Interview with Barbara Medina, December 1, 2012, Waukesha, Wisconsin

[title slide]

HEREDIA: Alright, hi could you please state your full name and where you're from?

MEDINA: Barbara Medina and I'm from Milwaukee. I was originally from Crystal City, Texas, but my parents settled up here in the north when I became of school age for better opportunities.

HEREDIA: Could you tell us your mother and fathers full name?

MEDINA: My mother's maiden name was Hillabela Flores, but then when she married my dad, she became Genevieve Medina. In the community, they called her Señora Medina and my dad is Alavaro Medina. He's from Texas and they know him as Valo Medina.

HEREDIA: Do you have any siblings or children?

MEDINA: I don't have any children and I was raised an only child, but later in life when my mom passed away I discovered that I had a half-sister, of my mothers.

HEREDIA: Alright, could you state her name?

MEDINA: Rebecca Moncada.

HEREDIA: Could you tell us your ethnic background?

MEDINA: Mexican.

HEREDIA: Alright, so I'm gonna skip to some questions. Can you tell us what it means to be Chicana and how this definition has influenced your personal achievements?

MEDINA: Well, I think in growing up around my mother who was one of the founders of the United Migrant Opportunity Services and being raised an only child at that point, she would take me to a number of her meetings, as well as being exposed to different organizations that were involved in addressing issues of migrants' rights and civil rights. And, my mother was in the middle of them, so I was aware of everything that was going on relating to that and as well as being from Crystal City, Texas, the birth place of the Raza Unida Party. And, my family was very much involved in that. I think I was raised with a sense of being able to impact change, being able to address the inequalities of 00:02:00institutional racism, and you start at a certain place and you move from there. So, I think it was a great place of observing and learning the different techniques that La Raza played in trying to make themselves better and address the injustices.

So, all of that said, that led me to know that being a part of the Chicano movement that we could mobilize and impact change. Chicanas could also do that, but also at that time the usual was to have the leadership positions were all men and women were a part of it but not in leadership positions. And yet, I saw 00:03:00the struggle in the different roles that the men and the women had in regard to leadership and as to how the relationship needed to change for it to be true equal. So, with all that observation in my youth, I realized that as a Chicana I could impact change. I could become involved and not take second place to men per se but only as equal partners. So, that's how I got the identity of being able to identify myself as a Chicana but as well as knowing well that there was a lot of power inherent in that.

HEREDIA: Okay, so you've not only been involved in the community level, but you've also been politically involved as well. Could you tell us why it is necessary to become politically active in order to enhance change?

MEDINA: Well, again I feel that being exposed as a youngster to the different stages of organization that had to take place in order to reach the goals that we needed to. The strategy ultimately was for you to impact true change you have to go where it counts and that's getting a Representative and exercising your right to vote. And, even though in some cases, we were numbers in the majority...that didn't necessarily translate into getting votes and identifying and getting the candidates that would serve our needs. Being younger, I remember running candidates--Hispanic candidates for office but they were not successful. I do remember being a part of it and going door to door and all that is related 00:05:00to campaigning. So, as I got older and I saw the different things that were happening, I figured we needed to impact that. So, one of the things that I started doing was trying to identify candidates who would run to serve our interests in the area that would be a number of Hispanics. It started out--we did it once when we tried to run Dante Navarro, that didn't work. So, what happened was the leadership, and when I talk about the leadership it basically talks about the same leadership that helped start UMOS; there weren't that many people around so generally it's the same cast of characters. They decided, "okay we didn't win this time so what did we do wrong."

So, we decided to get a candidate that would win but would serve our interests, our agenda, committed. So, it just so happened that we identified Maryanne 00:06:00McNaulty on the near south side of Milwaukee. She had been part of the organizing of our efforts for Civil Rights and for Chicano Rights and poverty all and Civil Rights so, she was the candidate we all got behind, and it just so happened that she was able to win. So, in a sense she was an Anglo, but she was put there because of our efforts. And, she really was a representative of our interests and really did a nice job in trying to promote our interests, but then as we got more politically astute...then we started saying, "well okay we need to get a Hispanic elective." And then, we started looking, because we had been there a generation or so before...we didn't have that many people to choose 00:07:00from. At that moment, we started looking around...there were other people with certain backgrounds that we thought were voteable that would win. So, I started getting involved in campaigns and trying to get Hispanics elected to different positions of City Council, assembly men a number of times, but it just so happened that we didn't win.

