Civic Engagement In Society

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Civic engagement means that an individual or group are making a change in society and/or politics in order to make a difference in the lives of individuals within that society in a positive or possibly negative way. In reality any one has the opportunity to make an impact within their community but not everyone does. Civic engagement is so much more than just protesting or standing up, being a part of a this means that you need to be dedicated to changing the lives of others and sometimes standing up for others. Sometimes it just means being the voice for those who are too afraid to speak up or can’t always speak up due to fear. There are various public figures that come to mind when we think of civic engagement. Some of the most popular figures …show more content…
For some, these leaders are perceived as heroes and for others they are perceived as a form of villain. There were so many public figures that I wanted to learn more about, but there was one person that stood out to me in particular. The public figure that stood out to me the most was Gustavo “Gus” Garcia.
Gus Garcia was a Mexican-American lawyer who attended school at The University of Texas at Austin. In that institution he was the captain of the debate team and a successfully academic student and eventually became a civil rights lawyer (Allsup, 1982). When World War II was occurring Garcia was drafted for service as were many other Mexican Americans. The problem with this is that many Mexican American men had volunteered or had signed up to serve their country. Prior to the war they were treated as second class citizens, and by this I mean that legally they were white, due to the treaties that the United States and Mexico created with the land acquisition. But the problem with this is that they didn’t have the same rights as the other white citizens of the United States, the Anglo Americans. At this time Mexican Americans and
…show more content…
Gus Garcia was a speaker for informational meetings to parents about the importance of attending school and would inform the parents about such laws that required their children to attend school. Gus Garcia was a civil rights lawyer and he believed that all Chicanos had the right to an equal education. He found out that there were various school districts in Texas that were segregating schools and did his research. Prior to this there was a case in California about school segregation, this case was Westminister School District v. Mendez. After seeing that the verdict in this case declared that segregation with the schools was not right, Gus Garcia decided to represent different families against segregation in schools from different districts. He didn’t do this alone since he had support from LULAC and the Alba Club at the University of Texas (Allsup, 2003). This case went to Judge Rice who ruled in their favor but left a loophole, the children could be put in separate classes on the same campus if it was solely for the instructional purposes which would be determined by the scores of the students from the standardized tests administered from the states. But segregation due to their ethnicity was now illegal, the children had rights to use the same facilities of those of their Anglo peers. They could now play together, use the same equipment and be in the same classroom with the same instructional materials.

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