the Los Angeles City Council. The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), founded in Fresno, California, came into being in 1959 and drew up a plan for direct electoral politics. MAPA soon became the primary political voice for the Mexican-American community of California. Student walkouts After World War II, Chicanos began to assert their own views of their own history and status as Mexican Americans in the US and they began to critically analyze what they were being taught in public schools. Many young people, like David Sanchez and Vickie Castro, founders of the Brown Berets, found their voices in protesting the injustices they saw. In the late 1960s, when the student movement was active around the globe, the Chicano Movement inspired its own organized protests like the East L.A. walkouts in 1968, and the National Chicano Moratorium March in Los Angeles in 1970. The student walkouts occurred in Denver and East LA in 1968. There were also many incidents of walkouts outside of the city of Los Angeles, as far as Kingsville, Tx in South Texas, where many students were jailed by the county and protests ensued. In the LA County high schools of El Monte, Alhambra, and Covina (particularly Northview), the students marched to fight for their rights. Similar walkouts took place in 1978 in Houston high schools to protest the discrepant academic quality for Latino students. There were also several student sit-ins which objected the decreasing funding of Chicano courses. The blowouts of the 1960s can be compared to the 2006 walkouts, which were done in opposition to the Illegal Immigration Control bill. Student and youth organizations Chicano student groups such as the United Mexican American Students (UMAS), the Mexican American Youth Association (MAYA) in California, and the Mexican American Youth Organization in Texas, developed in universities and colleges in the mid-1960s. South Texas had a local chapter of MAYO that also made significant changes to the racial tension in this area at the time. Members included Faustino Erebia Jr, local politician and activist, who has been a keynote speaker at Texas A&M University at the annual Cesar Chavez walk. At the historic meeting at the University of California, Santa Barbara in April 1969, the diverse student organizations came together under the new name Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MECHA). Between 1969 and 1971, MECHA grew rapidly in California with major centers of activism on campuses in southern