But each time, it was a learning experience you know after a while you get tired, but you know you always look but it's never a waste of time because you always mobilize people, you always outreach, and you always educate. And at one point, we had an opportunity which was in 1990, the census redistricting. So, as a community at least for me, each election starting from Dante Navarro to the present and the past was always a learning curve and so we got to the point 00:08:00where we were running candidates, they're...you know qualified, but they're not winning. What's the next step? Well, let's draw the lines ourselves because we can. So, then I really wanted this effort to bear fruit, so one of the things I figured we needed to do was get a coalition. We needed to get a coalition of all the Hispanics in the area of the assembly seat we were talking about and trying to draw, you know, the best entity that we could get. And so, I started knocking doors, I started calling people and explaining to them what we needed to do and why I needed them. I identified one of the things that I wanted to make sure was that people of the community, or people from the outside didn't say, "well, who 00:09:00are you? You're from the outside; you don't live in the area."

So, one of my biggest prerequisites--whoever was involved in this redistricting committee had to live in the area. So, through our efforts, we wouldn't be accused of gerrymandering. So, you had to be strategic. So, it just so happened that the different constituencies, I was able to fill so for example...I had Leonor Rosas, who lived in the area, but at the time was also director of Job Serves State of Wisconsin--very important job seeking firm, but also her qualities were unimpeachable because she had also worked in different campaigns. She had been working as assistant to the then County Executive, so she knew the rules, she had been around. But then, we also had Miguel Berry, who was one of 00:10:00the intellectual guy thinking type number crunchers. From...I think he worked for Jobs for Progress at that time. So, everyone lived in the area and they also had a skill. Marilyn Figueroa, she was a known organizer amongst the poor and disenfranchised in the area. Everybody had a role, had experience, and they were impeccable and they all lived in the area. One of the things that I found really interesting though was when I first started thinking about trying to get this type of coalition together, is that I wanted to see what was out there. And certainly, I found out that there was another person who was involved. Jose was already involved trying to make sure that our Hispanic interests were truly represented, but I needed to make sure that we didn't have too many Hispanic groups. We all needed to come as one, so I reached out to him and he became part 00:11:00of the group I was organizing.

So, all the other efforts that were around, I wanted to make sure that they were part of the redistricting committee and I also wanted to make sure that we didn't get agency directors, because agency directors did not live in the community. We could have an agency director if they lived in the community, but they did not live in the community so that was another forefront I had to deal with and soothe ruffled feathers. Because, why couldn't they be a part of it and I had to explain why it had to make sense. We had to have people from the area. We had to make certain expertise and people couldn't tell us that we weren't really working for the community. And then once we got the committee together, what we had to do was educate ourselves on process and let me tell you, its no easy task because you have to know the population counts in the different 00:12:00districts, and block by block, and which ones you want included in the district that you're forming because you want to maximize the voting age of Hispanics. And so, it could be this block or that block, or it could be 75 percent, 85 percent you want the highest possible. And so, we were able to look at the information that was necessary and get the best possible map that we could get.

And, we were...it's sort of like the stars were aligned because at that time, we had access to people in power at that point allowed us to the latest technology. Eloísa Gómez, at the time, was working with the then mayor, Norquist. Maria Rodriguez was in charge of the voting office and they were able to help us into 00:13:00the technical computer system that the city had in order for us to be able to look at the numbers, crunch the numbers, and at the same time we were outreaching to the African American community to make sure we were talking because the African Americans were also looking for the same thing for their constituency. We just wanted to make sure that whatever they were drawing wasn't gonna go counter to ours. So, we were talking, the different communities were talking to each other so we could be on the same page and then at the same time, we also needed to make sure that we had to do go to the hearings--make sure, organize people...that we have people there at the hearings discussing who's going to talk, what they are going to say. We didn't want people coming out of left field and sure enough there was always one. Manuel Salas was always there presenting another Hispanic district and I was like, "no," but as always, it comes with the territory. As best as you can, there's always gonna be other folks who are gonna come in and try to, you know, have their voice heard. We 00:14:00just wanted to make sure that ours was the best informed and with the best possible map we had and so we had to do it at the city level. We had to do it at the county level. We had to do it at the state level. So, you have to make sure when their subcommittees were meeting and there and sometimes they don't give you enough knowledge, so you had to make sure that you have the right person to talk to when the announcement was made.

