Student Protests Echo the '60s, but With a High-Tech Buzz
Youths used a popular website to organize their walkouts. And some did
know what a 'sit-in' was.
By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer
March 31, 2006
Shuffling her feet in her Garden Grove home last weekend, Mariela Muniz
stared into the carpet and suffered, as teenagers do, the silent
deliberation of her parents. Soon, her father nodded and her mother
uttered the words she'd been waiting to hear: "Lo puedes hacer."
"You can do it."
The next morning, the 15-year-old sophomore at Garden Grove High
School - with the permission of her parents, both of whom are factory
workers and Mexican immigrants who became U.S. citizens after entering
the country illegally - skipped school for the first time in her
life.
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FOR THE RECORD:
Immigration protest: An article and photo caption in Friday's Section A
referred to 1,500 students who walked out of Garden Grove High and
other Orange County schools during immigration protests Monday. The
1,500 was the countywide total. Fewer than 200 walked out of Garden
Grove High, said Garden Grove Unified School District spokesman Alan
Trudell. -
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following in the footsteps of those who led the first of the student
walkouts March 24 and the adults who organized last Saturday's massive
protest against proposed immigration legislation, Muniz became one of a
few dozen students in Southern California who helped spearhead a
national exhibition of civil unrest, one of the largest and most
boisterous since the civil rights movement four decades ago. By the end
of today - in Fresno, in Monterey Park, in San Diego - more than
40,000 students in California will have walked out of their schools to
protest the proposed reforms.
There is little question that some students took advantage of the
protests to ditch school. Some acknowledged they had little idea what
all the fuss was about. Others took the opportunity to throw bottles at
police and to shut down freeways. Law enforcement officials criticized
them for diverting resources from more pressing needs, and Los Angeles
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told them to go back to school.
But for the small group of students who instigated the walkouts, most
of whom hadn't been politically active but were well-connected on
campus and online, it was a transformative week.
Using modern technology - mostly their communal pages on the
enormously popular MySpace website - they pulled off an event with
surprising speed and dexterity. Planned in mere hours on little sleep,
lacking any formal organization, the protests were chaotic and
decentralized and organic.
They were also a reminder that there are more than 35 million Latinos
in the United States, about 40% of them in California. At least 8
million are in the country illegally. But many of their children -
including many of the student leaders - are citizens by birth. And
they represent a voting bloc that could help shape the politics of the
West for years to come.
"I think it is the beginning of something," said Louis DeSipio, a
professor of political science at UC Irvine. "You have the foundation
for a new kind of Hispanic politics."
Many of the student leaders attended last weekend's Gran Marcha -
which brought 500,000 demonstrators to downtown Los Angeles, stunning
even the event's organizers - and said they were awed by the event.
"I've always been proud to say that I'm Hispanic," said Rafael "Ralph"
Tabares, 17, a Marshall High School student and an organizer of his
school's walkout. "But on Saturday, I thought: Whoa. We can do
something. And we can do it right."
Others said they were inspired by the recent airing of the HBO film
"Walkout," which re-created the Chicano-era school walkout by 20,000
Los Angeles students in 1968.
Since that tumultuous time, many Latinos in California had come to
favor quiet, somber assimilation over loud, showy rebellion. To many,
the student protests - and the Gran Marcha - represented a
reawakening.
"It hearkens back to 1968," said Andres Jimenez, director of the
California Policy Research Center at the University of California.
"There was a sense of frustration that they saw with their parents in
terms of the tenor of the immigration debate. This group is being
singled out as a 'problem group.' And they wanted to seek an avenue to
respond to that, to show that on the contrary, this group is very much
a part of the broader society."
To be sure, students revealed both their youth and their naivete at
times. When thousands of Los Angeles students descended on City Hall on
Monday, for example, one student said she remembered something about
civil rights protesters in the 1960s sitting down during
demonstrations. It was a reference to the "sit-in," but it wasn't
entirely clear whether the students recognized the pedigree of their
decision to plop down on the steps.
"That was the idea of a girl from Belmont" High School, said Tabares.
"In the '60s, the way they did it was sitting down. So we told
everybody to sit down."
Just as often, however, students evidenced a surprising amount of
savvy. They carried trash bags in their backpacks so they could not be
accused of littering. They corralled students who tried to stray into
stores and restaurants so they would not be seen as marauders.
Tabares even ordered classmates to put away Mexican flags they had
brought to the demonstration - predicting, correctly, that the flags
would be shown on the news and that the demonstrators would be
criticized as nationalists for other countries, not residents seeking
rights at home.
Stephanie Cisneros, a senior at Los Angeles Downtown Business Magnet,
had to contend with the fact that many of her classmates were concerned
about the police in squad cars following the marchers.
"Living in a low-income neighborhood, you just don't have a really good
image of the police," said Cisneros, who became one of six students
invited into City Hall to meet privately with Villaraigosa. "People
thought we were going to get arrested. But I told them: 'No. We are
exercising our right to free speech. As long as we don't do anything
wrong, we won't be arrested.' "
Cisneros and a few others directed demonstrators to cross the street
with the light and to remain on the sidewalk so they couldn't be
accused of trespassing. "We were respectful. But we fought for
something," she said.
The protest staged by Muniz and two friends in Orange County was
typical of the student leaders' efforts.
They had heard about the March 24 walkouts at several high schools in
Los Angeles, and decided to launch a protest of their own. On Sunday
afternoon, they posted a bulletin on MySpace - since discovered by
school administrators, who were not pleased - announcing that anyone
wishing to participate should stand up at the 8 a.m. tardy bell Monday
and "meet in front of the school."
In the scattered, rapid-fire text typical of students' MySpace
missives, the bulletin continued: "dOnt b scared.... All these politic
officials are trying to make their dreams come true by destroying ours,
AND THEY WILL, unless we do something about it!!"
On the Internet site, which serves as a free-of-charge, virtual
gathering place, users can send bulletins to all of their MySpace
"friends." The lists can include dozens of people and the bulletins can
be passed along in seconds.
It didn't take long before most of Garden Grove High's roughly 2,200
students knew what was coming, without the knowledge or involvement of
teachers or parents.
Soon, the bulletin crossed over an invisible but critical line between
teens who were friends but attended different schools. Students began
posting their telephone numbers, and soon dozens more pledges to
participate were obtained through phone calls and instant text
messages.
Still, when the tardy bell rang Monday morning, Muniz had no idea what
to expect. Teenagers can talk a big game. But would they follow
through?
She waited in front of the school. Soon, the doors opened, and scores
of students - most of them Latino, but a handful of whites, African
Americans and Asian Americans too - joined her. They marched through
Garden Grove and Anaheim, picking up students at several other schools
as planned through MySpace bulletins. By 1 p.m., they had covered 10
miles. An estimated 1,500 students had walked out. Muniz was a truant
- and, to her friends, a hero.
School administrators have since informed her that she'll have to
perform community service as penance. Back at her home, a humble
ranch-style house with family photographs on the wall and avocados on
the dining room table, she said it was worth it.
"Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in," she said. "We
did. And it worked."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-students31mar31,0,347290.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines
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