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This is California: The Battle of 187

Ep. 1: They Keep Coming

This is California: The Battle of 187

Los Angeles Times

Society & Culture, News

4.6679 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Host Gustavo Arellano learns how Prop 187 was born 25 years ago, and talks to the pair of Orange County political consultants who helped write it. We learn what California looked like in 1993 and how the then governor of California, Pete Wilson, attached himself to Prop 187. Issues around immigration are beginning to set the tone for a huge political debate in California. Produced in collaboration with Futuro Studios. To learn more, go to latimes.com/thisiscalifornia.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Some people call them illegal immigrants.

0:03.3

Others use the words undocumented.

0:06.0

Aliens.

0:07.2

Americans have all sorts of names, nice and not,

0:10.4

for the 11 million or so people in the United States who are not legal residents.

0:15.1

I have a different name for them.

0:17.7

Friends, family, people I grew up with, the people I interview for stories that I write for the Los Angeles Times, and my dad.

0:32.5

That's him, Lorenzo Arellano.

0:36.9

He's telling me about the first time he crossed the border in 1968 to come to the U.S., jammed in the trunk of a Chevy.

0:43.0

And how much did you pay?

0:46.4

$125.

0:48.5

He was then 18 from a poor rural village in Mexico.

0:52.0

Dad settled first at East Los Angeles, then ended up in Orange County.

0:56.0

So being a so-called illegal immigrant was never a big deal to me. In fact, I didn't even know

1:01.4

people hated them until I was a sophomore in high school, when something happened that I'll

1:05.8

never forget. It's October, one of those damn Southern California autums where the weather is hot and windy.

1:14.9

I'm 15 years old, outside Anaheim High School, go colonists, and the school day's done.

1:20.2

So I'm walking home when out of nowhere, some white boys yell at me from a truck.

1:25.7

At first, I don't know what they're saying.

1:28.2

Then I make it out.

1:29.7

They're shouting, 187, 187.

1:33.9

And I looked at them and I'm like, huh?

...

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