Gloria Arellanes was born on March 4, 1946, in East Los Angeles. Throughout her early life she became accustomed to the systemic racism and discrimination that had plagued the Mexican American community for decades. The post World War two political economy had caused great demographic shifts in the Los Angeles area and even allowed some Mexican American families like her own to have access to social mobility, as well as middle-class lifestyles. However, much of these changes caused tension between Whites and Mexican Americans, and increased clashes between the two communities had occurred. Arellanes experienced these tensions first hand and sought community organization and guidance as a way to find a sense of security and comfort from police brutality and vigilante attacks. Arellanes later expressed that "I got involved with community services here with Chicano groups… we stuck together because there were race riots in the high school I went to, El Monte High School, and the police would come into the halls of the high school on their motorcycles and just arrest the Chicanos. They never arrested the white students". [3] It was for these reasons that Arellanes looked toward the Brown Berets for a sense of structure, security, and community organization that many other young Mexican Americans were striving for. Arellanes recalls " There was something there that attracted us, and so I wanted to know more”.
