California's First Latino Supreme Court Justice To Address 'Role Of Latinos In A Changing America'

California's Latino population finds itself faced with a number of political paradoxes. Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the state to passing non-Latino white population. Latino voter turnout does not reflect those numbers. Since Latino voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic anyway, some claim the Democrats are not focusing enough on issues important to the Latino community. Is kind of turmoil is something familiar to former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso , the better in law scholar and activist is speaking in San Diego tonight at an event held in honor of Cesar Chavez day. 'S topic is the role of Latinos in a changing America and Justice Reynoso welcome to the show. Thank you my pleasure to be here. I want to ask you first since we are so close to Cesar Chavez day what do you remember most about working with him? I started working with him when he was our staff person for a group called the community service organization we abbreviated to CSO. Was active with them in that regard and the CSO was to me the finest community organization I have ever belonged to. I was then in Imperial County and we had citizenship classes and English classes and we registered a lot of people to vote and so on. It was a very active group. In fact to me it is part of what the answer needs to be to have the Latino community have its proper representation in the public life of the state. Your commitment to the farmworkers was as a lawyer not as an organizer if I understand completely? Initially just as a member of the community if you well. But then of course later as a lawyer not only privately but when things would. A strike would happen and I would be there not organizing but making sure the First Amendment was protect did. Why was important for you to maintain the distinct and you were an attorney not necessarily an organizer? I think it's very difficult to be ball an organizer and a lawyer. In fact one time my late wife and I were visiting a picket line I wasn't picketing but again just to make sure things went well and the picketers including Dolores Huerta were handwringing -- handling out leaflets saying not nice things about the grower my wife looked at and said this is terrible. She asked Dolores is the grower really doing these things and Dolores as well sometimes we have to exaggerate things a little bit and later when Dolores walked away my wife said to Dolores say they were lying? So that roles are just so different. Dolores Huerta cofounder of the United farmworkers. Justice Reynoso where does your passion for Law and social justice come from do you think? I don't know. In fact I was just commenting a few minutes ago but I tried to think about that. Has I really don't know. I think what happened is the following. When I was in grammar school, I went the first of the years to a segregated school we had the patriotic songs that always speak about the goodness of America and equality and so on and the books we read also spoke in that fashion and I think I really got it from my teachers and from my songs and the students that I was in school with they certainly didn't get the same notice of justice in fact I used to refer to my sense of wanting to do something when I saw something wrong as been that might justice bone was hurting and I was compelled to do something about it. Is the son of migrant farmworkers did your friends and family think you would succeed in becoming a lawyer? I don't know that they really have that expectation. In fact when an older brother and I continued with our schooling because the expectation was all of the Chicano boys would quit school I was raised in orange county, would quit school at age 16 and when neighbors would come see my mom she would say in Spanish , Lookout losing my older boys turned out to be instead of being out there working they are still reading books. I don't like she really expected I would go on to become a lawyer. And indeed my dad who was a very hard worker, very respectful type of person would tell us he didn't care what we did when we grow up so long as we were not thieves and he would say that in Spanish by which emits a long as you do something honorable to support yourself, your family and good for the community. So we had a discussion later on I became a lawyer and he says to me crews , to memories to tell you when you are a youngster and of course we should grow to do something for ourselves and the community honorable he said you are right now explain yourself so I said dad don't you think I have been able to be honorable we talked about things and he says, Cruz you are an exception to the role currently his notions about lawyers never change but I was okay. The extraordinary achievement of your appointment to the California Supreme Court back in the 80s he were the first Latino justice in California and one of the things that brings that major personal achievement right up to the present day I think is that you also saw firsthand a court that was challenged on partisan grounds almost foreshadow of the kind of court action political split on the highest court in the land where we are seeing now we have been seeing for the last several decades the same kinds of political forces involved back when you were challenged as a state Supreme Court justice? Under the California Supreme Court after a person is appointed at the court of appeals or Supreme Court those persons be confirmed by the electorate so I had been confirmed several times but the time came when we had a governor who had very strong feelings about the death penalty particularly but other things he simply did not like the way the Supreme Court had been going really for at least half a century the Supreme Court had the reputation of being the best state Supreme Court in the country very often it would issue rulings for example of constitutional protection for women that later were adopted by the US Supreme Court. He launched a campaign against , particularly Chief Justice