And then, you organized and then you got people there and then you also had to make sure. You had to identify who had relationships with the elected officials to be able to identify someone who could be your lead and work with the existing. Be it assembly level, or country supervisor, or state persons to make sure they are able to take your voice and run with it. The coalition goes up within their constituents, so it's not an easy task and each one has their own 00:15:00dynamics. I mean, you might have an easier time in the city and not necessarily the county and at the county, you might have this faction that's going against this faction, so it really was a time-consuming process. It was very intense. It all happened within 30-60 days. So, the climate was also difficult in the sense that it was a time when people were trying to rain in the government. The government was too big, and they were talking about reducing the number of representatives and each time you would reduce the number of representatives, that means that people of color will have less votes, less vote to say. So, that's always not a good thing when you want to decrease the number of representatives. If anything, you want to increase itself. Our strategy was to try and maintain, to make sure we did not lose any representatives, but at the 00:16:00time with the city we were able to propose more just to make sure if there were negotiations we always maintained.

And, if we were successful with the city, we were able to gain an additional seat for the city of Milwaukee, so it went to 16 to 17. So, I was particularly proud of that because by no means I did it myself. It was with the help of a lot of people mobilizing people. People talking to each other that maybe would have never talked to each other before were working on the same goal as well as involving other communities of color and so I think that was an incredible experience, you know, bringing people together and being able to finally realize. At the very least, we maintained were we could and increased where we did, so I think our goal was to get the best demographic district to be able to 00:17:00elect a Hispanic in the future which we did, and we gained an additional voice to I am particularly proud of that. So, let me tell you about my involvement with the redistricting effort that I led with a team of people that were committed to ensuring that we are able to maximize our influence in order to get the best district available to able to elect a Hispanic candidate in the future at the time. That was the climate when, through the 1990 census that it was a climate of people thinking the government was too big and they wanted to reduce the size of the representatives.

Our goal, at the very least, was to increase the number of representatives and at the very least if that wasn't possible, to maintain. But, our goal was to 00:18:00increase representatives where that was possible...our efforts in working with the, at the city, county, state level we were able to maintain and not lose representation in the county and for the state, but...with the city we were successful and we were able to increase the common council from 16 to 17 representatives. And, we were especially proud of that because a number of people and coalitions put in a lot time and effort and expertise to make that we were able to accomplish that goal which we were able to do. Now, one of the other things that...once we had the district that was designed with the most Hispanics at that time of voting age or soon to become voting age, then the issue was the next step...was electing a Hispanic to office. So, we went through and we looked at the different candidates and talked to different peoples and we 00:19:00did run some campaigns, but it just turned out, we did not win. We went through this a couple times, so then we started thinking what else can we do to ensure we have a Hispanic representation even though we can do it through electoral, there has to be some other way.

And then, we started thinking how about political appointments. Let's start there and then we are thinking, what about something less neutral, not as volatile, as representative seat, what about judicial seats. So then, we are thinking "ok," so then we started looking around who would be the candidate that we could possible throw out there, when the time was opportune. And, we started looking at the pool of people available and we came to the consensus of approaching Elsa Lamelas, who was an attorney at the time. And, we wanted to 00:20:00tell her what our plan was and why we were going through this strategy and we talked to her and she agreed that she would be interested in seeking appointment when the case would occur. And, sure enough there was a seat that was vacated at Milwaukee county and at that moment we would already had started laying the groundwork and getting the committee and having our interest already to the governor that we were proposing Esla Lamelas. She was our candidate, and this was the first time no Hispanic had ever been appointed to the judiciary in Milwaukee county and we felt it was the time to have her be consisted and for him to appoint one. Sure enough, it happened. So, he appointed her to an open 00:21:00seat. She had to face election within the year, but by then we had already had most of the work done. She was already there. You know how hard it is to oppose an incumbent? We had achieved our goal through a strategy that had never occurred to us before and I worked on a campaign and she has been able to be elected and she has been in office since.

Then after that, then we started thinking, "okay, well, before we been running for local seats, so let's try assembly." So, the same group of people started thinking and we said, "okay, who should we try and ask to run for assembly?" and we ran into the name of Pedro Colon and sure enough people talked to him and thought about it. He agreed and sure enough there was an open seat he ran for office and he won, and he was able to win it single handily. And, from then on, he moved on to other things and he is also a judge in Milwaukee county. In 00:22:00between, Elsa and Pedro being judges, other judges were appointed, but see, we had already started the process. I am not saying if we had not done what we did, we would have as many Hispanic judges as we do now, but it worked and so we came from a strategy of as I have said the beginning when we were a young growing, in the movement and we wanted to run for office. We picked a candidate. He ran for office, as I mentioned before with Dante Navaro.

