ustxtxb_obs_1972_04_14_50_00022-00000_000.pdf

Page 7

by

MO NM MN ai /min MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 145 Ninth Street, San Francisco, California 94103 I want to support the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Enclosed is my check or money order for $5.00 $10.00 [I] $25.00 $ Check box if you require a receipt. NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP Make checks payable to MALDEF. Contributions are tax exempt. National Office: San Francisco. Regional Offices: Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, San Antonio. Mario Obledo, General Counsel; Vicente G. Gonzales, Development Director. Maybe I should have been a lawyer WHEN I WAS A KID in high school I might have tried to get myself to law school. Except in those days it seemed impossible, for a Mexican American. As a matter of fact, right now out of 50,000 law school students in this country, there are only 400 with Spanish surnames. High school kids in the Mexican American minority can’t see themselves through the seven years it takes to get a law degree. And yet a law degree is the single most important thing a young Mexican American can have today to help his neighbors, his community, his fellow-citizens in our Mexican American culture, to help them fulfill themselves as equal and valuable members of the American democratic society. A lawyer in the Mexican American community means just about everything in helping my fellow Mexican Americans to learn, grow and flourish, and receive the full protection and benefits of American law and justice. Whether you realize it or not, let me say that for a long time the Mexican Americans in this country haven’t exactly had a fair shake in business, jobs, schools and civil rights. Not by a long shot. And it harms our whole country. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has a great program to send Mexican American students through law school. It does it with money it raises itself, and with money that law schools and foundations provide to match. So I am asking you to help. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing I like better than being a first-string quarterback. But now I can also see what it means to be a first-string lawyer. Jim Plunkett