Immigration Battle Goes Too Far; Principal Not Surprised

California – Today at lunch, a large group of students carried a large Mexican flag and walked around the quad at a local High School in Southern California. This causes another group of students to join and chant, “USA!”. School staff went inbetween, and tried to control the two groups to prevent a fight from occuring. For me, the school bell rang (at the wrong time, probably because of this), and shouts of excitement bursted out. A mini-fight might’ve started, but I was looking at the wrong angle. At 1:15 all classes except P.E. (as they don’t have TV’s) turned on the TV and listened to the principal’s speech. Of course, this incident as well as the one yesterday with possibly the same group of people was triggered by the peaceful march that occured in Downtown Los Angeles last weekend. The principal noted that while the march from Saturday was a freedom of speech as well as a peaceful event, it was a totally difference case today. He also noted that school is from 8AM-3PM (or 7AM-2PM if taking 0 Period), and that if anyone decides to join the march, do it on their own time, but not during school hours.

Another story is what happened at the 101 Freeway. If you saw the music video of R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts, then you know what it looks like. Unlike the movie though, it didn’t have Michael Stipe influencing everyone to leave the car and walk on the freeway, nor there were any cars – a big group of students at another school played hooky and literally walked and protested on the freeway. One even said, “There are much more dangerous things than walking on the freeway.” Such words can either make it or break it.

~ by Yamato on March 28, 2006.