We had a lot of turn out for the Hispanic community and everything to organize to get them to vote, but at that point we did not win, so at that point the community leader . . .okay maybe the community is not ready for Hispanic candidate. Let's find a candidate that is winnable, but who is still with us and that's how they were able to get to Mariann McNaulty. She served our interest well, but it just came time to, let's see if we can get our own and we started running candidates, but they did not win so then we figured, "what do we do to 00:23:00make this better?" Well, lets create a district that better, that would be able to elect a Hispanic and we did that and that didn't work for a bit so then we figured, "what's the other way?" Let's try appointments when there is an open seat and so I think we ran the gambit of knowing how to...at least when I was involved, of how to get influence in the electoral politics because ultimately when you have one of your own, there they will have to hear when there is legislation things that are really important to us to improve our lives as maybe somebody else who would not just think that really does make a difference and...and it's--we come, it's time it was time and I am glad that its still happening.

HEREDIA: Could you tell us a little about the experience you had while you ran 00:24:00for 12th district alderman?

MEDINA: Oh, let me tell you, that was--it was all consuming. I mean, you had to...I don't care what they tell you about, you read this book, read this strategy, try this, you got to go door to door. That is the only thing that really worked or would work at the time and I know I have managed campaigns myself and candidates will want to speak at the university here and there. Then I would say, "how many votes would that get you? None!" You really need to go where the voters are. You need to go identify the voters that always vote and then you start from there. It was very intense and ultimately, I found out that after doing all that work with the redistricting community and actually doing it for myself, I got nomination papers. Then, I really have to have a hard talk to myself...you know what I discovered? I didn't have the fire in the belly and you 00:25:00really need that fire in the belly, meaning that you are willing to do anything and everything during the exclusion of everything else and just do that. And ultimately, I think my goals were to get people involved and get better representation, but it didn't necessarily have to be me, so that is what I learned. I thought I had it, but I guess not. It is better to have other people who really have it and it's better to have other people who really have it and they are the ones that will do a great job.

HEREDIA: Great, great, can you tell us about your role in the Latina Task Force and the Si Se Puede Conference in '83, '84?

R9: That was really one of the highlights. I think of the get together we had during that period. The Latina Task Force was a group of Hispanic women that 00:26:00lived in the Milwaukee county area and would get together. It started informally, just having lunches, networking, you know, sharing what was going on in their sphere of influence and we would hear about things and it was like well could you help me with this? Sure, we'll help you with that and then it started happening where we sort of got to know the pulse of the community and the different levels of government and different levels of programing and it was only a step later, "hey let's see what else we can do." And then, the idea came up, well, if people are running for office lets invite them and have them come talk to us because we need to hear what they have to say and what they are going to be doing to our community. And, even with all the women at the table, we worked in different areas; private sector, government, community organizations, private business. We figured yeah let's have them talk to us and see what they have to say, and priorities that we have because we see it and know it. You 00:27:00know, we talk to each other all the time, we network, so that's how we started.

And then, we were able to discuss the idea of what we thought was working and it was one way of increasing and getting our voices being heard as Latina women. And so then, we thought maybe let's share this opportunity for other people and maybe be replicated in other areas. That's when the idea came up of having a statewide conference and it would be about organizing and then we were thinking, "well, what should we call it?...well, Si Se Puede." And so, that got to be the name of the conference and we were able to get some funding from I think the Wisconsin Community fund and were able to hold it at St. Benedict's Center out 00:28:00in Madison. We were able to invite all of these key women, as well as some of us held rallies and scholarships to help other women come to Madison to be able to afford it. It wasn't really expensive, but you know just to be able to increase the outreach to other women. We were able to get a speaker out of Chicago on organizing and one of the things that of course because it was for women we also needed to be sensitive to the needs of children. We needed to find daycare and as it turns out some of the men in our life got to be the baby sitters of their children.

I remember in fact, one of the women's children had the measles, so all of the children there had the measles. So, I remember it was an interesting time because of the workshops that were given and the issue of identity and your 00:29:00place in you know being o. It's ok to be a leader without sacrificing your role as a woman. Latina woman are traditional, so I think that got to a side from the formal workshops that had to do with skill building and like how do you write a proposal, how do you organize a...you know, get out the vote campaign. I think a lot more of the critical issues happened afterward. We were able to sit down and network and share ideas and experiences and how people felt, how women felt and how, and to...to know what they were going through. They were not the only ones, that everyone of us went through what they were going though and to provide the assistance and the ideas to help them, you know, get through it and know that Si Se Puede, because Si Se Puede.

