In March 1968, some ten thousand students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools — the "blowouts" — demanding bilingual education, Chicano history, and an end to corporal punishment and counseling that tracked them into manual labor. The Brown Berets helped organize and protect the walkouts.
Three months later a grand jury indicted thirteen organizers — including Sánchez, Carlos Montes, and teacher Sal Castro — on conspiracy charges carrying up to 66 years, for the misdemeanor of disturbing the schools. The East L.A. Thirteen became the Chicano movement's first political prisoners cause; in 1970 the Court of Appeal threw out the indictments as unconstitutional, ruling that conspiracy could not be used to convert protected protest into felony — but not before the defendants had spent two years fighting for their freedom.