high school student will be placed in a college preparatory curriculum,'' Huizar said. ``It's a cultural change because for too many years this district thought that only certain types of students had what it takes to get into college. But we know that if we're given the opportunities and given the resources, we too can go on to college.''

But in light of a Harvard University study this year that showed fewer than half of Latino students in the Los Angeles Unified School District graduate, Olmos has another goal: ``We're hoping that kids will walk out.''

``They need the community base. They need to have their mothers and fathers and parents and all the kids and everything join together to walk out.'' He said if the kids walk out alone ``the society as a whole will come down on them very hard.''

``So they have orchestrate it as a communal understanding and do it in a nonviolent way.

``They care about a lot,'' he said of today's student activists. ``They just have to learn how to walk out ... and this picture is going to teach them how to walk out.''

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Civil might

`Walkout' rekindles the controversy behind the 1968 Chicano student protests

(2 -- color) ``Walkout'' director Edward James Olmos works with star Alexa Vega on the HBO film's big protest scene.

(3 -- color) In the film, as at the actual 1968 event, Black Panthers supported the Latino students' actions.

(4 -- color) no caption (protesters)

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News

(5 -- color) Moctezuma Esparza, who helped organize the original protests and also executive-produced the film, listens as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa - also a participant in 1968 - speaks to the cast and crew at City Hall.