San Diegans Reflect On 25 Years After Prop. 187

Speaker 1: 00:00 Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of prop one 87 the measure would have denied medical care in public education to people living in California illegally while a court ruling blocked it from being implemented. The fight over prop one 87 as had a major impact on the state and its residents. Here's what San Diego has shared with us about how they were affected by one 87 Speaker 2: 00:24 my name is Pedro Rios. I was a student at the university of San Diego when I became involved in efforts to push back against proposition one 87 as a student, I joined MEChA and participated in protest marches, rallies, candlelight, vigils, and public forums. Speaker 3: 00:42 HockeyApp. He knocked it down. Speaker 2: 00:45 I got inspired to organize against proposition one 87 because like it's proponent, it represented a white supremacist threat to my family and my greater community. Speaker 3: 00:54 This fall. We can send a message to Washington to stop illegal immigration by passing proposition one 87 the SOS initiative. Speaker 4: 01:05 Hi, my name is Swan. Close everybody on this. So we started hearing about the, the state proposition one 87 I remember that many, many people started thinking about naturalizing and becoming us citizens in however, with the danger of a benefits being taken away, many people became us citizens and those people, uh, or part of those people were my immediate family. Everybody including my mother, uh, filed for us citizenship in the end. Proposition one 87 was in that past and it backfired on Pete Wilson because with his action, he actually made thousands of Mexicans become us citizens who had for many years been just legal permanent residents. Hi, my name is Blanca Romero. I grew up in the neighborhoods of Sherman Heights and Barrio Logan. Speaker 4: 02:23 So when prop one 87 a, what's happening? I was very young. I was nine years old. Um, but I, I do recall asking, um, my mom, Oh, you know, what is all this mean? Because deep down inside I was hoping that it would mean that we would get to go back home, uh, back home to Mexico. Um, but all she said was, Oh, it just means it's going to be more difficult. Uh, for you, uh, to attend college, uh, prop one 87 was kind of what lay the foundation least within my family for, to begin. Uh, speaking about that and speaking about college, um, and yeah, and learning what it, what it was to not have proper documentation Speaker 5: 03:18 [inaudible] Speaker 4: 03:18 even though proposition one 87, um, with overturn and it was never implemented in the state of California, I think that, um, it said [inaudible] she had a very strong precedence. Sometimes people say, Oh, well, you know, if, if when 87 had been implemented, this, this, this thing could have happened. But to me is though, even though it did not get implemented, we still saw a racist them, you know, we didn't see kind of positive legislation coming through. Um, even though for 25 years, a lot of political leaders, um, and, and community organizers like myself had been fighting. There's still much work to do and that we still need more people to help us Speaker 1: 04:05 do work tomorrow. On the show, we'll take a look at how the politics of one 87 compares to the immigration politics of today. That's tomorrow on KPBS midday edition. [inaudible].