Oral History Interview with Albert H. Kauffman

Oral History Interview with Albert H. Kauffman Kauffman, Albert H. Interview conducted by José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D. Interview transcribed by Karen McGee José Angel Gutiérrez Transcript converted to XML encoding by Scott Holmes Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Arlington Texas State Library and Archives Commission 53 pages Published online as part of the Tejano Voices Project. University of Texas at Arlington Libraries

P.O. Box 19497, Arlington, Texas, 76019-0497

Literary rights and title are owned by the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.

2001

Source: MS-Word file transcript of video recording CMAS No. 92.

Oral history interviews published online as the Tejano Voices Project, partially funded by a grant received in 2001 from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission's TexTreasures program.

Library of Congress Subject Headings Library of Congress Name Authority File Jose Angel Gutiérrez Albert H. Kauffman none English Spanish Kauffman, Albert H. Gutiérrez, Jose Angel University of Texas at Arlington. Center for Mexican American Studies Mexican Americans--Texas--Interviews XXX oral history interview Tejanos Chicanos INSERT KEYWORD HERE

The University of Texas at Arlington

Oral History Interview with Albert H. Kauffman, 1998 Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) Interview Number 92 Mexican American Public Figures of Texas Location of Interview: San Antonio, Texas Number of Transcript Pages: 53 Cite as: Oral History Interview with Albert H. Kauffman, CMAS 92, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Interviewee: Albert H. Kauffman Interviewer: José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D. Transcribers: Karen McGee and José Angel Gutiérrez Date of Interview: January 15, 1998 Location of Interview: San Antonio, Texas Albert H. Kauffman Dr. Gutiérrez: January 15th, 1998. We are in the office of Albert Kauffman, the acting director or perhaps he is the director; we will ask him, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education) Fund (MALDEF) in San Antonio, Texas. And this is his office here. And he will be here shortly. This is on the eve of the filing against the United States Army and Corps of Engineers for militarization of the border. So the office is in a tizzy. And he's been somewhat detained. So it will be a quick, fast interview. We are on. I already said all the intro. This is Albert Kauffman. Why do you do this? Mr. Kauffman: What? Dr. Gutiérrez: Be a lawyer and, and run MALDEF in San Antonio? Mr. Kauffman: Well, it's sort of been a life's work. I mean, I grew up in the Sixties, Anti-war Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. And all that as a background, went to law school so I could somehow do civil rights work. And was lucky to get a job with MALDEF in '74. And I just got so interested in it. I decided to stick with it. So I've been with it for twenty, I guess, Mexican American civil rights issues, for twenty three years. But, civil rights issues for about thirty years now. Dr. Gutiérrez: Long history. Mr. Kauffman: Not compared to some people, but... Dr. Gutiérrez: How much longer are you going to do this? Mr. Kauffman: I will probably do this the rest of my life because actually you get to a point where that's all you can do. I don't, you know, I'm not saying I would be against going and do some other sort of law that with maybe a little bit less pressure and maybe a little bit more money, but I mean, I enjoy this. And the fact, is after awhile, that's all you really know how to do. I mean, I don't know whether could actually go be a lawyer and do contracts and divorces and stuff. I'd be... I'd be competing with people right out of law school who know more than I do. Dr. Gutiérrez: There's been some drastic changes here at this office. You are now a litagator, you are also the, the administrator? Mr. Kauffman: Well, that, that's the old.... That's why this office is run as a General, what they call the Regional Counsel, has always been involved in litigation, too, in this office. You know you had Joaquin Avila was the General, was the Regional Counsel, And Jose Garza was the Regional Counsel. And Norma Cantu was Regional Counsel. And, you know, basically everybody has done both the administration and the, and the litigation. Dr. Gutiérrez: So you are number four? Mr. Kauffman: You know, I think there's been a few others. There has been a few others. You know, at one time Ed Idar was head of this office back in the early Seventies. I think Jose Angel Gutierrez, I think, worked with us at one time, as a paralegal. There's Ed Idar, Jim Heidelberg, George Korbel, Joaquin Avila, Jose Garza, Norma Cantu, Luis Wilmot, and I. Dr. Gutiérrez: Is it true that Henry B. Gonzales had MALDEF run out of town? Mr. Kauffman: Well, that's the rumor. I wasn't around at the time, but I understand he had a lot to do with it. That apparently it was because he thought the organization was, was too political. And was sort of against the Democratic Party. And thought it was trying to split the Democratic Party. And, he began to get very curious about our activities. And my understanding is that he made complaints to, to committees in Congress and to the IRS about our tax exempt status. And, and I think the board decided it might be better if we were in a little bit area. And, so we moved. We moved to San Francisco. I think another reason for it was, honestly, there are more foundations with money on the West Coast than there are in, in Texas. And so much of our budget then and still does, comes from foundations that it didn't hurt to be closer to the foundations. I mean, MALDEF couldn't be in New York or Washington which is where Centers and foundations... So I think California made some sense. But, I do think it also was the pressure to move us out, as well as, the, as the decision to move somewhere else for profit. Dr. Gutiérrez: When was that? Mr. Kauffman: I am not sure of the exact year. But I think it was something like '71 or `72 is when the office moved. I know that, that MALDEF was started here in San Antonio. The head of it was here in San Antonio. And when Vilma Martinez became the head of it... I think that's about the time we got to San Francisco; right about the time Mario Obledo left and Vilma came in. Roughly during the '72 period, but I am not sure if it was '71, '73, '72. But when 1 got here in '74, it was, it was already done. The central office was in San Francisco, for sure. Vilma had been selected head of the organization in '73. Vilma Martinez. And I know that was all done by '73. So, the move was completed by then. I just don't know exactly the years. I can find out for you. Dr. Gutiérrez: The San Antonio office, this, this is about the fourth move. This is the fourth address that I know of, I think. Mr. Kauffman: Oh yeah. The San Antonio office has moved a few times; but, if you consider it's been, it's been here for going on thirty years, it's been very stable. And, and MALDEF has had a presence within four blocks of this office its entire existence. I mean, it started down, four blocks down from where the International Building, which is four blocks down, used to be. Then it moved to the Petroleum Commerce Building. We were there for seventeen years. I got there in '74. That's where I went. And we closed out of there, I think, in, in '89. We left there. Then we went over to Commerce Bank Building over on Commerce Street, and then over here. So, it's been all within a few blocks of the same downtown area the entire existence of MALDEF, which is going on thirty years this year. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you know why MALDEF doesn't buy some building or, or, or collaborate with other similar groups... Mr. Kauffman: Well, now you know, Dr. Gutiérrez: ...and own the building? Mr. Kauffman: Well, in San Antonio, I don't know. MALDEF does have its own building in Los Angeles, an a, an eleven story building. And it's been, you know, a lot of financial commitment because, of course, that's where the headquarters is. And we have bought a building, which by the way, was the site of the Los Angeles Stock Exchange back in the Twenties and Thirties. And where William French Smith, one of the U. S. Attorney Generals has law offices. And that's our building. So, we got that one. Why we have no building here, I don't know. Other than, you know, that's a real mixed blessing having your own building. I'd like our own building, think it would be a free rent. But all the hassles that come with it, I think we are doing OK. The rents in San Antonio are very reasonable. I mean, we... Downtown rent here is much more reasonable than it would be out on the Loop [410jor probably would be about as cheap as it would if we had our own building. So I don't know. Dr. Gutiérrez: What is that? How much do you have to pay for this floor? Mr. Kauffman I think it's around two thousand a month. It's about a dollar a square foot or something, which is real cheap rent for a big city. And, and a very nice place. Dr. Gutiérrez: Has anyone written the history of MALDEF? Mr. Kauffman: There has been a lot of attempts at parts of that. There, there was a very good report on our twenty fifty anniversary, which I need to share with you, to looking at the first twenty five years. There's a nice pamphlet about our true history. Our archives are at Stanford University Library. And there is a book of about a hundred pages doing nothing but listing the files of MALDEF that are in the area. There was a film of... One large corporation said that they were doing a film on the history of MALDEF, but I don't think, I've never seen it. But beyond that, I don't think there is a good history of MALDEF. It's certainly, you know, they're.... MALDEF has been written about in articles; talked about the development of non profits; and, and an article, but nobody has written a book on it. There probably should be, but I don't think there is. Dr. Gutiérrez: What is the content of those archives that you described at Stanford? Mr. Kauffman: Well, those archives have all the original files of MALDEF that are closed cases and are not considered confidential documents. There are memos setting up work meetings; there are memos creating the Chicano Rights Project. There are files of mine, Al Kauffman, when he was here from about '74 to '77 with MALDEF. There's some of Mario Obledo's work. There are files from all the different MALDEF offices. Basically, files that we closed, you know, the old files that we just cannot keep in a building like this and that did not have the client confidences in them. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Mr. Kauffman: They are all on deeds of display and available at the Stanford Library and are catalogued by the Stanford University staff. Dr. Gutiérrez: In the content of this long interview that you gave of oral history nature like this at St. Mary's [University in San Antonio, Texas], is it a tape? Is it transcribed? Mr. Kauffman: It is a tape. I don't think it's transcribed. It's by Professor Leal. Ray Leal is his name. I remember I talked to you and I couldn't remember his name. It's Ray Leal. And he's in the Department of Political Science. And it was about, it was just about an hour tape. And it was just about our education work; history of the education cases and what the law is in the area. Dr. Gutiérrez: Up to what time? Mr. Kauffman: We did, you know, we did the tape about five years ago and I think it was up to that date. And I think it's mainly spending time on the Edgewood case, on some of the desegregation cases. I think maybe a little bit about the higher education cases, LULAC versus Richards. Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. Well, try to skip that area and, and ask you things about new stuff because I'll probably get a copy of that tape. Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: And just augment this with that and save time here. Why don't you tell us a little biography? Who is Al Kauffman? Mr. Kauffman: OK. Well, you know, Al Kauffman is a kid who grew up with a, a pretty middle class existence down in Galveston, Texas. I came from an old Jewish family that landed here in 1870 and 1880 and was part of, there was a very small Jewish population in Galveston. And they were part of that population; been there a long time. I had a great-uncle that was mayor of Galveston. I had a great-uncle who graduated from UT Law School in 1916. My grandmother was in the choir at the St. Mary's Catholic Church and at the Jewish Temple which she belonged to. And they were pretty small, but sort of ecumenical existence there in Galveston actually. And then I just went to, to college in 1965 and I got involved in civil rights issues. And, and I was, of course, there during the Anti-war Movement and I got very interested in that. And, so decided that's what I want to do with my life. When I was in college I did some work with Upward Bound and starting projects for African-American businesses, starting together in Boston. Then I went to VISTA and worked in rural Oregon for a year. Put together a non-profit business for, for population in that area… Dr. Gutiérrez: What, what part of Oregon? Mr. Kauffman: In Medford. Medford, Oregon. I worked in Medford, Rogue River, and Ashland for that. Then, I taught school in Mississippi in 1970, in a school which was integrated for the first time. I just realized I should see what was going on in the South. So I taught school for a year in Lake, Mississippi. Then, I decided after all that, that being an organizer, of being a, a teacher was probably not a very quick way to make any changes, to do the sort of work I wanted to do. So I thought about law school. So, I applied to UT [University of Texas] Law School and entered in 1971. And then I kept doing the same kind of work. We started prep sessions for the LSAT; tried to get minority students interested in law schools. And I was there at the, the worst in the history of UT Law School, Sweat vs. Painter. I mean, there were no minorities like that. It was five hundred, that's five hundred, five Mexican Americans and one Black at UT Law School. Dr. Gutiérrez: All males? Mr. Kauffman: No, I think there was one female out of all, but basically all. At the time the law school was ninety percent male. So the law school, basically, was ninety percent, were male. Dr. Gutiérrez: Any salient or memorable moments or times or experiences or episodes in your early childhood or high school or college or during the work in Oregon or Mississippi? Mr. Kauffman: Well, I, I don't know. I just somehow got into wanting to, to, to do work in civil rights area. It just always seemed interesting to me, something I wanted to do. I am not sure exactly why. It's certainly no religious calling, just seemed interesting and something I wanted to do. And as I said, same old… The civil rights march and I grew up watching the Selma march on TV and hearing about it. When I was in college early, Anti-War Movements..... And Martin Luther King was assassinated and all that was going on. And I decided that there would need to be some good work down there and I'd like to do it. So, that's always what I wanted to do. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, who were your parents? Their names, grandparents, your wife, children, whatever. Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Sure. My father was Bernard Kauffman and born in Galveston. My, my grandmother was born in Galveston in 1885. My father grew the family.... They had a small furniture store. They were small business people in, in Galveston. My mother grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her mother was in one of the covered wagons, went out there and took land in Oklahoma back in the Gold Rush. And grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma and moved to Tulsa. And her father was from Ft. Worth. Mother from Tulsa, and she grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. An only child. They had a, a family that had a grocery store. My grandfather had one grocery store in 1918 and had seventy five grocery stores in 1929 and sold them all out for three quarters of a million dollars in 1929. Invested it all in second mortgages. And, and went from a three quarters of a million dollars to ten thousand dollars total assets in one day. That's when the stock market crashed. The second mortgages, needless to say, were the first things to go. So, he went back and he ran one single grocery store the rest of his life. That's where, that's the way she grew up. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was her name? Mr. Kauffman: Celia Maria. Dr. Gutiérrez: She still alive? Mr. Kauffman: No. They are both passed away. My fathers' been gone and my mother... was Celia Maria. And they both grew up in Jewish families, pretty much with all Jewish families. They met because they had a common second cousin who got them together at a party. My mother was a dancer, wonderful dancer. My mom was a very dark color, very dark skinned, green eyes, dark hair. And she danced as a Latin-American dancer in New York City in 1938 and '39 at a club that's… A Latin-American dancer at the age of nineteen. Single woman on her own in New York City. That was quite risqué at the time. And then they, my, her parents were upset about it. And they sent her out on tour to find herself a good eligible Jewish man. She found my father and they got married. And that was it. She... Dr. Gutiérrez: Any brothers and sisters? Mr. Kauffman: Brother and sister. A sister who is a nurse and has three kids. She's in Washington, D. C. I have a brother who's a statistician for the Houston School District. All but dissertation for Ph.D. in statistics. I have a nephew who's thirty years old and a doctor of who went from being a very reformed Jew to conservative Jew to extremely orthodox Jew. Has red hair, green eyes, big red beard, hat, coat, the whole thing. Dr. Gutiérrez: Let me ask you. What's a reform Jew? Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: Or the other, the other kind that of Jew. I know there's the Orthodox Jews. Mr. Kauffman: Oh, well... There's Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox, and, of course, they are variations within each. Basically, the Reform use little or no Hebrew in their ceremonies. Do not wear yarmulke. Observe all the holidays, not quite as intensely. They have mainly English in their services. Of course, men and women sit together. That sort of thing. Dr. Gutiérrez: Sounds like good Catholics. Mr. Kauffman: Well, you know, actually the very Orthodox Jews who, who go even to a Reform congregation..... In fact, my, my sister's mother-in-law is very conservative said when she went into our congregation, she felt like she might as well be in an, in an Episcopal church because there is so little Hebrew and so little relation.... You know, no yarmulkes, no nothing. So… Dr. Gutiérrez: And Conservative then? Mr. Kauffman: Conservatives are sort of in the middle. They, they, they use more Hebrew. They usually wear the skull hat, the yarmulke they call it or the keiv… is another name for it. They more follow ceremonies... And, as I said, more Hebrew services, longer religious services. In terms of the actual dogma of the religion, I think the only real differences is that the Reform believe that there was some, a Messianic Age. And many Orthodox Jews, who truly believe that someday there will be a Messiah. But obviously not really Jesus who was a Messiah, but that someday there will be a Messiah. But, but the Orthodox Jews, for instance, my, my nephew goes to a Synagogue where men sit completely separately from women. Every part of their social and personal lives is controlled by studying the Talmud. He studies the Talmud for eight hours a day. Every Saturday… Leads a Kosher existence. And my family was, basically… My family, and I grew up around Episcopalians and Catholics. That's my, that was my world. So, it's just… Jewish backgrounds is a rich, can be a very rich experience. Now, my kids… And my kids now, now I've got two kids. My wife is a Mexican American, grew up in… She was born in Mexico and grew up in the Valley. So my kids are sort of part Mexican and part Jewish. And they are real, real, real capirotada (reference to an Easter treat, a mixture of breads and other ingredients.). Dr. Gutiérrez: What are their names? Mr. Kauffman: Bernard Miguel and Marcos Nathan. And Bernard Miguel is five and to Marcos Nathan is three. Dr. Gutiérrez: And the wife? Mr. Kauffman: My wife is Olga, Maria Olga Garza Kauffman. Dr. Gutiérrez: Where did you meet her? Mr. Kauffman: I met her here in San Antonio. We were both on the board of the Mexican American Cultural Arts Center here. And that's where we met. Dr. Gutiérrez: Where is she from in Mexico? Mr. Kauffman: She was born in Tamaulipas, in a little town called Valle Hermoso, which is not too far from Matamoros. [across from Brownsville, Texas] And both her mother and father had some land there they got during, I think it was the 1930s, during the land redistribution. And they both had land next to each other, grew up around each other. My mother and father were both from the same small town. She was born in Mexico. And then the family came across when she was six months old. Her mother had some experiences by the way. Her mother was actually born in the United States. And when she was four or five years old in the 1930s, she was deported by the United States. And they had a lot of, repatriations they called them. And, so that's her mother's background. So, she was born in Harlingen, her family is from Mexico. Born in Harlingen and was sent back with her family to Mexico. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was her name? Mr. Kauffman: Her name was Reyna. We called her Maria de, de Reyna. Maria de Reyna Ortiz Garza. Dr. Gutiérrez: But you just called her Reyna? Mr. Kauffman: I called her Reyna, sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: Is she still alive? Mr. Kauffman: She is still alive. She's sixty five and still works as a custodian in a school district down in, in the Valley, rural ISD [Independent School District]. And still works forty hours a week doing physical labor and is sixty five. Dr. Gutiérrez: So, what did you learn in Mississippi when you went out there to find out what that was all about? Mr. Kauffman: You know, I learned that, I learned some differences between urban and rural racism, between rural, urban and rural race relations. Because I had worked in Boston when I was in college. You know, I tried to work in the ghettos and, and would work with poor kids of that area. And, basically, that had the poor kids. The Black kids didn't really know the white kids because they went to separate schools, of course. Or they just wouldn't… Really different socioeconomic worlds. And the South, the rural South where I worked, everybody knew each other. Now, they knew each other because the Black kids parents worked with the white kids parents, but the kids grew up around each other. They grew up on land right next to each other. Now, on the other hand, they were more interested in keeping the races separate, but they knew each other better. So, it was very interesting because the Black families and the white families, everybody knew everybody. You know, the Black families and white families lived around each other for generations. And in Mississippi, a very stagnant economy there. Wasn't a lot of, more movement in or out of the school, city… But, of course, there was complete racism. And I also got to see what it's like to, you know, I was in the school the first time it was ever integrated in 1970. Now, this is sixteen years after Brown vs. Board of Education. By 1969 when that school district went..... Complete segregation. K through twelfth, Black school; K through twelfth white school. Back then Black kids that lived across the street from the white school were bused five miles to Black schools there. I mean, complete absolute segregation. So, finally the 5th Circuit said they were going to close them down and cut off their funds unless they integrated. So they did. Overnight. So, it was shocking... A lot of interesting, you know… When you mix two races like that that had never gone to school together, and were so afraid of each other; and, yet certainly knew each other. Families. It's a lot of interesting sociology and political science. I was a twenty two year old white kid with long red hair. And I'd been to Oregon. And, so I had Oregon plates on my car. So it was just a real strange thing. Well, where I worked in Mississippi was forty miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi. The civil rights workers were being killed. And that was six years before. It was all fresh because of… So it was pretty… part time… pretty active KKK … for its time. Dr. Gutiérrez: Were you afraid? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah, I was afraid. Dr. Gutiérrez: All the time? Mr. Kauffman: A lot of the time. Sure. I actually bought a little twenty two pistol and… Never owned a gun in my life. Just because I didn't want somebody... I didn't want to look out and see white, see white sheets and, and, and flame without some protection. Of course, they would have shotguns I am sure. So it wasn't any good. It was, it was scary. Yeah. But I just, you know, kept pretty quite… Dr. Gutiérrez: So, when did you become a lawyer? Mr. Kauffman: I became a lawyer… '71 went to law school. '71 to '74. I said after years of VISTA in Oregon and years of school teacher, I just decided maybe lawyer would be may be safer. And maybe a better way to do this work. So, I went to UT Law School for three years. So, I actually graduated from law school in '74 and passed the… I got my bar results in October of '74 and the next day I started with MALDEF. Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you apply? Mr. Kauffman: Oh, I had applied three months before and... But, they said, of course, they wouldn't decide until the Bar [reference to obtaining a license to practice law] in September. Dr. Gutiérrez: Had you ever worked with or, or associated with Mexican Americans? Mr. Kauffman: Well, associated with yes, but worked with, but never in the way I did at MALDEF. I mean, I grew up in Galveston and I mean, there were Mexican Americans in my class. I was the campaign manager for a guy named Lupe Salinas, who later on became... Dr. Gutiérrez: Houston? Mr. Kauffman: Houston. He became a state district court judge, was almost a federal court judge. I was his campaign manager. He was vice president of the student council in 1964 in Galveston. Dr. Gutiérrez: Galveston? Mr. Kauffman: He's from Galveston. And Joe Hernandez, the State Rep. is from Galveston. Dr. Gutiérrez: I didn't realize he was from Galveston. Mr. Kauffman: Gonzalo, Gonzalo Barrientos, I think... His family, part of his family is from Galveston also. So that was the population there. Dr. Gutiérrez: Seriously? Mr. Kauffman: But it was just in school... And it was fairly well segregated. I mean, we had a, our class, I think, had one Mexican American in it and that was Inez Hernandez. You recall Inez Hernandez? And, but never worked with Mexican Americans. When I was in law school, as I said, I worked on this project to bring minorities into the law school. And there was a Chicano Law Student Association. And ... Those were some good friends of mine. A guy named Luis Moreno became a County Court at Law judge in the Valley, now practices here in this area Guy named Luis de la Garza was a General Counsel at Valero Oil over here. Was in law school there. But not too many. There were not too many. Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you have any involvement with the Raza Unida party in the early Seventies? Mr. Kauffman: Not until I got to MALDEF. I got to MALDEF in '74. We represented Raza Unida Party. And I worked real closely with Rosie Castro, with Ernesto Calderon. I met, I met Ramsey once, but just once. Guy named Lupe Youngblood and some of the officers of the Raza Unida party. But MALDEF, of course, had worked with the Raza Unida Party a lot. George Korbel was the lawyer on voting. He worked very closely with the Raza Unida Party. One of our cases was when the Voting Rights Act first applied to Texas in 1975. And, basically it says that when there is a change in government procedures, it must be precleared by the Justice Department. In 1972, actually the 1973 legislature, they changed the rules regarding Primaries to Party Primaries. Until then, if any political party got over five percent of the vote, the next, for governor, the next year their political primary is paid for by the state. So, basically it meant that the Republican and Democratic Parties are paid for. When the Raza Unida got more than five percent, the next session, they changed it to twenty percent. And Ramsey Muniz had gotten five percent, I think running against Dolph Briscoe and they thought this... Was the first minority elected Governor in the state of Texas, as far as I know. So, Texas changed their laws. So, we represented Raza Unida Party in case of the Raza Unida Party vs. White. And we stopped that election on back to five percent So, that's when I got to meet all the Raza Unida people. Not long after that the Raza Unida party really wasn't very strong after about '75, '76. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you remember the first case you handled as, as a brand new lawyer? Mr. Kauffman: There were two or three that were dropped on my lap at sort of the same time. One of them was the San Antonio single member district case. At the time San Antonio was selected from multi-member districts for city council. 1 worked on a sort of third round of the White v. Regester case. And that's the one that broke up the multimember districts for electing state representatives and the single member districts. And all of us that represent Mexican Americans in the case… And, and one for Bexar County [San Antonio]. And then on the second round, won for the other candidates, who were Mexican American basically, for the Valley, for El Paso, for Lubbock. And we represented... So I was involved in drawing some of those districts especially in Corpus Christi. And I followed up on that. And worked with the legislature. And another case was against Del Rio, San Felipe Del Rio because they had a country club on San Felipe Creek that didn't allow any Mexican Americans in it. And, so we represented Danny Trujilos who was a doctor... Here in San Antonio now. We basically sued because the city of, of Del Rio rented this prime land in Del Rio on the San Felipe Creek to this private discriminatory country club for one dollar a year. So, I mean that case, was going on before me and also with Raza Unida Party, to follow up on that. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was the aftermath? Mr. Kauffman: Eventually, they opened up and let more Mexican Americans into play golf basically. And, and opened it up. So, that was the conclusion. But they… We won in the… MALDEF won in the Court of Appeals, state Court of Appeals said they couldn't do that and sent it back on, you know… Because the district court would have dismissed it. And, eventually they just opened up the doors. I don't know what, what's going on now. I think that country club still exists, but it no longer has an exclusionary policy to get in. Dr. Gutiérrez: Which case has been the most exciting for you and which case has been the most devastating for you or disappointing in terms of outcome? Mr. Kauffman: The most exciting was the Edgewood v. Kirby case. The, the school finance case in Texas. Just because it involved so many kids and had such a real impact on, on the educational system. That's, I think, the most exciting one I've ever worked on in my life. I think the most, they are two that tie for most disappointing. I guess the worst one was a case I did on testing… Against… On these standardized test that the state of Texas wanted to use to control entry in the schools of education. And it had a real negative effect on Mexican Americans and Blacks. I won at the District court, but the Circuit 51 went against us. And that really devastated me. The other one is my higher ed. case, LULAC versus Richards. Where, you know, you won a very good judgment in District Court. We've got a hell of a lot of money from the Texas legislature. And then the Texas Supreme Court went against us an... 9-0. Finding that the system of financing higher education didn't discriminate Mexican Americans. Dr. Gutiérrez: Only. They said discriminate against all, everybody? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah, that's right. And, basically said discriminate maybe the whole border, but not as Mexican Americans, per se, because there are a lot of Mexican Americans in Houston and Dallas. Dr. Gutiérrez: I remember some details, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the jury, wasn't the jury judgment substituted by the judge? Mr. Kauffman: Part of it. The jury found for us on some issues and against us on some issues. But the judge gave us a directed verdict on the… The issue where the jury went against us. And they gave us a judgment when the jury went for us. The jury found that the system was inefficient and had the… And wasted money. And that it, that the state had, had impeded the efforts to form a, a Mexican American law school right down at the border. Jury found for us on that. The jury found against us on intentional discrimination. They, they found that the individual members of the Boards of Regents and Governor Richards did not intentionally discriminate against Mexican Americans. I mean, we had, we had objected to that jury charge. We don't think it was good questions, the questions they found against us on. The question they were asked on that issue. Dr. Gutiérrez: Who was the trial judge? Mr. Kauffman: Benjamin Uresti. He's from Brownsville. And he gave us a judgment. He give us directed verdict on those issues and gave us a judgment. I guess a judgment and we... On all of our causes of action, on the discrimination case, on the efficiency case also. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, when did the law change and, and was MALDEF responsible for that? At some time at the very end.... Point of law was that it did not apply to higher ed., the efficiency clause. Mr. Kauffman: Oh no. That, that... Well, that's what the Supreme Court found. They found the efficiency clause did not apply. Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, so that was, that part was reversed? Mr. Kauffman: That part was reversed. Yeah. They found... Dr. Gutiérrez: Is that still the standard? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah, that's still the standard. I mean, the Supreme Court said that the efficiency clause in the tax rosters... And that's the one we won the school finance case, the public school finance case on, did not apply to higher ed. And then it found on the discrimination case, it certainly does apply. But, that we hadn't proved it because although there were a lot of Mexican Americans on the border, there were a lot outside of the border. So, we couldn't really show that the system was intentionally designed to discriminate against the Mexican Americans in the state because the, there were Mexican Americans in Houston and Dallas who had benefited by the system. So, that's what the Supreme Court found. So, on one part they found against us on the law and the other part they sort of found against us on facts. Dr. Gutiérrez: On the school finance cases... That's gone on for like twenty some odd years. Is litigation the answer in, in that area? Mr. Kauffman: Well, I think litigation was necessary in that area. Dr. Gutiérrez: Sure. Mr. Kauffman: You, you know, it's gone on for that long, but there is ten years that nothing happened. I mean, there was the, the San Antonio ISD versus... The Rodriguez case in the U. S. Supreme Court. And certainly litigation from '69 to '73 and then that was over. We filed our case in '84 in state court. And, I think I, I think there is no doubt that we made a tremendous change in that system to improve it. So I think, probably litigation alone doesn't do it. And 1, 1, although I do litigation, that's my business, I think it alone doesn't do it. You need to combine the litigation with community work, community organiz, organizing around the issues, legislative advocacy around the issues. All of that has to be done together. I never believed that just one judge, you know, herself or himself can change the whole system or one court. But, I think sometimes you have to break up the system which is what we did at Edgewood. Dr. Gutiérrez: One of the things of MALDEF is that in a lot of deseg cases they, they walked away in the remedies stage. And, and one of the, the examples people use is agreement to the Singleton ration that cap resource allocations--twenty percent Black when for Mexican Americans.... Of course, the population has obviously been growing. So, now Mexican Americans have no standing in Houston, and no standing in many other places. Mr. Kauffman: Well, I, I think part of that criticism is fair, but not quite for those reasons. I think that, I think MALDEF was involved in many desegregation cases all around the, the country. And MALDEF is sort of the only organization doing those for Mexican Americans. And probably got stretched out too thin. I mean, at one time we were involved in desegregation cases in Uvalde, Del Rio, New Braunfels, Odessa, Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Tucson. Dallas and the other districts as well. So, I think it did a good job. Dr. Gutiérrez: Dallas and Ft. Worth? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah, that was basically all those. Fort Worth, I am not sure...Dallas. I know that we were involved. I am not sure about Ft. Worth. And those, we weren't involved and probably should have been. So, I think we, we were there representing our population. We got the final Order and, but in the population.... After that, I don't think we have done a real good job following up, going back every year. And seeing what is going on wrong and trying to bring more actions. I don't think we've done that nearly well. I, I think some of that responsibility is shared by the community groups who are not coming back to us and saying you know, "Look we still need to do more in this district." But part of that is our fault. So I think, I think we, we, some of that criticism is fair. As far as the Singleton ratios, I am not sure what you mean by that because that was the Fifth Circuit law and, and Singleton ratios is really about allocation of employees, teachers. The Singleton ratio is that, you know, if you have twenty percent Mexican American teachers in the district that you have to have around twenty percent in each school. And the reason was that that was one way they could keep a school from being identified as an all Black school or all white school. Now, I do think there is some conflicts there with bilingual programs. At a time, that's caused problems. But Singleton has never meant that you couldn't have more than twenty percent Mexican American teachers. The ratio just said of all the teachers you have in a district, you have to distribute them pretty equally among the schools. But it never was meant as a cap on them. We never agreed to it. And the law was never that to be used as a cap. If any district ever did that, they certainly violated the Singleton law. There's no doubt about that. Dr. Gutiérrez: In Houston and Dallas? Mr. Kauffman: I think Houston did that. Dr. Gutiérrez: Even to this day? Mr. Kauffman: I think so. Dr. Gutiérrez: Dallas has, has modified that twenty percent cap to like thirty four or something, but that is still below the, the percent of, of Mexican American students that are in the school district. That's about forty nine. Blacks are like forty seven. Whites are way, way down now. And, and we still have majority white teaching staffs and, and under the thirty four percent Mexican American. Mr. Kauffman: I, I know that is right. I will say that, you know, we advocated for it, but we have definitely lost on the issue. Everybody has. There is no way the court.... You are going to get a court to say that because you have fifty percent Mexican American students you need to have fifty percent Mexican American teachers. It is based on numbers and the state of Texas has fourteen percent Mexican American teachers. And there is just no way that we could ever get a judge to say that a district has to have fifty percent Mexican American teachers. Just no way. You know, the law is always.... Supreme Court law, District Court law... Now, if at any time the Dallas district or any other district said you know, "We don't need to hire more Mexican American teachers," then they are violating Singleton. And violating Title VII, for sure. And, you know, if somebody should go after them or something.... Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, they, they don't say that. They say they can't find them. Mr. Kauffman: Well sure. That is what they say. And I mean, they are not, they, they are out there. They should find them. On the other hand, as I said, legally it's a real hard case right now because you don't even have a prima-facie case on some of those because the districts.... And we looked at some recently... And I am not going to mention names... Districts that have sixteen percent Mexican American teachers have, should have a lot more, but the state only has fourteen percent. And, unless you can really tie them down to particular practices they have done, it's real hard. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you think a case can be made for bilingual ed. in that almost every school district has asked for an exemption, almost every school district that 1 know of has under-served children that they, they have no instruction. Isn't that not only statutory violation, but also a violation under 14th Amendment protection? Mr. Kauffman: Well, we could argue that. I am saying the law is not going to be real good on it because you know.... We can go after it as hard as we want, and we should; but, we have no bilingual education cases in MALDEF at this time. And one, with that, I think... Dr. Gutiérrez: Which, which one was that? The U.S… Mr. Kauffman: U.S. v Texas. Bilingual was a, a judgment by Judge Justice in 1981. And, it forced the legislature to come up with the present bilingual education bill. And that probably does need to be reinforced But on the issue of Mexican American teachers… And I have talked to, I think, very strong bilingual advocates all around the country… It's very difficult to do anything on the issue of the lack of available bilingual teachers because they just are not there. The state is partially responsible for that, but it's going to be awfully difficult to get a court to decide the state hasn't done enough to have... The right to get more bilingual teachers, you know... Just to, to tie that to the state is very, very difficult. That's all I'm saying. Dr. Gutiérrez: You don't think it could be argued that the universities and colleges just don't even have the programs in the Colleges of Education they don't, they don't create a Bilingual Department? Mr. Kauffman: They courts argue that. And, of course, their response always is they relate to demand. If they have five hundred people, Mexican Americans who come in and want to take bilingual education courses, they'll offer them. But yeah, you get into the, the chicken and the egg arguments. And we did that in our higher ed. case that went into a lot of that. They said well, "There's no programs because there is no demand." We said, "Well there's no demand because there are no programs." And I think you can win on that issue, some of them.... We did it before the District Court in the higher ed. case where I think we convinced the judge. And, I think, accept it. There and again, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It's worked. They put programs there and they have more students. I mean, the, the enrollments in Brownsville and Laredo have just skyrocketed because all of a sudden they have more programs. Laredo had about nine hundred students in higher ed. Now they have three or four thousand just in a few years. Brownsville was about a few hundred, and now they are up to several thousand. You know, it's... There are examples all over, where if you put the programs there you get the kids. So I'm, I agreed with you on the argument. I am just saying get a court to force, you know, to, to force the state... Say, "You must," you know.... Just totally contempt eventually for not having enough bilingual education programs. Unless we can show they are a hell of a lot of kids coming out and are interested in them, it's real hard. Maybe it's worth doing, but real hard cases. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do higher ed. students have a right to a curriculum? Secondary kids to say the Chicano Studies? Mr. Kauffman: I, I'd like to think that they do, but I don't think that we're, we're finding courts that agree with us on that. I mean, I, ultimately the law says that, you know. The states don't even have to have an education system if they don't want. I mean, under the federal constitution they don't have to. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well... Mr. Kauffman: The state constitution, maybe. And under the state constitution, I don't think we are going to get courts to order them to do that. I think that is going to have to be a political thing. I think it should be done. It should be argued that you should have studies that.... Mexican American students all around should be able to study their culture and history. I think it's very important for them. To get courts to order is going to be very hard. I think you could get a higher ed., but you can do it more broadly. If you tried to do a LULAC case, we get a broad, broad judgment saying that it does not service the community. And as part of that, say that you have to have curriculum sort of finally aimed... That's specifically designed to meet the needs of the community. That's probably what it is doing. But I don't think separating it out saying you have a, the students have a, a constitutionally or even statutory right to have certain types of curriculum, I just don't think it's going to work. I, I'm not against the theory. It's a great one. But I just don't think it will work as I see the way our culture is going. Dr. Gutiérrez: Before we leave this area of education, is there something here that you want to mention because I'm going to run out of the tape? Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: I want to ask a few things that are contemporary. Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: I don't have another on education. This English Only movement, do you think that will bump and preempt the statutory mandate for bilingual ed.? What are the consequences of this English Only, either economic or... Mr. Kauffman: No, I don't, I don't think it will. Dr. Gutiérrez: ...legislation? Mr. Kauffman: No, I don't think it will. I, I think that there activity... Some people who would like it to. And, of course, we are going to follow what happens in California very closely. And I, some people feel it is definitely going to pass by what they call the Unz Amendment, which is going to... Dr. Gutiérrez: Unz? Mr. Kauffman: Unz. U-N-Z. There's a man named U-N-Z. He was apparently the major proponent of the California proposition which I think many people expected to be on the ballot this summer, which basically prohibit any sort of dual language program in the public schools. I think it's a very bad idea. And hopefully that can, I think that can be litigated for sure. But I think the Supreme Court said back in 1975, I think the name of the case was Lau versus Nichols, 1975. Supreme Court case. That U. S. Supreme Court case... That if they have students who don't understand the language used in the schools, they are not getting an education. You have to offer them some education. So, I just think that ultimately that has to be done. Now... So I think there will be a good challenge to that one. I think it was harder to go after [Proposition] 209 as, as I think the court showed us they weren't going to go with that. [Proposition] 187. California was still... And that's still in litigation. In Texas we don't have Initiative and Referendum. So, I've had, I think if that the legislature of the state... Although I criticize and jump on them and fight them all the time... I, I don't think that there is a real majority in the state legislature that truly wants to end bilingual programs in this state. I think that there is a sense in this state, believe it or not... It wasn't this way twenty five years ago. But, I think there is now. That it is not in our best interest to end programs that look like they are helping Mexican American students. And indeed, with such an insult to Mexico, such an insult to the Mexican nationals, as well as, the country next door, to basically say that knowing Spanish is of no, no use in, in Texas. That I just don't think they are going to do it. Of course, I could be wrong. We have bills filed in the legislature, but we just have one, you know.... I think to a great extent because of the political problems of the, the Mexican American Caucus in the House and the Senate Hispanic Caucus. Basically, they have just said that that is non-negotiable for members. They are going to fight to the death against anything that prohibits, you know... an English Only, an English Only bill or anti-bilingual education bill. I just don't think it's going to go over well. Could be wrong. Dr. Gutiérrez: Let's switch over to the employment; the concept of do employees have a right to speak Spanish at work? Mr. Kauffman: Well, you want to know what I think the law should be or what the law is? There, there, well... What I think the law should be is: Yes, they should be able to speak Spanish at any time they want unless the employer can show that it literally hampers or hurts their business. But any of these policies that just say that, you know, we want no Spanish on the job should never be enforced by the law. I think they are against the law. Now, they should be against the law. What actually seems to be against the law is that an employer can set policies if they have any business interests. And, and if they have a business, which includes a policy of Only English on the job. If they can show through either safety interests or even a customer interest... Under the law that is developing now, I think they are going to get it. They can support an English Only policy. I don't think that should be the law. I think there are going to be some good cases. We, we've talked to some people who have been involved in some cases. We've looked at it very closely. It's just very, very hard to do right now. I mean, there have been some, this 5th Circuit case... I forgot the name on it. But they have a 9th Circuit case.... And I think it's insane, but that's the way it is. I mean; I think, I don't think any... As far as I know, there has been no case saying that if, if two people who speak Spanish want to go in the lunchroom and all four of them speak Spanish to each other and people don't allow that, I don't think any court is going to enforce that. But they have enforced a policy saying that two Spanish speaking employees cannot speak Spanish to each other when there is a person who doesn't speak Spanish as a customer on the other side of the, the counter. And I think that