Campus strike helped launch student into career of journalism and local activism

By Daisy Miao
Everyone has hobbies, but only a few people can turn hobbies into their life-long career. Juan Gonzales did.
Loving journalism, he started the bi-lingual Latino community newspaper El Tecolote serving the Mission neighborhood when he was 22 in 1970.
Loving Latino music, he produced the annual music festival Encuentro del Canto Popular and made it a San Francisco tradition when he was 34 in 1982.
Loving Latino culture, he founded a non-profit, San Francisco-based organization Accion Latina to promote cultural pride in Latino community when he was 39 in 1987.
Loving teaching young journalists, he headed the Journalism Department at City College of San Francisco when he was 42 in 1990.
Back to 1968, during the student strike requesting an Ethnic Studies Department at San Francisco State University, Gonzales started his journalism career as a writer and editor in the university’s newspaper.
“He (Juan) was very active in the strike for an Ethnic Studies Department,” said Linda Wilson, a volunteer Photo Archivist who has worked for El Tecolote for more than 20 years. The bilingual El Tecolote was born on August 24, 1970 as a final project of the La Raza Studies class Gonzales created in Ethnic Studies Department - thanks to the strike.
“We started the paper in order to voice out through the community’s perspective,” said Gonzales, who also worked as a reporter for United Press International and Associated Press in the 70s and 80s. “These mainstream newspapers do not represent the community very well.
“We focus on these kinds of good stories: housing, development, changes, relationships, crimes, laws and policies in the community,” he said. “We cover immigrant issues a lot because they are struggling to be a part of the community. We also welcome anybody from different backgrounds, because what happens in other places can also happen in our community.”
Wilson explains why she has volunteered for El Tecolote as a volunteer for two decedes: “We believe that it is important to have a community newspaper. It is happy to work with him. I respect him. He is so dedicated to journalism.”
El Tecolote is Spanish for “The Owl”. Gonzales says they have chosen this word because it both sounds and looks nice.
Starting as a bi-monthly, four-page tabloid with a press run of 5,000, El Tecolote has grown to a bi-weekly, 16-page newspaper with a press run of 10,000 today. Gonzales says: “We would like to make it a weekly newspaper in one to two years, if we are financially successful.”
“He is not getting paid. And when there is not enough money, he brings money out from his own pocket,” says Wilson.
The budget of El Tecolote mainly comes from advertising and fund-raising activities. The fund-raising activities are running successfully through the years. And they managed to have their own office building on 24th Street in Mission neighborhood in 2000. “The donors are usually people who know the paper and come from the neighborhood,” says Gonzales.
“He is so dedicated to the community,” says Daniel Powell, a current journalism student of San Francisco State University and former journalism student of City College. Powell has got to know Gonzales four years ago because he worked for the City College’s campus newspaper The Guardsman where Gonzales serves as an adviser. “It seemed funny at first, but Juan did not have a lot to do with the newspaper. I later found out that was intentional. Everyone worked on that paper learned from the other students. It was a great crash course in newspaper journalism.”
Powell adds: “Juan loves good parties, and he makes excellent barbecue chicken.”
“He loves baseball. He usually invites all of the volunteers to the giant games,” says Wilson.
Gonzales is now working on the Voice for Justice Project encompasses a documentary film, an interactive website, a companion book and one-year national bicentennial campaign beginning in September with a news conference on Oct 15th in New Orleans, birthplace of El Misisipí - the nation’s first Latino newspaper.
“We are proud of that history. We would like this project to be more interactive to get more people involved,” says Gonzales.