Publishing Resistance: The Red Tide’s Challenge to School and Police Power in 1970s Los Angeles

• In Event: Latinx Student Activism, Institutional Power, and Cultural Resistance v2

Abstract

This study examines The Red Tide, a student-led publication launched in Los Angeles in the
early 1970s during an era of national debate around civil rights.[1]
Investigating how the
publication functioned as a form of student resistance, this study seeks to address: What
strategies did The Red Tide use to amplify youth voices and resist institutional power, and how
did those strategies change over time?
The publication printed from 1971 to 1981 and eventually developed into an organization with
branches in several major cities across the United States. As the publication grew, it began
addressing the broader educational and social justice issues affecting youth of the period.[2]

Youth in Los Angeles, particularly Black and Latine students, used the publication as a method
to challenge policing in schools and educational authorities. It served as a space for
cross-neighborhood and cross-racial dialogue and highlighted the specific struggles of Los
Angeles youth while aligning with national movements for justice.

Author

• Joanna Torres, Northeastern Illinois University