that's the courts are, are supporting that sort of policy. It's sad, but that's the way it is. Dr. Gutiérrez: Has the situation with undocumented workers or workers with work permits and these raids gotten any better? Is it still dark ages when? Mr. Kauffman: It's still the dark ages. We always, we are getting a lot. In fact, we are getting more and more complaints about raids recently. The INS policies are, of course you know... Here in Texas along the border, the, the militarization of the border, using federal troops to try to force the immigration issues. And, and as well as you know, they say it's also the drug issues, but to a great extent, it's immigration issues. Dr. Gutiérrez: This takes a long time to transcribe. Are you at liberty to discuss what you are going to do in this area of fighting the Border Patrol or anyone else on the militarization of the border? Mr. Kauffman: Well, let me just say I, I, I'll say this. We have been, we have been contacted. And we are considering litigation against the Border Patrol and against the Army Corp. of Engineers for the massive public works projects they are going to be doing right along the river to build new roads, to increase other roads, to clear underbrush, to build helicopter ports, to store diesel fuel. Basically, they are going to set up military bases along the American side of the border. And there is a lot of environmental consequences they have not considered. So, we are considering taking action against that on an Environmental Act. We certainly are very concerned about the point of view of the...Like the Ezequiel Hernandez situation in West Texas. A goat herder got killed by the [U.S.] Marines. I think any time you have military people who are out there with guns trying to patrol... And given the way the border works, when that, you know, you have Mexicans and Mexican Americans who certainly are going to be treated like, look alike--at hundred yards--not to expect to shoot anybody. But you are going to end up with a lot of citizens, permanent residents who are going to be accosted by these people. And a lot of people from both sides of the border are going to be killed. I mean, they are trained to kill. That's their job. The INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] and the Border Patrol. Although, I certainly am not going to defend the Border Patrol, I think actually are better trained for working with civilians than the Border Patrols. There's, some of them are crazy. And INS has a lot of lawsuits against the, you know, officers who just beat up people. But, in general, they're, you know, their training is if you are involved in civil enforcement.... And they are not supposed to be pulling out your guns as soon as you see somebody blow people away. I mean, having the Army involved in that is just a terrible situation up in that... West Texas. So, we're very concerned about that because, you know, we represent, you know, we represent the Hispanic community. Some people forget, you know. You haven't forgotten it. But many people forget that our families are very often are residents, you know, citizens, permanent residents, and undocumented persons all living in the country. And I mean, almost every family you talk to has family along the border. And even in the central, north Texas, has a relative or a member or a close associate who is possibly and who could be considered undocumented. So, I mean, these are rich families. And, so it does matter. It affects us all. We have policies in effect, allegedly just to stop that "illegal alien", but it affects all of our families and all of our population. And, then, of course, we always get the statement, I mean you know... When Luis Wilmot, my predecessor at this job, whose family has lived here for a hundred years, got accosted on the bus by Immigration [INS] because he happened to have long hair and mustache. I mean... So, we are always affected by the implementation of policies, either the... Employment got a lot of ... You know, since Rodino [immigration bill] first went in, we got a lot of allegations of employment discrimination. People would go in and, you know, if they looked like a Mexican American, you know, who could speak English without an accent they were fine. But, if they were, spoke only Spanish or spoke with a heavy accent, people were questioned as far as their immigration status. And, so it affects all of us. Dr. Gutiérrez: The higher ed. issues, I just, I just remembered you said you, that you don't forget. There have been many Chicano professors that have been denied tenure and that had employment discrimination problems at the higher institutions of learning. And has MALDEF taken a case on behalf of a professor along those lines? Mr. Kauffman: Yes we did. We took one or two out of California back in the mid Seventies. We represented sort of a, a class.... Mexican American professors during the, the development of the Texas plan for higher education. You know, we represent Mexican American professors as class, saying part of the desegregation plan has to be an increase in recruitment. As far as an individual tenure case or any individual firing case, I don't think we've taken any in a long time. The fact is that it's very difficult for any individual employment case. We have a few„ now and then, but mainly we try to work on our class actions. And tenure cases, of course are that much more, more difficult than other cases. But I mean, I am not saying we would never take one. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, explain that policy, so, so it's clear for the record. MALDEF does "precedent settling cases." And, it tries to do class actions because the resources would, would be used up immediately if you go after individual cases, but can you flesh this out? I mean, how, what's the criteria; how do you go about deciding on what kind of cases you do take; and how about the case load; and, and is there a budget allocated per case, money plus resources? Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Lot of questions, lot of good ones. First, how we take a case is, I guess, based on a few factors. One is, you know, does it have an issue that we need to litigate? There are a lot of cases that are basically... Do not have new legal issues in them. And, our general policy is not to do those because our private attorneys who take those cases... And can do them and make, make some money in them. And do them as well or better than we can do them. We try to concentrate on issues involving cases about new issues that have not been litigated or we need to develop along further. Obviously, another criteria is the number of people involved in the community. I mean, if it's a fairly old law that we are talking about, you know, you know, a thousand or two or three thousand employees; then, obviously that's a positive effect on taking a case. The chances of success are important, too. I mean, if it's a case that there is almost no chance to win, the only way we can take that is that if the issue is just so exceptional it has to be litigated. On the other hand, if it's a real easy case, you know, there's almost always a private attorney who will take one of those. An employment case where you, you have a pretty clear case you can usually find a private lawyer who will take it because you can make some money off of it. And then as the resources we have available mainly in terms of staff, and also funding. You know, these cases get very expensive. We do not charge fees and we pick up the costs on our cases. So, I mentioned a higher ed. case to you we did. We have so far got no fees in that case. We are still going to do it for them, but we had... So far got no fees. Dr. Gutiérrez: And about how much did you spend on that? Mr. Kauffman: We spent over three hundred thousand dollars of money out of pocket. I am not talking about attorneys. Dr. Gutiérrez: Staff time? Mr. Kauffman: Staff time. Or overhead losses. I am talking about expert fees, travel fees, studies, depositions. Out of pocket checks that we wrote and sent to people, is over three hundred thousand dollars. And that's a big, big expense. And I filed this testing case recently in this state, against the state high school exit test. And that's one where we just felt it had to be done. The fact that, you know, forty thousand kids a year were failing this test, it was Latino kids who failed the test. And, it just, we just had to deal with these issues. But we'll probably, if we litigate that all the way, I mean, it has to be tried and retried, and deposed. And they have a whole range of experts. We will probably spend one or two hundred thousand dollars on that case. And spend about half of attorney’s time for two or three years. I mean, on Edgewood I, I spent roughly half my time for five years on that case. So that's why, you know, we cannot take as many cases as a lot of people would like us to take. But when you take these big ones it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. Dr. Gutiérrez: I was looking at the dockets that you provided in terms of the cases that are in the litigation dockets. I realize that there are other cases that are not there, but it seems to me that, at least in the San Antonio office, there's been a decline in the number of cases. What's the reason for that? Mr. Kauffman: I think there has been some decline for a few reasons. First of all we, we've gone through a stage where there are fewer attorneys. We went from five to four to three to two, and now we are back up to four. So, I mean, there was a decreasing attorney because of people leaving and not being replaced right away. We have done a lot of long term work on old cases that are not new cases. And I think we've got a lot of unfair criticism for not filing new cases when, you know, I was doing Edgewood 5. And that was a old case, but it was more involved than a new case. Dr. Gutiérrez: I ran across, the first one I think was Rodriguez versus... Mr. Kauffman: Yeah, we were involved in the Rodriguez case. Back in 1971, '69 or '71 we were involved in the, the first school finance case was in federal court, but in Edgewood.... Some of the Edgewood cases we, we filed on it in '84. We amended it and filed again in '85. We won it. And, then they came up with a new plan and started filing again in 1991, again. Filed again in 1991, won again; filed again in 1993 and lost. And '95 lost. So, we did it, but we only had one case there. But we done it five times. So I mean, there is a criticism, I think a valid one, about not as many new cases. Some of that is because of fewer attorneys, but some that has been because we have been doing a lot of work on old cases. And some of the cases we have been working on for ten or fifteen years. Dr. Gutiérrez: Has the budget been diminished for the San Antonio office? Mr. Kauffman: No, that has stayed about the same through the years. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, that's diminishing. Mr. Kauffman: I think, I think diminished, yeah. I think it has diminished in terms of buying power. In terms of buying power I think it has diminished some, yes. But it's going back up again, now. As I said, we, we were down to two attorneys at one time and then three and now, four. So I think we are back up to about where we were. Dr. Gutiérrez: Getting back to the policy of, of, of brutality. Police brutality cases. Abuse of authority. Both, basically were individuals like the, the case in Pearsall [Texas].Modesto Rodriguez. What was the outcome of that? Mr. Kauffman: He settled and got a fairly good settlement for that. We worked on that. But that's a case where we worked for several years and got him a, a decent amount of money. Not a great deal. But that was a little bit different issue though because it was police brutality, but it was directly related to his going out and trying to find witnesses to talk about Voting Rights Act. I mean, it wasn't the classic case of someone walking down the street and you know, get hassled by the police and beaten up. Or, or the case of someone in a bar who is an innocent bystander who tells the police, you know, "Don't beat that guy up." And then gets beat up and gets charged with resisting arrest. It wasn't that sort of a case. It was one where he was literally out trying to find witnesses to talk to the Justice Department lawyers who had come down. That's one of the reasons we took that case. I actually filed that case. Did the original pleadings on that case in 1975 and `76. And, I think we finally got the judgment part... And, it was something like '81 or '82. So, those things take a long time. Before I got here there was a case MALDEF did on a Mexican American who was shot in his home, called the Lopez case. That took one lawyer almost an entire year. It was lost. And, and you can't always win.... You lose cases. Or afford to take them all. But it's just a weighing process of whether to spend that much time for one case versus for one person versus spending it on a, another school desegregation case or a class action Title VII case or school finance case or the bilingual case against a big district. I mean, it's a weighing process. No way we can do all of the cases we get. We get requests almost every day to do a case. So, it's a matter of picking and choosing. Sometimes we don't pick the right ones. Sometimes we don't take enough on. And, we are not a perfect organization. I mean, it's a legitimate weighing of resources. