VIVA NO SCHOOL

From the Whittier Daily Press:

PICO RIVERA - A student protest that resulted in a Mexican flag being flown on top of an upside-down U.S. flag at a local school has prompted disciplinary action against one El Rancho High School student.

El Rancho Unified School District officials said the unnamed student was punished for being involved in the flag incident, which took place Monday at Montebello High School, about four miles east of El Rancho High School.

...The incident took place about noon Monday, when a group of about 1,000 students from the El Rancho and Whittier Union High school districts marched through Pico Rivera to Montebello High, where students had walked out of classes in the previous week to protest proposed immigration reform legislation.

By the time they reached Montebello High, the campus was on lockdown, district officials said.

That's when the protesters took to the flagpole, added the Mexican flag and turned the U.S. flag upside down. The school's California flag was stolen in the process, Henke said.

This week has been filled with high school students engaging in similar protests. I'm not surprised. Leaving school to march in protest of immigration laws is a lot better than sitting in a Calculus or American Lit class, or, God forbid, American History.

Actually, I'm surprised the number of protests and protesters hasn't been even greater. I'd expect some of the public school teachers to be encouraging walk-outs. That would seem fitting.

Today, there was another flag problem, this time at Apache Junction High School, in the Tucson area.

Tensions over immigration reform heightened in the Phoenix area's East Valley Thursday when students raised a Mexican flag over Apache Junction High School — and then other students yanked it down and burned it.

"I know (they) shouldn't have burned the Mexican flag," said Jacob Stewart, a 16-year-old sophomore. "I heard it was raised above the American flag and that just irked me."

He said the turbulence was tied to debates going on in the state Legislature and Congress...

...Freshman Chelsea Garcia, 15, and junior Brittany Ramage, 16, said the unrest had more to do with long-running racial tensions at the school.

The week's events might have sparked some anger, Ramage said, "but kids aren't too deep about that stuff."

Exactly, Brittany.

Kids aren't too deep about that stuff. Thousands of students don't feel compelled to take to the streets over immigration issues.

I'm sure that some do understand what the protests are about. Others are merely followers, eager to get out of school and join the party.

Some more stories of socially conscious, politically active students:

EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- Thousands of high school students clogged downtown streets Friday during a third day of protests against immigration proposals that call for a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Chanting "Viva Mexico!" and waving Mexican flags, the students converged on a downtown El Paso plaza to join a rally of several hundred others in honor of Cesar Chavez Day.

Boisterous teenagers, followed by Chavez supporters waving pictures of the famed union leader, marched through downtown El Paso to a migrant farm worker center near the Mexican border.

Oh, those boisterous teens!

SAN DIEGO -- An estimated 2,000 students skipped school and converged on Chicano Park in the Barrio Logan neighborhood for a rally today. Many of the students continued the march toward downtown San Diego.

Police followed the marchers but reported no arrests. Nor did police try to keep students from leaving their schools. In suburban Oceanside and Vista, schools were closed today because of fears of violence after an unruly incident at Oceanside High School earlier this week as police attempted to enforce a lockdown.

Another 1,000 high school students marched in Bakersfield, authorities said.

The operative words are "skipped school."

LAS VEGAS -- Students walked out at more than one dozen Las Vegas schools today in a renewal of protests over immigration policies being debated in Congress.

Police and school officials report at least 23-hundred students left after the morning bell at eleven Clark County high school and seven middle school campuses and the Community College of Southern Nevada.

This immigration debate is certainly a sweet deal for students looking for an excuse to get out of class.

Large protests were expected today because the late labor organizer Cesar Chavez was born on this day 79 years ago.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles and an immigration rights activist, called for students to commerate the anniversary of Chavez's birth by staying in school to honor his memory.

From the LA Times:

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.

Although tens of thousands of students walked out of school this week, far too many did so for purely selfish reasons. They didn't act on principle. As a result, the numbers of students involved in the protests can't be said to indicate passion for the immigration movement.

The many that skipped school just to skip school tarnished the few that walked out with a purpose and protested with a real understanding of what they were doing.

However misguided, much smaller protests with students committed to the cause, perhaps demonstrations that took place on school grounds, would have been more impressive.

Instead, these displays, with their circus atmosphere and mob mentality, served to diminish the cause.

Here's another way to sully the purported nobility of the movement. This story comes from a small city in southeastern Wisconsin.

From the Burlington Standard Press:

Several Burlington businesses last week were the target of a graffiti tagger that police say could have a gang connection. Between the late evening hours of March 23 and the early morning of March 24, a total of six different properties were struck.

Among the things tagged with graffiti were several work vans, including those belonging to Schneider Electric and SBC, a garage at a home in the 300 block of Chestnut Street, a new camper parked in the 400 block of Herman Street and the 3D Construction building at 496 S. Pine St. Much of the graffiti was expletive filled, with the wording ranging from "f*** whites" in several instances to "Latino-Chicano pride" and "Viva la Mexico" in others.

...Estimates of damage caused by the graffiti and its subsequent removal has been placed in the thousands of dollars.

A word of advice to protesters:

Defacing property, flying the American flag upside down and below the Mexican flag, burning the American flag, and clogging up freeways and city streets so they become impassable, are not ways to win over the hearts and minds of tax-paying American citizens when it comes to immigration policy.