Carlos Montes's Beauty of Becoming Film Transcript

CARLOS MONTES: My name is Carlos Montes. You know what lead me to become a voice for immigrant rights and social justice was you know growing up as a young boy facing discrimination, you know and just growing up in the neighborhood of East LA getting harassed by the sheriffs, experiencing racism, you know looking at apartment signs that says for rent whites only, you know this is the South LA near Huntington Park. But also you know listening to my mom tell stories about my grandfather being in the Mexican Revolution. I already always had a family history of fighting for justice, facing discrimination in East LA, finally bam I just kind of broke out of a you know of a shell. Well, the Brown Berets are is a group of young angry men and women that we bonded together, that we were angry and we were looking to do something about the conditions in East LA and we said let’s form the Brown Beret. Why the Brown Berets? Cause we were inspired by the black liberation movement, by the Black Panther party, by MartinLuther King, the black civil rights movement, that made a major impact on me and the Brown Berets. We picked the brown beret cause brown, we’re brown and proud, and we picked the beret as this so we’re going to be militant, we’re going to march and protest, and we’re not gonna advocate about it but we’re gonna advocate self-defense. We’re brown, we’re indigenous, we’re Chicano, we want Chicano power.

Watch Carlos's Beauty of Becoming video below.