High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Brown Berets is a Chicano nationalist activist group of young Mexican Americans that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s to the present day. The group was modeled on the Black Panther Party and inspired by the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Young Lords, anti-war movement(s), Cesar Chavez, the Farm Workers movement, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, Reies Tijerina and revolutionary movements around the world. The group was seen as part of the Third Movement for Liberation. The Brown Berets focuses on community organizing against police brutality and are in favor of educational equality. As a decentralized movement, several groups have been quite active since the passage of California Proposition 187, carrying on the militant stance and paramilitary garb of the original movement. Units exist in most sections of California and a few in other southwesten states. They primarily serve as a visible symbol of historical Raza resolve at demonstrations and political parades.