Cantwell High School

In the Antelope Valley, it was the anti-gang dress code. In Chicago, it was the firing of school principals. In Contra Costa County, school budget cuts. The students who took to the streets in angry protest at two South Bay high schools Monday and Tuesday are part of a recent explosion in campus activism, the likes of which has not been seen since the civil rights and anti-war movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Mike Aldapa would like to be a politician one day. During his years at Cantwell High School in Montebello, he was student body vice president and president of his sophomore and junior classes. Now as the USC senior studies for a degree in public administration, he imagines himself representing the East Los Angeles neighborhood that is his home. But Aldapa, 26, has doubts about his political career. He does not speak Spanish.