HEREDIA: Could you tell us about your time on the Milwaukee Child Abuse Prevention Services Coalition from 1990-1995?

MEDINA: Could you repeat that, the name of the organization?

HEREDIA: The Milwaukee Child Abuse Prevention Services Coalition?

MEDINA: The Child Abuse Prevention Network?

HEREDIA: Yeah.

MEDINA: OK, well that happened when I was working as assistant director to Espinosa, the director of La Causa which is a daycare and family social service agency. And as a part of that, since we served a number of children and family programing to help our families, we had to become a part of coalitions. One of the city-wide and county wide coalitions was called the Child Abuse Prevention Network which consisted of different agencies, officials, and volunteers related to making sure we do whatever necessary to improve the lives of family and 00:31:00children. There was several, it was one of the better organized coalitions in the city because each committee had staff, paid staff, by the different community agencies and so you didn't have to worry about who is taking minutes because you just showed up and you did the work. And somebody else took down the minutes for continuity to see if it was on the agenda to return the goals.

I was the chair of that at some point as well. I was chair of the political public policy, which was really interesting because our job there was to make sure that we would seek funding, maintain funding, get more money from the assembly the city and the state and the federal government for the different services we provided. Because we were a coalition, rather than just having one agency go in, we would strategize and say this funding has become available, we 00:32:00know it's coming up in the next biennium, what are their services, who can provide it? There could be five different agencies, but who can do it better? How can we package it, so it would help us to think how we could actually run something and give certain pieces to the agency that was best at doing their part? That way, we could come with proposals and ideas for programs and more than likely they would get funded.

It helped that you weren't doing it by yourself, that you were doing it across the city. You are networking with other agencies and an array of different constituencies. You are talking about people of color, people who are poor. You are talking about Hispanics, African Americans, Asian, Hmong, Native Americans, so it really covered the gamut. It was very interesting and that's how I learned to do a number of lobbying at different levels and being able to set the agenda 00:33:00to be able to accomplish the goals. Because of that, a number of south side agencies were able to get a number of funds that may we not have been involved. They might have got to other parts of the city, exclusively, not on the south side.

HEREDIA: Could you talk about what other achievements you are proud of?

MEDINA: Well, some of the other things that I did get involved into, was trying to bring some economic stimulation to the near south side of Milwaukee. So, one of the things that I helped be a part of was, we figured it would be a good idea to add a credit union. It was called La Colectiva, and it was run out of Saint, oh what is the name of that, Patrick's, St. Patrick's church. And we started there, it already started, and it was very small, but it was right there in the neighborhood around 7th and Washington Avenues in Milwaukee. And when I came on 00:34:00board, they asked me if I would be Chair of the credit committee. I said, "Credit committee? I go what are you doing?" Well, what you do you know, you take loans from members and you go through the application process and then the committee reviews it to see if it has merit, if what they are asking for, if they have collateral. So, I was like, seems interesting.

First, I started off on the committee, then I started out as chair of the committee, and then I started being one of the assistants for the board of the credit union. One of the ones that helped, was very involved, was David Espinosa. So, we were spending many a time trying to recruit people to come and help us. Our idea was to have people in the community invest their money with us, and thereby we would loan it out to people in the community there by not qualify for a loan from institutions in the neighborhoods. So, I am surprised at 00:35:00this point of how much we did without thought to obverse things. For example, we would be open so many nights a week and on Saturday mornings. The members themselves would take turns. We would train them on how to, you know, do different transactions and how to take payments and we had money. We had a lot of money on site and we had like a little vault. I mean who's to say and mostly only one person a night was on there. It's not like we had two or three people, so there were many times when I was there by myself like till 10 o'clock, well actually until 9 o'clock, but then you had to close the books. And sometimes, if they didn't match, you had to stay there until they did match up, but it was like...and by that point we had moved into the building, which is also part of St. Patrick's where other agencies were housed. We were on the first floor and 00:36:00we had just like, the office was as big as this area, not very big at all, but anybody could have stuck us up for all we know. But you know, we didn't think about it at the time, but we knew we were providing a service to the neighborhood and I am very proud of that. We gave out a lot of other loans that may have not been able to happen without us. Then, it got to the point where we weren't able to sustain it. So eventually, we were combined with another credit union. That was interesting to say the least.

