Zambrano is an educator in the San Diego Unified School District, a community organizer and a member of the Association of Raza Educators San Diego chapter. He lives in Southeastern San Diego.

My journey to become a community organizer and an educator began over two decades ago at San Diego State University. I joined the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (M.E.Ch.A), an organization formed out of the historical oppression that Chicanos experienced prior to the 1960s — and still experience today. It was in this social context that I began organizing in M.E.Ch.A, fighting against issues of educational inequities and social injustice in the historically oppressed communities of Black and Brown people. It was firsthand experience organizing that helped me begin to embrace my Indigenous roots and find social consciousness. More critically, learning about the historical oppression and injustice of Chicanos/as had experienced in the 20th century, such as the Lemon Grove Incident and Operation Wetback, provided the lens of how to read the world — essentially how the conditions had not changed much for Chicanos/as. In hindsight, this was a critical part of my journey in reclaiming my humanity and understanding the colonial experience that had long denied me of the right to be in our Indigenous land.

Here, six activists — all with San Diego roots — explain why their activism is important to them and how it changed how they thought about the world.

Twenty years later, our community continues to experience the same colonial violence with police brutality, separation of families by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — la migra — and educational inequities that our Chicano ancestors have fought against since 1848, when the English grabbed part of the Mexican land under Manifest Destiny, a racist ideology used to justify the stealing of Mexican and Indigenous lands. It is these social injustices that compel me to continue the work that our forefathers in the Chicano movement fought for.

As in the the 1960s, we continue the struggle for social justice in the community today — fighting the New Jim Crow laws designed to criminalize Black and Brown people and label them as felons for petty minor drug offenses, an old form of racial discrimination. Furthermore, the current mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, which by design created the same trap that kept Black people from making socioeconomic and political progress during the post-slavery era, is the new form of a racial caste system. Having been raised in the Sherman Heights barrio, I witnessed firsthand the war on drugs’ policies associated with mass incarceration of poor working-class people, and targeted harassment and the stop and frisk system on the Black and Brown youth.

Without any humane intervention that supported the youth from dropping out of middle school and high school, many Black and Brown youth growing up in the barrio ended in the prison system. The school to prison pipeline was a reality that funneled many of my friends to the juvenile and prison system that is still operating similarly today. However, the truth is that similar to the Jim Crow laws in the late 1800s, the war on drugs and mass incarceration of people have yielded huge profit to corporations like the Geo Group, CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections and the Management and Training Corp. Immigrant families, many of which include political and economic refugees, have ended up in the U.S. not by choice, but as a result of U.S. economic and political policies that have also been a source of huge corporate profit in the ICE detention facilities.

As a conscious educator who witnessed the colonial oppressive policies, I find it my duty to continue fighting for the long-overdue freedom that has been denied to the Black and Brown people. Through collective struggle and organizing with organizations like the Association of Raza Educators, I have come to believe that it is the only way to achieve that much-needed change that we have long yearned for. The Association of Raza Educators has provided the space to continue advocating for a more equitable and inclusive educational experience that honors the struggles of the people who have been historically oppressed by the education system that has denied them of their history.

It is through this lens that I find my place to contribute to a real democratic change that is long overdue.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains” — Assata Shakur

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I realized that the support I received mattered, and I wanted to give back.

More than 20 years later, this is as clear to me now as it was then.

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I am proud to say that I have touched many students’ and their families’ lives.

I will give a fair warning to anybody who gets involved in activism: Don’t get discouraged.

In some ways, the U.S.-Mexico border seems more like an arbitrary line for many Americans and Mexicans on either side of it who consider California and Baja California to be one big region. Here, a novelist, two people involved in the area’s World Design Capital 2024 bid and a law school graduate share their points of view on life in two languages and cultures.

Get Weekend Opinion on Sunday mornings

Editorials, Commentary, Reader Reaction and a touch of Steve Breen delivered every Sunday.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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