Students Protest Immigration Legislation - in the Streets

So, there we are – my girlfriend and I are walking from my downtown apartment down to the Justice Center to vote (for Radnofsky, by the way).

Police cars are blocking the road. My apartment manager is striding over to see what’s going on. There are kids walking over the street, headed for downtown.

Obviously, it was part of today’s student protest. MYSA.com has the story here.

A few minutes later, the election judges at the early voting site at the Justice Center are commenting on it - “They’re just doing to get off from school – they don’t know why they’re marching. They just want to skip class.” Well, there probably is that, I thought.

But on the way out of the poll site, I thought about it some more. These are my musings:

It does not matter what any individual student walking out of the school to protest is thinking. It doesn’t matter if she knows that she’s protesting H.R. 4437, the ‘Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005’, which is a Republican attempt to make illegal immigration a felony and criminalize those who assist immigrants, or if he just thinks its cool to get out of school.

I’m a political scientist by training, so let’s put that hat on. Let’s consider cause and effect. Are kids any more desirous to get out of school at this point than they are on any other day? No, not really – school is pretty much equally onerous to the average student every day of the academic year. Therefore, if simply getting out of school is their motivation, why not do it on any other day? What does make the timing of this unique – the anticipation of crazy Republican legislation on immigration. If you know of any other independent variable, please let me know. Regardless of assisting motivations on the part of the individual student, they - the students in aggregate - are out on the streets over immigration.

We can also talk about the effectiveness of the protests – this is different. Personally, I don’t think that waving the Mexican flag is really the most shrewd use of political symbolism to bring about a desired political result. Still, it lets people know that folks are upset.

Our dear Senator Cornyn’s response: "I do not believe it is helpful and this will just inflame passions and undermine our ability to get a good result," (WOAI)

Yo, Bub! Ya think?!
That’s the whole point of a protest march!! A ‘good result’ according to Senator Cornyn probably involves concentration camps for Mexican slave labor. And, about inflaming passions – that’s the whole point as well. Dr. King said that a protest is “to dramatize an appalling condition.” in the I Have a Dream speech. You don’t protest because you’re fine with what’s going on – you protest to let people know you’re not happy with what’s going on, and you want what’s going on to be stopped or changed.

Spreading the word that the students protesting don’t know what they’re protesting is seriously missing the point. They are out on the street for a reason. It’s not spontaneous – somebody is organizing this, and that somebody has got a friggin’ clue. If that person, or those persons, can stage this type of action, where hundreds of students at schools all across Texas get up out of their benches and walk out of the school, somebody in the halls of power had better wake up and smell the coffee!

Poo-pooing the kids also distracts from the central message. It’s not about what the kids know – it’s about what the Republicans are trying to do in Washington, D.C.. Talking about the kids not knowing why they’re protesting is sign that we need to improve our schools – there’s another reason to protest, by the way.

I think street action is a good idea. ‘The man’ (in this case, that’d be you, Messrs. James Sensenbrenner, Lamar Smith & ilk) been stickin’ it to us for far too long, and we ain’t gonna take it no more! Should Democrats (young or otherwise) be a part of this – hell yeah! The people on the street need to know that we’re on their side. We need to give them a reason to vote for us.

Does this mean that we’re against immigration reform of any kind? No, of course not, but we ARE DEFINITELY against immigration legislation that is degrading to the inherent human dignity of the immigrant, and criminalizing of the human charity of those who help immigrants.

Authored by: Michael Wright, SAYDs Treasurer