José Marquez says,
Joel Rubin, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, just told the host of a news program on KCRW (the NPR affiliate station in LA), that the 15,000 high school students who walked out of school today organized today’s march using MySpace.com over the weekend. The students were, once again, protesting the House bill would make illegal immigration into a felony rather than a civil offense.
Link to “Which Way LA” radio show, and eecue took lots of photos of the student protests (including the one above) — Link.
Reader comment: cathode ray says,
i am a student teacher at crenshaw high here in los angeles. let me begin by saying that as the daughter of mexican immigrants, this issue is of paramount importance to me. let me continue by saying, however, that the “walk-outs” can hardly be described as “organized.” i strive to empower my students politically (even in my math class!) but staging a walk-out from school is a slap in the face of the many immigrants who have come to the united states seeking, among other things, a decent, if not quality, education.
when i asked my kids why they were walking out, only one knew about the bill in the house. the remainder were simply getting out of school early. schools like crenshaw lose *hundreds of thousands* of dollars per day due to absences. i think a more appropriate form of protest would be to stage a “school-in” much like the lunch counter demonstrations from the 1960s civil rights movement. coming to school and saying “i demand *everyone* have equal access to *a quality* education” is, in the end, more productive. and i can tell you, that the vast majority of the students who walked out of crenshaw high are the very ones who have constantly failed their classes, despite our best efforts to teach them, in english or in spanish.
in the end, education is the key. leaving is simply opting out of the educational process, which is another slap in the face to educators like me who are doing the best they can to provide these kids the futures our parents dreamt for us.