the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and unfortunately things went well in terms of their campaign against or so they decided to add a couple of other justices to basically take over the court and they succeeded. And sad to say the court has not celebrated in one of the best state Supreme Court's since that time because it changed drastically just as the US Supreme Court has changed since from my point of view of the great days of Earl Warren and the protection of the little people. I remember many years ago attending a conference and there was a song that said if you have been discriminated against and things are not going well turned to nine black robed. If you have been arrested and properly you turn to nine black robes. You can do that anymore with the present Supreme Court I am afraid I am not come as you can tell, not an admirer of our present Supreme Court though now with such a Mayor and two other women who are now but court liberals "-right-double-quote on the court maybe things will be changing but sad to say the courts too respond or are affected by the politicians who appoint them. You will be speaking to now the role in the changing Latinos in America are you focusing on the political roles Latinos will play? Partially. In fact I think one of the most important roles we have is the following. California to me represents what America is going to be in 20, 30, 40 years years in terms of ethnicity and race. So we have the responsibility all of a sudden California to make sure that experiment works in terms of having a community of interest of our own expectations which will include respecting one another, irrespective of race, ethnicity, language, language, accepting the reality that some folks speak a language other than English though English I think will always be the common language and indeed encourage that. I already see some beginnings of the where live we have a school called Cesar Chavez school with a teach everything in Spanish and my stepdaughter is probably the person that knows better Spanish than anybody else in my family right now because they started learning the language when they are young the best time to learn the language other than your own is ages two to 10 we don't start taking other language until we get to high school would do things exactly topsy-turvy if you well. I think we have with Latinos being now 30% of the population in California I think we have a responsibility to make sure that experiment if you will succeeds because we are beginning becoming a very different country than we were 50, 100 years ago. Yet we still keep talking about the Latino vote being a sleeping giant in California because there aren't enough people of Latino heritage to actually vote. There both actual reasons and some sociological reasons. One is that the Latino population is younger sonatas may percentagewise can vote. The other is that some Latinos are not citizens so that cuts it down for the. Perhaps the most important one is that all studies indicate that a community is happier if there is not a great diversity of income among those who are very rich and those who are very poor. Sad to say the Latino community right now is the poorest of the ethnic groups in the studies indicate that when that is true a lesser number of votes. So one we have to do a lot more to change the educational pattern but two have to recognize as long as that is a reality not just of Latinos of angles, blacks and someone that will be the reality. One of my ideals that we need to work for is to have a democracy the country and state and cities that are more equal in terms of income a judge a long time ago appointed by President Wilson said something like I will paraphrase you can have all of the assets belong to a few people are you can have democracy but you can't have both. And I think that is true our ability to have a political chilly economic system that your system politically to spend on circumstance on democracy in the economic system. There really was an idea a couple of years ago that we were on the brink of really seeing big immigration reform sweeping immigration reform been passed by the U.S. Congress and we had a bipartisan bill passed in the Senate and it just stopped. I want to ask you first of all was that personally depressing for you to see what is happened to that legislation? Also in the political ramifications you think that will have? Of course it was more than distressing to me. I know a lot of undocumented ones I know are fine people working hard to pay their taxes incidentally they know you don't need a Social Security card to pay income tax so they get a PIM name to pace that is what I have seen so I think and in fact I did serve on the immigration and refugee commission appointed by President Carter many years ago who recommended a plan whereby many could be documented and that meant that was very effective nowadays the Republican leadership says that proves it didn't work because now we have more undocumented not recognizing that we have more documented in part because Mexico can't, sad to say have good paying jobs for all the Mexicans but in part because legislation we have passed that has made it far more difficult for them to emigrate. When I was practicing attorney in El Centro I helped many emigrate and at that time they could emigrate with a letter of employment so long as they were not otherwise prohibited from being an immigrant IE certain sicknesses and mental and physical and so on. Now it is practically impossible I have a friend who is applied to emigrate and he actually has a little bit of help because one of his sisters has already emigrated to this country nonetheless I think he told me that his name will come up in 20 years. He may or may not be alive at that time speemac, to let everyone know you are going to be speaking tonight on the role of Latinos in a changing America at 7:00 at the downtown San Diego Central Library. I really want to thank you for coming in beforehand and speaking with us Justice Cruz Reynoso thank you for your time. My pleasure. Thank you so much.