HEREDIA: Anything else you would like to make note of?

MEDINA: Again, with the same theme of self-determination. How we really need to provide, give ourselves the opportunities, because nobody else will. Through some of my friends, I was able to get involved in a fund called the Wisconsin Community Fund which was a philanthropic organization which was not part of the mainstream. What happened was, we would raise funds and we would distribute it 00:37:00to communities of need that weren't necessarily being represented by the others like United Way or that type of foundation. And usually, what we would do, we would involve the past funds and grant recipients and their staff, as well as community organizers to make sure that when we would have proposals, the ones that would review them would be the actual people who were involved in the community. They were the ones that would know what the need would be, what things would work, would not work, what they had seen. As opposed to having a board of directors review it. It was the hands-on people that would review the projects and it was statewide community fund organization and we would have 00:38:00applications from native Americans up to the north, to maybe farmers rights out in the west, to urban issues in Milwaukee and Kenosha and Racine.

So, it was very well represented and that was an opportunity I got to know the rest of the state and their needs and their issues and making sure that there was room for them to be heard as well as be able to raise funds for this organization. It wasn't the only one by itself. There were sister funds across the country, so it was the "go to" place for people or organizations that may have not been eligible for funding from other sources. It could be something as small as maybe they needed a computer, or they needed something small like that. Maybe you know, other places wouldn't review, but we would because we knew it 00:39:00could make a critical difference. Just one thing I found out, I went to a national meeting of the community funds, in I think it was LA, some years back and one of the things they were going to start to do was to give, consider applications for the arts. And, somebody who submitted an idea for funding, they reviewed it and felt that it didn't have any merit. So, they passed on it and it was one of the projects of Spike Lee, so they missed the boat on it, but just to show you that we did try to make a difference and I think we did.

HEREDIA: Ok, a little bit on a different note, why do you think it is important to instill in our youth the need for activism and to fight for equality?

MEDINA: Well, I think it's important that they do this because we can't do it all. We are all getting older and I think that torch needs to be passed on. It's 00:40:00their responsibility to try and impact their environment, their community. That's where they are going to live in. They are young. They have a whole life time, so they have the time to invest and to see what they want to come realize and actualize. I think we set the foundation to know that it can be done. I think they can certainly start from where we started, what we will leave behind. But, I think the new challenges will be the new identity of how they see themselves at this point in time which is very different than when we were beginning. Different forces play with their own challenges, so I think they need to take review what has been done, look what's working for them, what's not 00:41:00working anymore. How do they define their own future? How do they define their identity as chicanas, Chicanos Hispanics, in a world that is very different? The thing that I think is real exciting though, is that we saw light at the end of the tunnel. We knew where to go. The generation now, it's here we are going to become the majority. Now, we just need to translate that into expressing our vote to be able to make sure that we define. We need to do the work, the coalition building, be able to reach across the aisle and talk to people to be able to see our side the story. So, I think that they have an excellent base for much to start and they can pretty much make however they want to do it, define 00:42:00it in their own image to their own priorities.

HEREDIA: Is there any particular advice you would give these young activists nowadays?

MEDINA: I would say, keep your mind open. What you will hear at some point, might not seem like a good idea or a might not just gel with you, but always keep it as an option because you never know in what situation you will find yourself in where that piece of advice you hear at some other point might be the approbate thing to do. Keep yourself open. Don't be afraid to ask for feedback, not so much from your contemporaries, but also from people not of your circle. They can tell you things that people who are close to you don't see. If you have an issue, make sure you see if from different angles, not just from yours 00:43:00because you need to be prepared to be able to argue all the points that might be an issue with your issue whatever it is. (You) might not be able to see it, so you need to be informed and you need to see the lay of the land. You need to see something from beginning to end and then, be able to identify the key parts you need to seek advice from formulate, you know. I would say, "be open, seek advice, and always don't be afraid to try something different."

HEREDIA: Alright, finally what are your dreams, hopes, and aspirations for the Chicano activism?

MEDINA: Well, I think like I said before, I think we laid the foundation and there is certainly many more options than there were before and that's a good thing, because sometimes some people radiate to become involved politically. 00:44:00Being leaders and some other ones, strive to become more involved in the business sector or in the arts and certainly my preference is that they follow their heart. We couldn't do that before, because those options weren't available to us, so I think, you know, make the most of it and I think that they will.