Thousands of Students Defy Lockdowns and Continue Walkouts to Protest Anti-Immigrant Bill

Protests are continuing across the country against proposed changes to the nation's immigration laws. In the Los Angeles area, at least 11,000 students took part Tuesday in a second day of walkouts despite school lockdowns and threats from administrators. As we continue to look at the issue of immigration, widespread protests continued across the country on Tuesday against the anti-immigrant House bill. Thousands of students walked out of classes for the second day in a row. The majority of walkouts took place in California where some 8,000 students from the Los Angeles Unified School District took to the streets. Over 3,000 students walked out of schools in other cities across California as well as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Texas, where a crowd of demonstrators converged on City Hall in Dallas and Houston.

Scores of schools were put under a strict lockdown to avoid the mass walkouts, but students defied the ban and marched in the streets waving flags and holding banners, many of them in the rain. A small numbers of arrests were reported as authorities began cracking down on the protests, rounding up demonstrators as truants and issuing citations. The widespread demonstrations appeared to be loosely organized, with students learning about them through mass e-mails, fliers, instant messages, cellphone calls and postings on myspace.com Web pages.

On Monday, as many as 40,000 students walked out of classes in Los Angeles alone. The walkouts followed a weekend of enormous rallies, including one Saturday that drew upwards of one million people in LA.

Yesterday we reached some of the students in California who were staging walkouts. They spoke out about immigration reform and why they were taking to the streets.

* Fermin Vazquez, Bauman High School
* Katie Delgado, Rennaissance Academy
* Leno Silva, Woodrow Wilson High School
* Sarah, Montebello High School
* Christopher Aldrear, Wilson High School

We go to Los Angeles to speak with two guests:

* Jasmine Chavez, a 17-year old student at Montabello High School.
* Luis Rodriguez, community activist, poet and writer. He is author of the award-winning memoir "Always Running: La VidaLoca: Gang Days in L.A." and, most recently, "Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Dangerous Times." He founded the Tia Chucha Press, which publishes young socially-engaged poets, and is also a founder of Youth Struggling for Survival, a Chicago-based youth community organization. Rodriguez walked out of his middle school in Los Angeles during the walkouts of 1968.
- Website: http://Luisjrodriguez.com

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