By Karen Mary Davalos

As an interview with Sister Karen Boccalero reveals, Self Help Graphics & Art was founded because Chicana and Chicano artists were systematically excluded from the art centers—the galleries, museums, and schools of fine art. At the same time, SHG was a direct response to the institutionalized inequalities in education, health care, housing, and employment as well as police brutality in East Los Angeles. For example, in 1968, when Chicano students consistently walked out of their high schools to protest poor instruction, corporal punishment, lack of college preparation, and the highest dropout rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the sheriff’s deputies responded with increasing repression and intimidation. Wearing riot gear and swinging clubs, the sheriff’s deputies beat students for legally protected activities—peaceful demonstration. The thirteen organizers of the walkouts—later known as the East L.A. 13—were arrested for "conspiracy to disturb the peace.” The California Court of Appeals eventually struck down the trumped-up charges. The impact of the walkouts was lasting, and several leaders emerged from the blowouts, including educator Vicki Castro, artists Harry Gamboa Jr. and Patssi Valdez, and filmmaker Moctesuma Esparza.

Police brutality was also the response to the Chicano Moratorium, a series of peaceful demonstrations in 1970 against the Vietnam War and the disproportionate number of Mexican American men wounded or dying on the front lines of battle. The largest uprising in California since the 1965 Watts Riots, the demonstration on August 29 began as a peaceful event for families, local residents, and youth who gathered in Laguna Park and marched down Whittier Boulevard. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department fired tear gas canisters into the crowd and also into the Silver Dollar Café, a local club, killing Ruben Salazar, a popular Los Angeles Times reporter. The state-sanctioned violence fomented anger, chaos, and injury, and the crowd was cornered by the police, who arrested 150 and killed four people. 

These and other collective actions, which we now consider as major contributions to the Chicano Movement, were directly inspired by the Black Panther Party and the Ten Point Program. Widely circulated among Chicana and Chicano activists and students, the Ten Point Program stated the demands of the Black Panthers—What We Want—and identified the structural inequalities—What We Believe—that African Americans experience in housing, judicial system, health care, education and employment. During the 1970s, the Brown Berets of Los Angeles collaborated with the Black Panther Party on several occasions. Chicano artists were members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Students for a Democratic Society. Others were inspired by the Black Panther’s newspaper, using it as a model for creating community newspapers in East Los Angeles. Finally, Chicana/o arts organizations, particularly Self Help Graphics, were influenced by the Panther’s fundamental vision of self-determination and economic autonomy.

In short, these events not only activated the Chicana/o/x community, a contemporary term that registers intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, but they inspired Sister Karen to form an arts center that would openly support the creative expression and experiences of local Mexican-heritage residents of East Los Angeles, and eventually of Boyle Heights. She and her co-founders, Carlos Bueno and his partner Antonio Ibañez, along with Frank Hernandez aimed to work with the community by bringing art to daily life. That is, their vision was collaborative, creative, and transformative, and this vision has supported Self Help Graphics and social change for nearly five decades. 

This spirit informs our continued commitment to social justice and solidarity with those who name, witness, and challenge systemic violence.

Dr. Karen Mary Davalos is a Board Member and Professor and Chair of the Chicano and Latino Studies department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.