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, maybe off the record I'll, ask you about a certain person. In 1976, I believe, about the time of Modesto Rodriguez perhaps, MALDEF took a very, a vigorous effort to, in protesting the violence and police abuse of Mexican Americans in, throughout the western states. Mr. Kauffman: Sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: And even went with pictoral exhibits of at least thirty killings and some seventy odd instances of gross brutality. Has MALDEF kept that project going? Because it, it's worse now than then. Is there any documentation, any research? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah. I don't think, I don't think we really have kept that project going. No, I think that that's, say we were more involved in that in the early Seventies for sure. We were very involved with a case for Morales, a, a Mexican American from, from Pearsall. Dr. Gutiérrez: Hondo? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah. Pearsall. Yeah, that's it. Hondo? Was killed in Castroville. Shot by Sheriff Hayes. I don't know if you remember. He was shot... Dr. Gutiérrez: And the wife Mr. Kauffman: …blown in half. And then they tried the state court and got, I think, involuntary manslaughter against the sheriff. And, then we advocated strongly in that...Ruben Sandoval [attorney, now deceased.] We were involved in an advocacy point of view. We didn't do the litigation. But I think we were more active on that during the Seventies, the mid Seventies. I, I don't think we've had been exactly in that type of litigation. Dr. Gutiérrez: Would you say that, that in the area of voting rights and in the area of civil rights and abuse of authority that, that while at one time, probably the Department of Justice joined the plaintiffs. Now, that Department of Justice joins the defense? Mr. Kauffman: Well, that's certainly happened during the Eighties and the early Nineties. I think that there has been some change with the recent administration where they are just, they are not with the defendants as much, but I mean, I personally had that happen to me in my testing case that I told you about in 19..., 1985. We had this old case. United States versus Texas where we intervened on behalf of the G. I. Forum, LULAC. And, we were considered on the testing case. And the Justice Department turned around and was against us. They were the original plaintiffs. We were the plaintiff intervenors. The plaintiffs, then, basically, said, "There is no jurisdiction to hear the case." So.... Dr. Gutiérrez: Flipped? Mr. Kauffman: And on desegregation cases, on desegregation cases, they often change sides between 1981 and 1992. You know, desegregation cases where they had brought them and they said there is nothing wrong with this district. We, we back out. So, I, there is certainly a change there. I think that since 1993 there had been some change where they haven't been as actively in opposition to us. I mean, I was at, I was at, involved in Fifth Circuit argument in the Austin desegregation case where Bradford Reynolds represented the Department of Justice was on the, on the side of the district. It was the university. It was US v Texas, Austin ISD. And the U. S. had been the major proponent of that case. They were....Plaintiffs of the United States in that case were minority kids. And it has completely changed position for the Fifth Circuit. So, I, it was an amazing process to see. Dr. Gutiérrez: Before I forget because I, I am getting tired.... Mr. Kauffman: Tell me. Would you like a coke or a cup of coffee or something? Dr. Gutiérrez: No. But let, let me, let me flounder around. On the Education Fund side of, of MALDEF, do you also have leadership training programs; do you give scholarships to go to law school; do you pay for bar exam fees? What, what is the "Education Fund" side? Mr. Kauffman: We still have, we still have scholarships for law school. I think they are fairly limited to something like twenty thousand a year. I don't think it's very large. But we do have scholarships for law schools. Dr. Gutiérrez: Twenty thousand a year? Mr. Kauffman: I think that's right. It might be more. Dr. Gutiérrez: Total funds or per...? Mr. Kauffman: I think its total fund per year. But I am not sure. I will have to find that out. Dr. Gutiérrez: That's a pittance. Mr. Kauffman: That's about all the funds we could get for it. I mean, we, you know.... Dr. Gutiérrez: What was it? Staff allocated? Someone out there to... Mr. Kauffman: There's some, there's someone allocated to read the, to read the applications to make the scholarships. Dr. Gutiérrez: Right. Well, and to raise money. It seems to me that... Mr. Kauffman: Oh sure. Leadership. I mean, our fund raiser always is looking for money for that. But the fact is there is, there are people offering scholarships on the... There's a hundred organizations out there trying to get money to offer scholarships to students. And, we have, we have a fund for it, but it's not very big. So, there's not much money in it. I don't know what the amount is. So, with twenty thousand, don't hold me to that. I'll have to find that out for you. I can find out. But I don't think it's a great deal of money is what I am saying. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, who's on the board of MALDEF now and how do they get there? Mr. Kauffman: There's forty people on the board. It's a national board. Dr. Gutiérrez: Just give me the list. Mr. Kauffman: I'll give you the list. Dr. Gutiérrez: Forty people? How can there be any accountability there? Mr. Kauffman: Well, forty people is all I can tell you. And, but remember they come from, they come from California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas. Dr. Gutiérrez: This is not a board of directors. That is a share holders meeting. Mr. Kauffman: Well, there's, there's, you know, there's, there's your Executive Committee. Of course, which I guess, has a great deal of the power. But it's a large board, no doubt about that. Almost all of the civil rights organizations, though do have large boards. I don't think there are any that have like a, a board of five or ten. I mean, I think a large board is partially fund raising boards, of course, because you want a large board membership, so they have contacts to raise money for you. I mean, without that as well as, you know, everybody wants to be represented on the board. So, I mean, if you just had five, where would they come from? Would you have one from Texas, one from California, one from New Mexico, one from Arizona, one from Colorado? And you know, you know, Texas.... Well that would be terribly unfair to Texas and Cal, to California considering the population. So, I, I think it has to be a large board. Forty is a large board, I agree. Dr. Gutiérrez: I don't mean to suggest there.... potential conflicts of interest in suing certain companies and suing certain corporate interests or businesses that may be on the board. Mr. Kauffman: Well, we have a policy that we will, that we will sue anyone. Dr. Gutiérrez: Didn't that come up here in San Antonio with Bell Telephone? Mr. Kauffman: They're, not us. I don't think so. Dr. Gutiérrez: Southwestern Bell hired Wilmot? Mr. Kauffman: Oh no, no, no, no. The opposite. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Well, what, what Mr. Kauffman: Wilmot, Wilmot had been the, the public utility counsel for the state of Texas and had filed a lawsuit against Southwestern Bell. Then, we hired Wilmot as head of the office. Southwestern Bell threatened to cut off funding. Wilmot stayed, nothing changed and Southwestern Bell is still giving us money. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, so it does come up? Mr. Kauffman: Of course, it comes up. I mean, I have no doubt about that. I mean, anybody that gives you money can bring that up. But we have never not sued someone because of it. And we have never backed off because of that. And, I am not saying that nobody was ever... They did say something about it. Dr. Gutiérrez: What kind of a percentages or what kind of a, a break down can you guesstimate of revenue that comes back to MALDEF from attorney's fees and, and the work that you do? Mr. Kauffman: It varies from year to year. You know, I think it's averaged ten to twenty percent, but that's a real important part of the budget. Just because I mean, the foundation moneys are fairly, fairly consistent and secure. The contribution moneys are fairly consistent. But the attorney's fees, sometimes you make a hundred thousand for a year. And, and sometimes you made two million in a year. So, it just varies. I mean you know, like on some cases we've made hundreds and hundreds of thousands and other cases we've worked on them, as I said, this higher ed. case, you know, we potentially deserve about two million dollars in fees, but we so far haven't got a penny. So, we are just... Dr. Gutiérrez: Do the regional offices keep those moneys and there, they... Mr. Kauffman: No, the money, no, no. All the money we get goes to the General Fund. That includes all the money we get nationally. And, then it's distributed to the various offices in turn. So, I mean, like we get an amount. And, like most national organizations where you, you know, you don't really have it. You know, the regional offices are not autonomous in terms of... We don't have to go out and raise the money, but then we don't get all that we raise. But, then, you know, there's actually probably more money that comes from California and the east coast than comes from Texas. Dr. Gutiérrez: From what I recall, the, the conception of MALDEF had to do with being the legal arm of the Chicano movement at the time. Chicano civil rights movement. That now has evolved into many other branches that, that perhaps may not have anything to do with the Chicano movement or civil rights. Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of evolution as you see it? Has MALDEF gone through certain stages or, or have... Mr. Kauffman: Well, I think... Dr. Gutiérrez: ...you yourself? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah, I, I think that all of it has to do with, with representing the Chicano movement. I, I really do. Although I think that there is a, there's been expansions in some of the programs. I mean it was just a small group of lawyers who went out and filed cases. And that was it. And did a very good job. No doubt about that. It started in Texas and some of the first cases were this local school issues. New Braunfels, Uvalde, some in Portales, New Mexico. And, those sorts of cases. But, we also are involved in advocacy. And, by that I mean we are, we, we go to Austin and I mean, we go to Austin. We go to Sacramento. We go to Washington. And I think are very effective on what our Chicanos want in those areas. No doubt about that. To a great extent, because we've done the lawsuits, I mean, it's always related. I mean, you know, I have gone to Austin to talk about school finance. It's not just because I work with MALDEF, it's because MALDEF did the school finance case. That makes our work particularly important one. Higher ed., when we go talk about higher ed., you know, we also sued the state on higher ed. and we were part of the Texas plan. And, so we know a lot about it and we have sued them. So, it's related. But we have expanded into advocacy more than we ever had. No doubt about that. There is more leadership. You asked earlier about leadership. We have an expanding leadership program. There is like three of them. One of them is parent leadership. We have had the program here in San Antonio for five years. We, we go into schools and try to teach parents about their rights in school. What you can expect from the school, that school should do for you. And, then we teach them how to go by the board meetings; raise hell at the board meetings; the changes in school; how to work with the teacher; work with the principal. It's a wonderful program. It's not a large one at all, but it, but it's a good pro, a good program. Then, there's the, then we have what they call the mid career leadership and early career. Basically, one of them is... It is basically Chicanos are just starting into a career and want to know more about how the system works. So, we have these classes where we teach them about: Here's how city government works, county government works. Here's how businesses work. Here's how to make changes. That sort of thing. And