Trent Hawkins
Chanting "Si, se puede" ("Yes, we can!"), school students from around the United States poured out of classrooms during the "week of the walkouts" in late March, taking the fight for immigrants' rights to the streets. The push by conservative politicians to turn undocumented "illegal" immigrants into felons and criminalise anyone assisting them has provoked outrage and sparked massive demonstrations in the US.
At the student walkout in San Diego, a year-six student from St Jude Academy told the US Socialist Worker: "There are people being discriminated against and made into criminals. They're my mom, my dad, my cousins. They're me, they're my future!" Her classmate said, "At school, the rich teach us about their democracy. Here, we show them ours."
The student protests came in the wake of more than a million immigrants and supporters marching in Los Angeles on March 25, representing the 11 million undocumented people living in the US. The march demanded an end to their status as second-class citizens. Forty-thousand school students began the walkouts in LA on March 27, and they were followed by hundreds of other actions organised at schools throughout the country. The demonstrations were organised through handing out flyers, mass emailing, text messaging, and postings on Myspace.com.
In many cases, school administrations tried to stop protests with lock downs and threats of suspension and truancy fines. Anthony Soltero, a 14-year old student from De Anza Middle School, committed suicide after a school administrator told him he would go to prison for three years for his role in organising a walkout. An April 15 day of protest by students was named in Anthony's honour.
The determination of young people was crucial in building a day of further massive demonstration on April 10 against proposed new anti-immigrant laws. Two-million people mobilised. As Christopher Aldrear, a student from Wilson High School, put it: "My family immigrated here from Mexico. And, you know, I'm doing it for my family, I'm doing it for my friends, you know? It's going to affect all of us in a major, major way, because we're the future generation ... if we don't stand up for it and try to do something for it, then who will?"
As the Howard government tries to wall Australia off from Third World refugees seeking asylum or a better standard of living, young people need to be at the forefront of our own immigration battle. The rehabilitation of the "Pacific solution" will mean any "unauthorised" refugee who arrives in Australia is sent directly to a Pacific island to await processing. The government is also aiming to crack down on refugees making political statements about their country of origin. It is imperative that we stand together against these attempts to deny refugees asylum. We need to say that no-one is illegal, and fight for a world without borders.
From Green Left Weekly, April 26, 2006.
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