David Kronke: Walkout
Watching the protests and student walkouts of the past week in response to the immigration bill drama in Washington, I couldn’t help but let my mind drift back to … oh, a couple of weeks ago, when I watched the HBO film “Walkout.�
That film (airing again tonight at 10 p.m. and a couple of more times in April) concerned the 1968 Chicano student walkouts in East L.A. schools over unequal treatment -- they were not allowed to speak Spanish in classrooms, nor permitted to use restrooms during lunch breaks.
Last August, Edward James Olmos, director (and co-star) of “Walkout,� told the Daily News’ Valerie Kuklenski of today’s student activists, "They care about a lot. They just have to learn how to walk out ... and this picture is going to teach them how to walk out.� He was speaking specifically of the low graduation rates of Latinos in L.A. schools; instead, many of them, American citizens, are defending their parents, who may not be in this country legally, and would face deportation.
I’d say, given the events of the past few days, lesson learned.
One can imagine what a tightrope walk this represents for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who himself participating in the protests depicted in Olmos’s film, at Roosevelt High School. In today’s Daily News, he says, “Our students belong back in school ... in their classrooms, where they can have further discussions about this issue.� Asked about 1968, he admitted, “Yes, I was involved in protests and I paid a price. It was one of the reasons I was forced to leave school.�
Of course, as the film makes clear, and as Villaraigosa knows, the students were successful in 1968 because their passion carried them past the safety zone of protest. Authorities then, as Villaraigosa seems to be doing now, took an initial attitude of, “Yes, we get your point. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, let’s go back to the status quo.� And when the students didn’t, things got ugly. It was the students’ refusal to back down at that point that underscored their commitment to the cause, and the importance of the cause, rather than showing up the students as mere dabblers in the idea of protest.
The current protests are a response to a Draconian bill in the House of Representatives that initially made it a felony to be in America illegally (that, at least, was downgraded). It also, with an almost paranoid zeal, demanded an immense, $2.2 billion wall along the Mexican border. Perhaps most surprisingly, it made it illegal for churches, social-services agencies and medical professionals to aid illegal aliens – in short, for doing precisely what their vows to their jobs demand of them. (Did anyone think to check the financial and social ramifications of this part of the bill, clogging the already-overburdened courts with criminal cases against religious leaders and doctors?)
The Senate passed a far milder immigration bill crafted bipartisanly by John McCain and Ted Kennedy. CNN’s Lou Dobbs, whose grandstanding on this issue is doing for him what other strident pundits got out of the “war on Christmas,� denounced the Senate bill as “an unconscionable act.�
Even the New York Times’ liberal economic columnist, Paul Krugman, agrees that illegal immigrants come at a cost to taxpayers and unskilled American workers, who would be able to earn more if people weren’t taking jobs at such low wages. But some of the reaction does seem to renounce America’s status as a land of immigrants, and some of the measures in the House bill seem, at best, impractical.
What do you think of the debate? Before answering, consider the points made by both sides of the issue.
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