- published: 16 Jul 2011
- views: 14846
Walkout is a 2006 HBO film based on a true story of the 1968 East L.A. walkouts. It premiered March 18, 2006 on HBO. Starring Alexa Vega, Efren Ramirez and Michael Peña, the film was directed by Edward James Olmos. Moctezuma Esparza, one of the students who was involved in the walkouts, was the film's executive producer and many of the actors playing parents in the film were also protesters.
A month after the film first aired, 2,500 Colorado students initiated a walkout of Denver schools to protest H.R. 4437, known as the "Sensenbrenner Bill." This House bill would have made it a felony (rather than a misdemeanor) to be in the US illegally. The bill was the catalyst for the 2006 U.S. immigration reform protests. Other student Walk Out protests in May 2006 were in part inspired by the film.
High school student Paula Crisostomo (played by Alexa Vega), is tired of being treated unequally. She meets a group of student activists from around East Los Angeles and they decide to try to change the way students are treated. They are punished for speaking Spanish in school, their bathrooms are locked during lunch, they are forced to do janitorial work as a punishment and many in the high school administrations actively dissuade the less promising students from attending college. Inspired by her Chicano teacher Sal Castro (Michael Peña) and despite opposition from her father (Yancey Arias), Paula joins in and helps hand out surveys to students to suggest improvements to the schools. Each East LA high school has two or three students who are in the group; Paula particularly becomes interested in Robert (Jeremy Ray Valdez).