Relentless Pursuit

by Donna Foote

  While Crawford was trying to breathe new life into the boys’ football team, the girls’ soccer team was thriving. At Locke, sports mirrored the demographics and the changing culture. Football recalled Locke’s storied past, when African Americans were the majority; soccer represented its future, as Hispanics continued to gain ascendancy. The boys’ varsity soccer team was okay; the girls’ varsity team was great. With Rachelle as head coach, the girls’ JV squad ended up dominating, too. She may not have felt totally comfortable teaching special ed, but she was a natural soccer coach. She loved the game and recognized how much it had given her. She believed it could do the same for her girls.

  At first, the girls were skeptical. Where did this white girl come off trying to coach them—Latinas who had been playing soccer since before they could even speak? But Rachelle had the skills, and whatever initial qualms the girls may have had, they were quickly replaced by a kind of reverence. The JV girls hung around Rachelle like she was a movie star. They stopped by room 214 before classes, between classes, after classes—often just to chat, sometimes to get help with their schoolwork, too.

  Locke atheletes had to maintain at least a 2.0 GPA, and some coaches were grandfathering in a no-fails requirement. Dennis Stein, the boys’ soccer coach, offered an academic lunch club during the season, and his kids had to subscribe to his priority list: family first, school second, then soccer. If soccer took precedence over academics, the kid couldn’t play. So sports was an effective way to keep students engaged in school.

  Playing soccer had worked for Rachelle as a student. Now coaching soccer began to work for her as a teacher, too. She had spent the first half of the year feeling very isolated. That began to change in early February, when the Locke coaches invited her join them on a trip to Las Vegas for a huge coaching clinic at the Flamingo Hotel. Rachelle didn’t know what to expect when she said yes. At Locke, there was tension between some of the young, hard-driving teachers who were hell-bent on academic achievement and the athletic coaches, whose players got out of school one period early for practices and games. Folks like Chad Soleo and Josh Hartford argued that the kids at Locke needed more, not less, time in the classroom, and SE had introduced a seven-period day to make that happen. The coaches resented the encroachment on team time, insisting that sports were a proven way to get kids hooked on school. The conflict engendered yet another divide at Locke: the jocks versus the nerds.

  Rachelle traveled to and from Las Vegas with Locke’s basketball coach, Stephen Minix. Minix, a twenty-eight-year-old six-footer whose family lived in Washington, had been at Locke for four years, making him practically an old-timer. At first Rachelle was hesitant to ride with Minix. Los Angeles to Las Vegas was a six-hour car ride, and she didn’t want to be stuck with a total stranger. But they had a mutual friend who helped out with the softball team, and she agreed to accompany them. Rachelle sat in the backseat and listened to the two of them chattering away up front. He’s so nice, she thought.

  Traveling as a member of the athletics department was an eye-opener. Many of her companions on the trip defied all of her preconceived notions. The coaches were smart, dedicated professionals who loved their students as much as she did. Unlike some of the TFAers who were in and out of teaching, these coaches were in it for good; it was what they wanted to do with their lives.

  And they knew how to have fun. On the third night, they all got kicked out of the hotel. Somehow, in typical Locke fashion, the reservations had been screwed up and their rooms were booked. The problem was, every hotel in the city was full. So they ended up cruising around the hooker hotels begging for lodging. In the end, they found one room and all piled in for the night. They had a blast. Rachelle found herself bonding with them. They were so normal.

  They regaled her with Locke stories, and she began to see a side of teaching that seemed to be missing from the Teach For America approach. They didn’t talk about significant gains and tracking data; they were more interested in the whole child. Minix, who was the son of a biracial couple, told of how sometimes he would shut the door, forget about “teaching,” and just open the floor up to questions. He found that the kids were desperate to find an adult to talk to, someone who actually listened to them and could identify with them. If you happened to be that adult, the kids gave 100 percent back. That approach resonated with Rachelle, and she began to spend more and more time with Stephen and his colleagues.

  She was on the field on February 24 for the last game of the girls’ varsity soccer season—all the coaches were. Many of the Locke jocks, encouraged by their coaches, came out to cheer the girls on. It was a Friday afternoon, generally a kick-back time at Locke anyway, so Rachelle told the students in her last class that if they got all their work done quickly, they could all make posters and go down to the field to watch the game. It also happened to be Mexican Flag Day, and many kids had come to school wearing sombreros and clutching the green, white, and red Mexican flag. When Rachelle’s students arrived at the field, the stands were already filling up; black and brown, boys and girls, even the Hispanic rockers in their tight black jeans and studded jackets were there to watch the show. It was magical. The great divides at Locke disappeared. For this one special game, everyone there was a Locke Saint. Looking back on it, Rachelle considered it the most exciting girls’ soccer game she had ever seen.

  They were playing Cleveland High School, a good team from the San Fernando Valley. Cleveland was much more ethnically diverse than Locke; 60 percent of its students were Hispanic, while the rest were a mix of white, Asian, and black. The school ranked relatively high academically, and some on the Locke side detected a whiff of superiority in the air when Cleveland arrived and took the field. “That Valley team came in and thought they’d kick the ball around for a few minutes,” recalls Dennis Stein. “They didn’t know anything about us. We had been completely overlooked.” But as Stein observed: “The one thing our kids know how to do is fight.”

  And fight they did. The girls played their hearts out. The Saints kept Cleveland scoreless, and when the ref blew the whistle to end the game, Locke was scoreless, too.

  The game went into overtime, and the stands were transformed into a churning sea of green, white, and red. Chants burst from the bleachers; drums sounded. The fans were in a frenzy, and still neither side scored.

  Now it was double overtime. With a minute of play left, Locke scored, ending the game 1–0. With the ball safely in the net, fans—black and brown—poured out of the bleachers and onto the field. They were laughing, hollering, dancing. One black football player draped himself in the Mexican flag and ran around the field, a scene etched forever in Locke’s collective memory. The players wept, and so did many of the coaches and teachers. “It was our little World Cup,” recalls Zeus Cubias, who had started the girls’ soccer team in 1998. “It was our Brazil, our England.” The field was filled with revelers long after the Cleveland buses pulled away. Someone blasted a Latin American punta from a boom box, and the kids danced in delirious delight to the ancestral rhythm.

  The soccer game was just a curtain-raiser to an extraordinary display of Hispanic pride and passion at Locke a month later. A battle over immigration policy had been heating up for months all across the country as legislators debated the fate of some twelve million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the United States. The issue was particularly pointed in Los Angeles, home to the largest immigrant population in the country. On March 25, more than half a million Angelenos descended on city hall in one of the largest protests in L.A. history. La Gran Marcha was followed the next Monday by a student walkout that left many of Los Angeles’s inner-city high schools virtually empty. Unlike the weekend march, the student protest appeared to be hastily organized via MySpace pages and text messages. When word of the walkouts spread, many LAUSD high school campuses went on lockdown to ensure that students stayed in their seats. Locke was one of them.

  Roberto, a senior at Locke, had attended La Gran Marcha downtown that Saturda
y. It filled him with pride to see so many of his people join in the show of unity: they were good people, hardworking people, whom the government was trying to mess with. The news had said there were 500,000 protesters. That was completely incorrect. Roberto thought there were one million, maybe even two million people at the height of the demonstration. Hispanics were everywhere, as far as the eye could see, and they were all hollering “¡Sí se puede!” (“We can do it!”), the motto of the United Farm Workers coined by César Chávez in the seventies. Roberto had never seen anything like it, and it filled his heart with pride.

  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.