This article describes a ten-year effort led by youth, community organizers, and a range of partners that resulted in two new, successful high schools and showed the power of grassroots mobilization for social justice. Since opening in 2009 and 2010 respectively, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High School for College and Career Preparation and Esteban E. Torres High School have developed to be two of the more successful high schools in the Eastside of Los Angeles. In this article, the authors draw on their own experience at InnerCity Struggle and interviews with a number of other stakeholders to detail how InnerCity Struggle partnered with students, parents, educators, community members, and nonprofits to implement a "community schools" vision at these two schools. This collaborative effort to create two new community schools shined a bright light on the crisis of public education in East Los Angeles. The path leading to the two new, successful high schools described in this article was not easy. It required over a decade of hard work, grassroots organizing, and partnership building. But the vision of sustainable community schools that provide the learning opportunities and services that students need to succeed, and that act as hubs for community services and enrichment programs, proved to be powerful, gaining the support of an increasing number of partners.