Despite successful efforts from school officials to prevent a walkout at Mountain View High last Friday, student organizers were pleased with how their lunchtime immigration protest turned out.
“I think it went well and that we got our message across,” said sophomore Zhazil Gurbiel, who organized the protest with fellow sophomore Ada De Paz.
About 100 Mountain View High students, mostly Latino, gathered during lunch last Friday to protest the recent bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would criminalize illegal immigrants and those who help them. The students also spoke out in support of the “Dream Act,” a Senate bill that could grant residency to undocumented students who wish to continue their education beyond high school.
At noon, Latino students flocked to the lunch quad, and slowly congregated by a table Gurbiel and De Paz had set up with posters, fliers and both Mexican and American flags.
“There has to be a better way to reform immigration policy and this is not the way!” read a flame-orange flier De Paz and Gurbiel handed out from a table.
Students wore orange ribbons and streamers in support of the cause, and senior Ramon Mata shrouded himself in a large Mexican flag.
“What would you do if your mom told you she needed to be deported? They’re treating them like criminals,” said junior Adriana Merales.
Students chanted in Spanish and cheered, and their enthusiasm escalated when a crew from Telemundo appeared to capture the protest on camera.
Protesters marched around the lunch quad and the parking lot while other students watched from a distance.
Sophomore Maria Inez Arismendiz speaks little English and came to the United States in the past year with her parents, who work in construction and at a hotel. Standing behind the protest table, Arismendiz said she wants to study to become a dentist, and that she hopes her parents won’t be forced to leave the country as a result of the new legislation.
“[My parents] think it’s not fair because they want to call them criminals when all they want to do is work,” she said in Spanish.
Many other students echoed her sentiments.
“I don’t think it’s fair because most of the workers are Hispanic and they do jobs most Americans aren’t willing to take,” said sophomore Cecilia Valle. “They’re here to make a better life for their family and people are treating them as criminals.”
Nearing the end of the lunch period, the protest gathered momentum, and some students talked about marching to downtown Mountain View, as their Los Altos High School counterparts had done a week earlier.
“We hadn’t planned to walk out of the school but lots of people wanted to,” De Paz said afterwards.
But Mountain View High administrators intervened. With other administrators looking on, assistant principal Donna Peltz organized the cheering students, getting them to join hands in a circle and leading them in a moment of silence, then convincing them to return to class.
Peltz’s actions surprised De Paz and Gurbiel.
“I thought she was probably against [the protest], but she surprised me because she formed a circle and had a moment of silence. I thought it was good to do that,” she said.
De Paz’s mother helped her prepare for the protest at Mountain View High School, and the mother-daughter duo plans to organize a city-wide protest in Mountain View in early May, in conjunction with the Day Worker Center.
E-mail Molly Tanenbaum at mtanenbaum@mv-voice.com
