The incumbent branded him a dissolute radical -- a “liberal, sociologically motivated professor who by his associations must advocate sit-ins and love-ins.”
Julian Nava weathered that attack, but after winning election to the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District, he was branded by many on the other side -- Latino activists with whom he sympathized but whose tactics he could not always support -- as a member of “The Establishment.”
If that sounds like a mild epithet today, consider that this was in 1968, when phrases like “sit-in,” "love-in', and “Establishment” put you on one side or the other of a vast, cultural/political divide. And perhaps the scariest place to be at that time was where Nava consciously sought to dwell, the place where he felt he could do the most good: the Middle.
“Man in the Middle” is the fitting title of a story by Michael Balchunas in the Spring 2008 issue of Pomona College Magazine, the alumni magazine of the liberal arts college in Claremont, Calif.
It tells how Nava deftly -- and, I would add, courageously -- helped guide the district through one of the most volatile periods in its history.
Nava was there when 22,000 students from 16 schools walked out over the treatment of minorities, especially Hispanics. And he was there when his friend, the schoolteacher and activist Sal Castro, was fired because of his involvement in the protests. During the round-the-clock student sit-ins that followed at the school board office, Nava had to balance his sympathy for Castro and the students’ desire to have the teacher reinstated with his duties as a board member.
“I wanted to hold the four-vote majority on the board, which I would have lost if that sit-in got out of hand,” Nava said.
In the end, Castro was indeed reinstated, and of the 92 demands issued by Latino students (including. Balchunas writes, “ending corporal punishment, such as paddling of students for speaking Spanish”) the vast majority had been implemented by the time Nava left the board in 1979.
“Man in the Middle” is a remarkable story of a public servant who was willing to take heat from all sides in order to do what he thought was right.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor