Thread: Marching to City Hall does little

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/14221642.htm

Posted on Thu, Mar. 30, 2006

Marching to City Hall does little
By Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Our teenagers -- our future Texas leaders -- cried out Monday in a heartfelt political protest.

By midweek, though, other teens were simply tagging along late. Apparently, some were protesting because (1) they didn't get enough of the attention, and (2) didn't get to skip school.

Our teenagers definitely have plenty to protest:

The Texas Legislature shortchanges our schools and universities.

The children of illegal immigrants must live in households with chronic asthma and diseases, all because our Tarrant County public hospital is among the very few nationwide that refuse their parents low-income clinical care.

The few teenagers here illegally -- most are native-born Texans and Americans -- can't even get allergy medicine or insulin for diabetics.

We treat our teenagers worse than almost anywhere else in America.

Having said that, I also must point out that this week, some of them showed up late, went to the wrong place and didn't bring much of an argument.

What began as a protest against an immigration bill before the U.S. Senate -- its House counterpart might have turned some teenagers into criminal felons and deported their parents -- collapsed by midweek into helter-skelter marching and flag-waving to the inexplicable chant of "Mexico!"

Look, I'm proud of Texas history, including our time under the Mexican flag. It's part of Texas' legacy. It's a symbol of our shared history and culture.

But if you want Sen. John Cornyn or Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to vote your way, here's a hint:

The most effective lobbying effort for Congress does not involve marching to City Hall and chanting the name of some other country.

"The young people are genuinely concerned," said Felix Alvarado, the former Fort Worth high school government teacher and former Democratic candidate for Congress and governor. He is now an assistant principal at William James Middle School in the Polytechnic Heights neighborhood, where about 150 students from the high school nearby marched Tuesday after Dallas students protested Monday.

"Skipping school and being rowdy just makes them look bad," Alvarado said.

"And hey, I'm proud of my Mexican heritage," he said. "But chanting and waving that flag only takes away from their message. This is the time for them to stand up and say, 'This is America! I'm proud to be an American!'"

Somebody in Dallas has apparently gotten the message.

The new invitations for a "Mega Marcha" protest on April 9, billed as potentially the largest civil-rights protest in regional history, now specify that marchers should wear white clothes and bring only American flags.

That march will go from a church to Dallas City Hall.

But if young people want to protest the House immigration bill passed in December, or voice concerns about the current Senate effort, the best place to protest is to their House representatives.

For the students from Polytechnic, or their friends from Haltom High who protested Wednesday, that means calling on Republican immigration hardliner Michael Burgess at one of his offices in southeast Fort Worth or Lewisville. He lives in Flower Mound.

"I applaud the students who stayed in class," Burgess said yesterday by phone from Washington. "Education is one of the most powerful ways they can make their voices heard."

He said that the Texas teens seemed to be protesting "something from three months ago."

The House passed its bill in December. The Senate is now debating a different version, which seems less likely to impose criminal "aggravated felony" punishment for all immigration violations. Right now, immigration violations away from the border are considered minor civil offenses -- like a Class C misdemeanor ticket.

Burgess, an obstetrician concerned about immigrant health-care costs, said that he hoped to make illegal immigration a misdemeanor crime, but not a felony. He said that he and other local Republicans supported an amendment to ease the punishment, but it failed.

He and other local Republicans, plus Democrat Chet Edwards, supported the bill, HR 4437, anyway.

"At the end of the day, after all the debate, the question was whether we in Congress need to pay more attention to border security," he said. "The answer was yes, and it's still yes."

The House bill also would have made it a crime to help an illegal immigrant in any way, although the bill's author, a Michigan Republican, now says he would revise that to address churches' concerns.

I asked Burgess what he would tell protesting teens in his Fort Worth district. He said he would ask them to "go back and look at the history of this bill and how it evolved, not just go by what's in a text message."

Some students in Fort Worth said they protested Tuesday after receiving a cellphone text announcement: "Latinos, Tuesday is the day 4 u 2 wear ur white shirt 2 let them know we are against law HR 4437. Pass 2 all Latinos."

The Associated Press credited a Duncanville High School student, Gustavo Jimenez, with helping promote the Dallas walkout through the Web site MySpace.

Jimenez was quoted saying that he simply "wanted to let the government know that we're here too and we have a voice." His parents came from Mexico, he said: "We're here to live a better life."

Even Spanish-language comments by adults on local TV news and posted on the stations' Web sites criticized the teenagers for protesting with little attention to their purpose.

KUVN/Channel 23 reported in Spanish that most students did not know why they were marching or gave reasons that were not related to the immigration bill. Adults complained in Spanish that the teenagers protesting Tuesday seemed to be "playing."

Viewers writing on the station's Web forum said the students should go back to school, study government and rally around the American flag to make a stronger political point, not the flag of Mexico or other countries.

Back at his middle school in southeast Fort Worth, Alvarado was showing students how to start petitions.

Hundreds of teens and adults had already signed.

"The immigration bill is the work of politicians," he said. "Everybody knows that politics is defined by two things -- money and votes.

"We have to show that we have the votes. Protests look bad. Petitions prove you have the votes."

Some of the teenagers who protested this week will cast their first votes soon.

We need them in school. We need them seriously studying our nations' politics and government.

We will need their help to lead our changing Texas.
Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. (817) 390-7538 bud @budkennedy.com

The new invitations for a "Mega Marcha" protest on April 9, billed as potentially the largest civil-rights protest in regional history, now specify that marchers should wear white clothes and bring only American flags.

If they have to order them to bring American flags and leave their mexican flags at home, what's the point? Do they think we don't see right through that? It's obvious there not here to be Americans, just to take everything they can from America.