then we have the advanced one where we take... What they call mid career. People that have been out for ten or twenty years who want to get on boards and commissions. And we train them that, you know, what work do the commissions do and all that. How to run for city council. We've had some good graduates of that. We, this Juanito Soliz, Juan Soliz is running for State Rep, who ran for congress was a graduate of that program. And, and a lot of good people in the community. You know, teachers, community organizers, lawyers, doctors involved in our leadership program. We have five years of the mid career leadership here in San Antonio, five years of parent... So, we have expanded into the leadership programs. So, I mean, those are Hispanic, but I think they are very valuable. I really do. So, I, I don't think there is anything, I mean, we haven't gone into real estate. You know, we, we haven't gone into building businesses, anything like that, but I think all of it is closely, closely lined with.... On the advocacy stuff, the fact is you know, we have lawyers with expertise on, on a payroll who could go work for free in Austin. And, if you, you had to keep up the pay, you can never afford it. I mean, if I could charge out all my hours over there, two groups we could make a fortune. If I could charge one half or one quarter of the fees as a lobbyist, they charge, you know, we'd be rich people over here. Dr. Gutiérrez: Are you going to do any work on, on the NAFTA treaty? Mr. Kauffman: We, we are part of a coalition that criticized the NAFTA treaty. And, and I think led to the NAD [North American Development Bank] thing and to the reeducation proposals and the environmental concerns. I don't think any of those have been particularly successful though. But I mean, we are a group. The Southwest Voters [Registration and Education Project] are part of that coalition that are set up. We were very concerned about the effect of NAFTA on the communities. But we have, we have not taken a very strong anti-NAFTA or pro-NAFTA stands. We are pretty much saying that we are against it unless you have, you know, environmental protections, worker protections, and other protections. Dr. Gutiérrez: I meant in terms of litigation because the, the, the treaty called for a retraining of workers that were displaced. Mr. Kauffman: No. We have been contacted by that.... I, I, it's one of those cases I would like to do. Where out in El Paso there is a very serious situation where I... The retraining programs are very weak. They basically are English language courses, rather than retraining and employment programs. And I think there is some, there may be some ways to get around it. We just haven't put those together. We have been contacted by them at one time. I'd like to, but just have not done it. Dr. Gutiérrez: This is "not done yet." We have to go back to your story about just barely getting back up to strength and limited resources. Mr. Kauffman: Well, sure. I mean... Dr. Gutiérrez: NAFTA is not yesterday. NAFTA is ten years old. Mr. Kauffman: NAFTA, oh yeah. Absolutely. NAFTA is not yesterday. Some of the effects of, you know, these programs that were put in to ameliorate the effects of NAFTA are, are just beginning to be seen, as far as, the real effects are concerned. So, that is new, but in terms of what you said... Let me just say, we have just a long list of things we are already involved in and to some extent we have to wait until we have some time to do things before we get into a new one. I mean, Edgewood basically, my personal time occupied so much of it in higher ed. Slowly, but surely, that is ending. I am spending a little bit more time on testing now. You know, the redistricting in the early Nine, Nine, Nineties, it, it took the office four or five years to work through. So, now we can do more of individuals, small districts, and school, school district cases, individual city cases more than we could back in the early Nineties. So, but there is a, you know, we have a long backlog of work. I mean, you know, like just today we have covered about twenty things we probably should be doing. I mean, I, I, I probably should spend more time on bilingual education enforcement in Texas, but I mean... No doubt about it, there are a lot of things we should be doing that we are not doing because we just don't have the time. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let me ask you if, if, without being offensive, is it a part of understaffing? Mr. Kauffman: It's fair… Dr. Gutiérrez: Is, is part of the understaffing putting an, an unfair burden on you, that you are the only one with experience and expertise to make decisions on the criteria? Rookie attorneys would think every case is great? Mr. Kauffman: Well, most of the attorneys think their case is great. And, to some extent I have to, well I, you know, I... My, my rookie attorneys are very interested and do a lot of things. They have a good judgment. But, I mean, it puts pressure on me to some extent being the only real experienced lawyer in the office. But, you know, I, I knew that's what I was going to do if I got this job. And, and the other thing, you know, it's so important. Those of us who like to keep to…On both sides of this camera, but... Been in the business a long time to teach the young ones, you know. To tell them whatever skills we have, to teach them about the history of the, of this movement, to teach them the skills they need, or give them the community contacts. I feel very good about that. And, on the other hand, I've seen lawyers that have been in practice twenty years who are not as good a lawyers as my new ones are over here because they don't have the energy or ability or the knowledge about the, the recent law. I mean, they have the experience, but they sometimes don't have the energy. So that, I feel bad about that. Dr. Gutiérrez: In, in the area of leadership, has MALDEF ever considered the training of potential candidates for judicial posts? Or, or providing judges, any positions, more, more training and, and experience, you know, that they could move up into appellate courts? Or for the moment, have a list of potential nominees for the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice? Those kinds of things it would seem like, the training is, is needed in all those areas, but in the main area of, of the people that... Mr. Kauffman: Well, the judicial, I... No, no we haven't. We have not, you know, we really haven't said that, you know, we have a course for judges to.... Dr. Gutiérrez: Would that be a conflict? Mr. Kauffman: No, well. No. Conflict. I think it would be sort of fun. But, I think I mean I also, I am not sure, you know, at that level, it would be very well received. I mean, you know, these judges, most of the judges have been in practice as long as any of us. And, probably know the law and politics better than we do. I mean, I am not sure, I am not sure how well we really are needed. Dr. Gutiérrez: Because that was a conflict... Mr. Kauffman: Now, on the advocacy side... Dr. Gutiérrez: ...you... Deciding in our favor all of the time. Mr. Kauffman: Well, they are thinking of, of along what we do. Obviously the other question you said, yes, we do have a list of people who we have supported for the U. S. Supreme Court. I don't have that list, but I know that there's, there's been a list of names we have suggested for the U. S. Supreme Court. One of them was a man who is on the California Supreme Court many years. Dr. Gutiérrez: Cruz Reynoso? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah. Of course, Reynoso is one name on there. There's another, there's a list of several people who we have recommended. There is a lot of issues right now. And a lot of coalition building with the other Latino organizations because obviously to some extent people feel that eventually there is going to be a Latino Supreme Court Judge. And, I think the difficulty is.... I don't think we want to get into a situation where, you know, MALDEF says it's got be a Mexican American judge; and, the Puerto Ricans say it's got to be a Puerto Rican judge; and, the Cubans say it's got to be a Cuban judge. So, there's some coalition building around that. But, no, I don't think we've come up with a short list that everyone agrees on, yet. The Hispanic National Bar Association is working on some of that, too. But I, I don't know. I think, I hope to be working on that. And I know that we have list of people that we have supported and that we have said these are people who, without being an exclusive list, they are people that we think would be good judges. So, I know Cruz Reynoso's name is on that list. I am not sure of the other names on the list. Dr. Gutiérrez: How about a little lower? Mr. Kauffman: Huh? Dr. Gutiérrez: Is MALDEF interested in, in nominations to appellate courts? Mr. Kauffman: Sure. And we, we've had... There have been offers. We had an, we have office, we have an office in Washington. And a woman named Gina Verdugos heads our Washington office. And she is involved watching all of the appointments to the district court benches, U. S. 5th Circuit, other Circuit appointments. And, works with, you know, other civil rights groups around there to sort of look at all the candidates, recommend candidates. So, we have been involved in that at the Washington level. Dr. Gutiérrez: Hilda Tagle. Corpus Christi. Nominated. Mr. Kauffman: I saw her yesterday Dr. Gutiérrez: It's been three years Mr. Kauffman: I saw her yesterday Dr. Gutiérrez: What's going on? Mr. Kauffman: Well, all of these nominations have been held up. I mean, almost all of the nominees by Clinton, you know. There were a lot them that got through the first year of '93 like Judge Garcia, here. Orlando, Orlando Garcia. Fred Biery got appointed to the federal bench here in 1993. Very quickly. Nominated and put on. As, as far as in '94 and '95, of course, when the Congress changed, they just held them up. And even, even, even the U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Renquist has criticized the congress. And, to some extent the Hilda Tagle... But, mainly it's the Congress for holding up these long nominations. So, Hilda Tagle definitely be moved through. I mean, there's Jorge Rangel... Is waiting to get on Fifth Circuit. There's some, there's a, a judge in Houston, I think one up in Dallas, an African-American judge in Dallas who has been held up just as many years. I mean, it's a terrible situation. But we have been working on that. Trying to get the administration to do more towards getting that Judiciary Committee to do more. But, you know, our, our power on the Judiciary Committee is not great, I guess. We are trying. So, MALDEF's organization has been very active on those issues. I mean, to some extent, when I am answering your questions I'm answering more from my own experience and this office's experience, but nationally we have been very involved in those issues. Dr. Gutiérrez: No, no. I understand. And, I am sure that a reader of this will know that you are not speaking for MALDEF in general, but just your, your role here in San Antonio. But I guess it's typical, no, of what goes on in every other office? Mr. Kauffman: Yeah. Sure. The regional offices, yeah. In our office... There is Chicago, San Francisco. Those three offices act very much the same in terms of about the same staff and, you know, the same general interaction. Now, there's a Los Angeles regional office which, of course, is, you know, in the same building as the national office. So they have a little bit closer contact with the national office. And, then the Washington office does all the advocacy work. So, they, they don't do litigation. Dr. Gutiérrez: Is anyone there registered as a lobbyist? Mr. Kauffman: Yes, I think all three of them are. Dr. Gutiérrez: How does the left hand know what the right hand is doing within MALDEF? Mr. Kauffman: Well, actually the communication is probably better than it used to be. There's... We have monthly conference calls with the heads of all the offices. We send in reports every quarter on everything we are doing. We have, as I say, conference calls by phone. We have a yearly staff meeting where all the staff, all of the legal staff gets together and talk about where the cases are going. What we are doing and what we are going to do next. All of our litigation has to be approved by the Vice President of Litigation who was, has, you know... Obviously is, is not going to let us have one case here arguing the bilingual education is required by certain law. And, having another case somewhere that says it is not required by that law. So, I mean, yeah, that sort of controls it. But it's always... And it's always a, a tension there between, you know, coordination versus too much control. So, I mean, all the regional offices want to set their own agendas and want to do their own things. And, of course, people at national office want to make sure they know exactly what is going on and want to make sure that everything is consistent. So, the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. Dr. Gutiérrez: Does Antonia [Hernandez] call you regional officers to periodic meetings, quarterly monthly regular...? Mr. Kauffman: Well, Antonia calls us whenever she wants from time to time. We meet… Dr. Gutiérrez: Quarterly…? Mr. Kauffman: No, no. Yeah sure. The Vice President of Litigation named Teresa Baker Steels is the vice president. And, she talks to us every month as a group. All of the heads of all the offices. Every month talking about what's going on, what are the issues, you know. Here's what we are doing. Here's what we are doing there. And, we all talk to each other then. And, in addition, she calls up, you know, at least once a week to find out everything that is going on. So, I, I think there's pretty good communication actually. