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There I was, eating enchiladas mole
at Las Manitas, trying not to make a big deal out of John Dee
Graham standing right next to me, when, through the window, Congress
Avenue turned red, white, and green with chanting students ...
500 high school students from
Austin area high schoools marched to the state capitol Friday
where they rallied for immigrant rights in opposition to a threatened
federal crackdown.
Students marched up Congress
Ave. shortly before 2:00 p.m. and rallied along the wide sidewalk
just outside the capitol gates.
Dressed mostly in white t-shirts
and carrying various sized flags of Mexico, students chanted
"Me-xi-co, Me-xi-co, Me-xi-co" and "Hell No, We
Won't Go!"
"We're here to work. We're
not criminals!" declared one hand-made sign. "Viva
Mexico, Si Se Puede" said another, echoing the famous slogan
of Cesar Chavez, "Yes, We Can!"
"We Pay Taxes," said
a slogan written in black marker on the back of a white t-shirt.
"Without US Mexicans, the US is Nothing," said a posterboard
sign in black and white. A few young women wore petit-sized flags
tucked to the fronts of their shirts.
The students were greeted with
frequent honks from passing cars as drivers waved and gave thumbs
up' to the impromptu demonstration for immigrant rights and dignity.
Sometimes the car would be a mint-condition Chevy SUV, full of
students waving Mexican flags from the windows.
One demonstrator, with his
face half covered by a bandana made from a Mexican flag said
most of the students were between the ages of 15 and 18. Others
identified themselves as from Reagan, LBJ, and Garza high schools
in Austin.
"I was on lunch break
from Garza High School," said 19-year-old Daniel Dimas,
"and I heard the people walking shouting ay, ay, ay!' So
I pulled up beside them and played my Spanish music real loud
and said, Do you need some support?' So I ended up here!"
Dimas held a Mexican flag mounted on a short pole that he waved
as he led chants.
"Who made this country?"
asked Dimas before he turned back to his newfound friends and
shouted,"Who likes beans?" and "Who likes tortillas?"
He could have asked also about caramel-colored lollypops, which
seemed very popular with the crowd.
"You see what I mean,"
says Dimas, smiling at the robust cheers that answered his questions.
"We're a whole new diverse group that this country needs.
And we're not going anywhere. What else can I say?" Of course,
he had more to say:
"We built this country.
We are nearly half the population. Even if they stop us, we're
going to come back. They're not going to stop us. We've been
here too long."
Sixteen-year-old Vanessa Villa
from Vista Ridge High School in nearby Cedar Park said she had
planned to march next Tuesday, but on the spur of the moment
this morning, students started walking from the high school toward
the capitol, a distance of 24 miles.
"We've been walking all
day, since 10:30!," exclaimed Villa.
"We're that proud!"
said 15-year-old Jacki Caballero of Cedar Park, recalling the
long walk down FM 1431 to Highway 183 where the students caught
a bus.
"We're the ones who created
this place!" said Caballero.
"And we're working for
all immigrants," said Villa, "not just Mexicans, but
Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, too."
An adult passes through the
crowd with flyers announcing a national day of action here on
April 10 (at 4pm). On Saturday (April 1) the annual Cesar Chavez
march is also scheduled to highlight immigrant rights.
Leading up to last Saturday's
immigrant rights march held in Los Angeles, students there staged
walkouts. That march topped a million people, and students across
the country have continued walkouts this past week.
The afternoon was unusually
warm for late March, and one student was taken away by ambulance
for apparent heat exhaustion. She was only one block from the
capitol.
At the main entrance to the
capitol grounds, some students sat shoulder-to-shoulder along
low stone walls, occasionally joining in chants or making "waves"
from one end of the wall to the other with a ripple of dancing
hands.
Other students enjoyed the
rally in the modest shade of small trees. Still others led chants
and cheers from the warmed up sidewalk along 11th Street.
When a television cameraman
moved into position behind the sidewalk crowd they turned their
attention from passing traffic to face the camera.
"No, no," explained
the cameraman, "face the street!"
When the students first arrived
at the capitol, the Austin police department lined up eight motorcycle
patrols along the curb of the sidewalk. But with students in
a cheerful, peaceful, and sometimes playful mood, police soon
retreated to the shady side of the street.
Tourists passing through the
main gate to the capitol grounds made their ways gently through
the crowd of students. It was impossible not to note that two
Anglo women passed through the crowd walking their Chihuahua.
After about an hour of rallying,
students began to peel away from the rally, many of them leaving
by way of the nearby bus stop where they could be seen lining
up to board buses and Dillos (the smaller downtown shuttles).
Afterword,
with Obscenities
If you visit the streets of
Austin often enough, you'll see occasional t-shirts that say,
"F**k y'all, I'm from Texas," a trend that might possibly
be blamed on the cultural influence of Texas songwriter Ray Wylie
Hubbard who wrote a song with a very similar title a few years
back, but who of course sings the song with a great deal of wry
glee.
This is just a long way of
introducing the context for one carefully lettered t-shirt in
red, white, and green marker that was covered up most of the
time. But for a few minutes the student took off his outer t-shirt
(yes it was a guy thing) revealing the back panel of his his
inner white-t, lettered with the kind of font that you sometimes
see in family names written on the rear windows of cars and pickup
trucks.
"F**k Y'all," said
the t-shirt, "I'm from Mexico." It was a total work
of art.
CounterPunch
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CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
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