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Title
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CSO San José Chapter Organizing Tactics
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Description
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In San José, CSO organizers held house meetings where they identified community concerns, which became the focus of their campaigns, and recruited potential members and volunteers. Formal meetings were then held at the Mayfair School to create an official organization. The main issues of concern to Eastside residents included improving essential services, paving streets, installing streetlights, dealing with police brutality, and addressing economic inequality. Due to the anti-communist fervor of the early 1950s, it was important to involve religious leaders like Fr. McDonnell to assure the authorities that CSO members were not Communists or political agitators, so the opportunity to hold regular meetings at the Chapel was welcomed.
Articles in El Excentrico introduced more people to the organization and emphasized its roots in the local community. Juan Marcoida, CSO member and chapter president, hosted a radio program, CSO INFORME, for ten years on KLOK and KSJO radio stations, with businesses donating to cover airtime costs. CSO services were provided free of charge, and, with so many people in need of help, fundraising was continuous–donated Christmas trees and tamales were sold, musicians played for free at dances, and members held raffles and ran a secondhand store.
Prior to World War II, only a small percentage of Mexican immigrants had filed naturalization papers since citizenship did not appear to improve their working or living conditions. CSO members learned that some problems required legislative remedies to develop better public policy, which made citizenship, and thus citizenship classes, more important. The CSO became part of a civil-rights coalition, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the Jewish Community Relations Committee, the Japanese American Citizens League, and other organizations that met regularly to frame the strategy for public policy involvement in California. By increasing their political power through citizenship classes and voter registration, these groups fought discrimination in education, housing, and employment on local and state levels. In the 1950s, the CSO San José Chapter lobbied to end citizenship requirements for Social Security benefits and promoted voter registration drives with the assistance of the G.I. Forum and worked with the NAACP to challenge discrimination of Mexicans against African Americans.
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Identifier
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B4SV Exhibit Topic Five: Slide 021