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was the story behind that meeting when there was a candidate for Antonia's position when she was still sitting as president? Tony Anaya. What was that all about? Mr. Kauffman: Well, I was lucky. I was at a low enough level then. So, I don't really know what was going on. So, I, I... Dr. Gutiérrez: What do you think was going on? Mr. Kauffman: …know they are… I know that it happened in the mid Eighties. And, I think there was. I basically think that there was a group of board members who felt that they wanted another leader for the organization. And they were about to go and hire that person. And I think that maybe it was Tony Anaya. I don't know who it was. And had planned to remove Antonia and hire that person. And, so there was a power struggle on the board. I think you know, it didn't happen. So, and, there is no change in leadership there. But there was certainly a power struggle. There's no doubt about that. Dr. Gutiérrez: What do you know about what MALDEF did or the Washington office did or anyone else did here when Norma Cantu wrote that wonderful letter opposing the, the attorney general Morales' decision that Hopwood would apply to everyone. And, she said we are going to lose federal funds within a week. The rug is pulled out from Norma. What did MALDEF or anybody else do about that issue? Mr. Kauffman: Well, we wrote a very strong letter to Janet Reno saying we strongly disagree with the actions taken by the Solicitor General there. We wrote a letter to the president saying we disagreed about what was going. And we wrote a letter to the Secretary of Education saying that, that you should have supported Norma all the way through. And, and literally not, in effect, forced her to back off of some of those positions. So, I mean, we, we did whatever advocacy we could. We wrote those letters and we made the calls. I mean, we did not, we did not do marches in the street. We didn't do that sort of action. But we took actions we felt were appropriate which is writing, like I said, letters to the president, to the Secretary of Education, to the Attorney General, strongly supporting Norma. Dr. Gutiérrez: Then what happened? Mr. Kauffman: Basically, they said we did what we did. We aren't going to change it. Dr. Gutiérrez: Why did MALDEF not attack Morales on this Hopwood thing? Mr. Kauffman: Oh, I think we attacked him very strongly. I wrote several letters to the editor that were published all over the state. I think that Barbara Aldave and I, were the strongest critics in the entire state against Morales. I met with the House Mexican American Caucus and the Senate Hispanic Caucus. I wrote articles strongly criticizing him, issued press releases strongly criticizing him. I think we were probably the leaders in the state to criticize that decision, absolutely. I testified before the House Committee and the Senate Education Committee saying he was wrong in his decision and that his interpretation of Hopwood was wrong. But I think we were very active on that. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, couldn't that be litigated because, that's just an opinion. It's not binding. Mr. Kauffman: Just an opinion. Yeah. Just an opinion. Dr. Gutiérrez: The universities go way beyond, I mean, implementation. Mr. Kauffman: Absolutely. And it could be litigated. I will just tell you that I, I, again, it's on the list of the things to do. But I, I have a, I basically have everything I need to do to litigate it. It's just a matter of waiting for the right case, the right time, with the right facts. I mean, if you notice what happened, you know, the universities did very well. It's only the law schools, the UT law school is the only one, and the medical schools, that really did badly. By badly, I, I think all of them have done badly historically. No doubt about that. I mean, I guess what I am saying is that as far as getting worse, you know....We were really afraid that UT Austin would go down from the eleven percent to five percent Mexican Americans entering the class. It didn't. It stayed at the same percentage. So did A & M. The University of Houston Law School stayed at the same percentage. UT Law School went down dramatically. And they are probably the ones who need to be sued. The medical schools all went down about twenty, thirty percent. Dr. Gutiérrez: Some quick questions to conclude here. Who is the most effective Mexican American leader today? Mr. Kauffman: Until two weeks ago, I would have said Henry Cisneros. Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. Mr. Kauffman: Now, I am not sure. I think it might be between [Raul] Yzaguirre and Antonia. As far as, when I say leader, I am talking about leader on issues that are of a great importance to me. I mean I guess, if you look past that, you know, to some extent Morales has affected a lot of policies. I mean, I don't think.... Dan Morales I am talking about. But I would say those two, as far as, the national civil rights scenes is concerned, those two would probably be in the top two for sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: What's the most effective Mexican American organization? Mr. Kauffman: Well, in law it's us. I really think that. I think in law, naturally it's, it's MALDEF. As far as general advocacy, I think it's somewhere between the National Council [of La Raza] and MALDEF. 49 Dr. Gutiérrez: What are the most pressing issues facing the Mexican American community today? Mr. Kauffman: I mean, there's a whole list. I mean, there's employment, there's education come first to mind. Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. Well then in rank. Mr. Kauffman: Yeah. I think…0K. Dr. Gutiérrez: What's number one and what's number two, what's number three? Mr. Kauffman: I really think it's education, first. And, I'd probably put employment next. And voting rights next, although it's very hard to rank them. And people can argue that forever. I really feel that if we get enough of our people in and out of high school and in and out of college that the employment and the voting stuff will come along. I really do. But I think the education stuff, trying to get more of our people into good colleges, out of good colleges, into graduate professions and out of them is just so important. Because I think once we get that, a lot of the other stuff will come along. Arid of course also, get the good quality high school education. So you can go after the good quality jobs. You know, they are all interrelated. I know that. I mean, if we had better voting we'd probably have better school districts and we'd have better educated kids_ And I know that if we had better employment, we'd probably have more voting and elect more of our people and we'd have better schools and if they have better employment, we could send our kids to better schools and finance it. I mean, all of its related. And I mean, so asking me to rank them as you know is an impossible task. But I think if we had more of our kids getting into and out of good colleges, grad schools that would be probably the quickest way to do… Dr. Gutiérrez: What do you think are the underpinnings of tension between Browns and Blacks? Mr. Kauffman: Well, we got forced into a system where we are fighting over the bones. You know, I, you know, they say, you know, fighting over the huecito (bone) I, you know, the little bones. You know there is very little money available for poverty programs, for civil rights programs. And, to some extent the people that have the powers said you know, we will pay at the office. This is how much we will pay. You guys work it out. And so we are forced into fighting it out. I think that's been very difficult. The way the law goes, in terms of redistricting, in terms of employment, you know, often if one group gets a major victory, it sometimes does hurt the other group. So, I think that there are tensions. And, I think we do need to do a lot of talking with each other. I think the common areas are much greater than the ones with differences. I mean, like we work real closely in the state with NAACP. I cannot think of any issue where we have disagreed with them. Gary Bledsoe, personal friend of ours, work very closely with him. But, in some of the redistricting issues, it's going to be pretty sensitive. Especially in the year 2001 where you can no longer, at least officially, draw districts according to race using race as the criteria. And, if you don't, if you just try to come up with square districts or rectangular districts with no curving lines, you know. There is just no way we are going to be able, have districts that are good for Mexican Americans and good for Blacks. Dr. Gutiérrez: What ought to be the relations between Chicanos and, and persons of Mexican ancestry in Mexico and Mexico to them? Mr. Kauffman I, I, I, I guess they ought to be very, very close because I mean you know, we just, you know, we share the same blood. And, I think the only differences, of course, that the Mexicans in Mexico.... All their struggles are very, are almost all poor versus rich. Native Americans versus you know, the, the gueros (light skinned ones) in the country. And more than, you know, white against Black against Mexican American as it is here in the United States. But, I think there's a lot of commonality. And, I think we can make a lot of progress working together. I really do. Dr. Gutiérrez: Second to the last question. Mr. Kauffman: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: In the context of leadership for the Mexican American community, how do you characterize the role of MALDEF? Mr. Kauffman: Mainly, I think it's, as a very strong legal voice. Taking the strong positions on major legal issues like school finance, bilingual education, voting rights, you know, immigration rights. And I see that as sort of the voice of the lawyers that are most closely related to the community. That's what I see as the strong role. Dr. Gutiérrez: Last question. Is there something that I have, in this segment at least, forgotten to ask you that you think I should have asked you, that you should say something about, or, or rephrase something or add something? Mr. Kauffman: Well you know, as I say, you are going to try and get that other tape where, about the educational stuff... Dr. Gutiérrez: Yes. Mr. Kauffman: I, I, MALDEF's working education went through some phases I think that is important. We started off with desegregation basically. Mexicans were part of separate schools. That was in the early, late Sixties, early Seventies. And, in the late Seventies it was more of an issue of getting involved in the desegregation cases and making sure that we had good programs out rather than just, you know, desegregate school by numbers. Making sure there was a mixture of kids in the schools. It was more... The Blacks were rooting more for that when we were rooting for more teachers, more bilingual programs, dropout programs, that sort of thing. So, I think there's a different approach. Dr. Gutiérrez: It went along with the finance? Mr. Kauffman: Huh? Dr. Gutiérrez: Went into the finance? Mr. Kauffman: ... and then we went more into finance, affirmative action in high ed., and higher ed. work so the, the early Eighties through the mid Eighties. And, now I think it's, it's involved in testing. Also though, affirmative action is very strong. Affirmative action education is a major project and of course we are still following up on some of these old desegregation cases. You just said that one that we haven't followed up on. There are some obviously. Next week though we are going to El Paso to follow up on that one. And, going to Odessa to follow up on that one. So, we are trying to do some of that. Dr. Gutiérrez: Is Tucson out of this office or is…? Mr. Kauffman: Tucson is out of Los Angeles. Dr. Gutiérrez: Out of Los Angeles? OK. Well, that's another brewing segregation case. Anything else? Mr. Kauffman: I think that's it. Dr. Gutiérrez: I want to thank you very much. Mr. Kauffman: Oh, thank you. Oh, listen I don't mind, you know, I think…