Los Angeles School to Honor the Legacy of Miguel Contreras

The naming of a new Los Angeles School for Miguel Contreras will honor the legacy of a great labor leader who spent his life championing opportunities for the working class to give their children a better life.

Then Los Angles School Board voted April 2 to name Central High School #10 after the late Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in a room filled with community members who paid tribute to him with their presence. The community led a campaign for Contreras with a mail campaign to the board members, urging them to pay homage to his memory.

Maria Elena Durazo, Contreras’s widow who took over the leadership of the LA Fed says that the naming of the new school will be one mark his life and his accomplishments.

“It means that all of the sacrifices Miguel made in his life, from the time of the UFV movement, will now be recognized at the site of the school. He dedicated his life to change workers’ lives and to change their children’s lives,” Durazo said. “Miguel is smiling right now.”

Carl Friedlander, president of the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild, AFT 1521, urged board members to pay respect to the life of Contreras. He reminded them that it was a site at which Contreras had worked for years, when it was the home of HERE Local 11.

“Miguel taught us there were two main paths for people to life themselves into the middle class and that they are inextricably connected,” Friedlander said. “Students’ lives were touched by him. It is the right thing to do because he was a champion of education programs.”

Miguel Contreras never had the opportunity to attend college himself, Friedlander said, but he understood most working class students would attend community colleges. He continued, saying that Contreras knew those opportunities were becoming increasingly difficult for students faced with increasing fees, cost of tools and books.

He saw these as assaults on the upward mobility of the working class youth, Friedlander told the board.

Friedlander recalled the time that hundreds of community college students marched into the convention center in downtown Los Angeles. The gathered around Contreras, he said, as he spoke of his plan to help lead the campaign to aid students.

LAUSD parent Ricardo Perez, too, spoke of the labor leader’s contribution to the lives of families, and in particular, his own daughter.

“Miguel did a lot for the community where this school is being built. He empowered us all to stand up for our rights and fight for what his fair,” Perez said.

Madeline Janis-Aparicio, the Executive Director of LAANE, said that the office one block away from the site was the initial headquarters for the first successful living wage ordinance, which was also championed by Contreras.

“It would be poetic justice to name that after Miguel Contreras,” she said.

The legacy of Miguel Contreras, who spent his life championing decent lives for the working class, will be honored by a new Los Angeles School that will named after him.

3-23