Biography
Danilo Melendez was one of Los Siete de la Raza, a group of young Latino men from the Mission District of San Francisco charged in the May 1, 1969 death of plainclothes police officer Joseph Brodnik. Brodnik and his partner had confronted the group over a suspected burglary when a struggle broke out and Brodnik was fatally shot; the defense argued the fatal shot came from the gun of his own partner during the scuffle. Danilo Melendez was arrested and jailed pending trial, and the case became a major cause of the Bay Area Chicano and Latino movement, which built a defense committee, the newspaper Basta Ya, and community survival programs modeled on the Black Panthers. After a lengthy trial, the defendants were acquitted in 1970.
The Movement publishes a first-person interview with the six jailed Los Siete defendants, discussing community organizing, education and treatment in custody. Nelson’s account describes the group’s May 6 arrest in Santa Cruz and a separate San Francisco State warrant against him. Collective language is not used to manufacture a missing individual admission or release day, and the interview is not treated as another prosecution. Source: The Movement, November 1969, PDF page 10. https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mvmt/6911mvmt.pdf#page=10
An original November 1969 Movement interview identifies Bebe as Danilo Melendez, and the adjoining individual photograph is captioned Danilo (Bebe) Melendez. This authentic portrait is distinct from the June 1969 cover photograph ambiguously captioned Jose Melendez.
In his November 1969 jail interview, Danilo Melendez recalled that he was confined under the California Youth Authority during 1967 and actually got out in 1968. The account does not establish when that juvenile custody began. This separate earlier custody episode records only the actual release year 1968; no January 1 day or completed duration is inferred.
In a November 1969 jail interview, Danilo "Bebe" Melendez recalled being confined by the California Youth Authority in 1967 and getting out in 1968. After returning to the Mission he became involved with the Mission Rebels. He described encouragement from Roberto Vargas and political education from Sonia Sanchez, then a teacher for the Rebels, and said Gio Lopez encouraged him to attend the College of San Mateo. These recollections concern an earlier custody episode, separate from the Los Siete prosecution.
