The quick labeling of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, or MEChA, as a violent, racist and separatist organization by Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock and others who criticize Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante for being a mechista in the 1970s at Fresno State shows the critics obviously haven't met the Tulare Western High School MEChA Club.

About 150 MEChA members at the school organized a fund-raiser for the recent Nuestros Niños Radiotón that raised $2,500 in three weeks for Children's Hospital Central California. The students held car washes and went door-to-door to solicit funds.

The high school group spent this weekend decorating a float for Wednesday's Tulare County Fair parade, and is organizing a Mexican Independence campus celebration next week. At Christmas, members will participate in the Salvation Army's bell-ringing fund-raiser.

How's that for radical, violent and separatist?

If we are to believe the critics, MEChA members are plotting a takeover of the U.S. Southwest, territory that MEChA literature refers to as the Nation of Aztlán, and that nothing would please them more than to drive Anglos out.

Even Mike Madrid, a veteran worker for the state Republican Party, defends MEChA. "It's bizarre to assume this is some kind of radical group seeking to overthrow part of the United States," Madrid told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was part of the Brown Beret and Chicano studies movement, but it's mainly a social group and has been for years. To suggest it's involved in paramilitary training or some underhanded conspiracy is ludicrous."

MEChA's problem is not with its membership, and Bustamante -- as well as the thousands of successful Latino professionals who once belonged to the organization -- shouldn't apologize for being a mechista.

The problem is that some MEChA members or supporters are racist and fit the image that McClintock and conservative radio talk shows liken to that of the Ku Klux Klan.

Two years ago at the Chicano Youth Conference hosted by California State University, Fresno, and organized by MEChA, a man in his 50s began spouting racist rhetoric and demeaning nonbrown-skin individuals. Some teachers and participants recoiled at the remarks, and organizers said they don't endorse such talk.

Television footage aired about MEChA shows a 1994 scuffle between supporters and opponents of Proposition 187, a voter-approved measure to deny state benefits to undocumented immigrants. That image, says María Aguilera, is wrong.

"At rallies, you'll find a lot of people who are in many different organizations and it's hard to find out who they belong to," says Aguilera, president of the Fresno State MEChA. "We are anti-violence. We try to educate the community, but we don't resort to violence."

The truth is that today's MEChA has shed a past rooted in the Chicano movement of the 1960s when more militant groups such as the Brown Berets were founded.

Proof can be found at Tulare Western.

Juan Esparza Loera is editor of Vida en el Valle, The Bee's bilingual publication.