Los Siete
Unfinished History
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Los Siete de la Raza with attorney Charles Garry
A fat Irish cop in the Mission sees three Latin kids standing with a TV near a car. Pulls out his gun and says you're under arrest. They pull out a gun and shoot him. Los Siete, the seven, they are tried, there's a defense committee formed, the Committee to Defend the 7, these are young latin kids.
Out of that rose Centro Legal La Raza, and the La Raza Cultural Center, which very quickly gets involved with another phenomenon occurring in the Mission, which is a little but more professional, a little bit more Alinskyesque and it's a thing called Mission Coalition Organization (MCO). It's thought by many community activists of the left persuasion to be CIA counter-insurgency, because of the connection with the Stanford Research Institute, which happened to be doing research into counterinsurgency techniques in Vietnam. Point being, plans are afoot, it turns out, not paranoia, real, to make the Mission a redevelopment area. The MCO moved by the now organized and mobilized Latin community around the Seven, says “absolutely not. No. No redevelopment in the Mission. Stop Redevelopment in the Mission.”
(from Calvin Welch at New College)