ATLANTA — “My family comes from Mexico and I can see every day how poorly immigrant workers like my parents are treated in this country,” Tri-Cities High School student Santiago Ozuna, 16, told Socialist Workers Party members Lisa Potash and Susan LaMont when they met Jan. 30, after a walkout by some 70 students there.
Ozuna and other students had stopped at the McDonald’s — which happens to be across the street from the Socialist Workers Party headquarters — to warm up. Ozuna, Aziza Abdush-Shakur, 18, and Dulce Sandoval, 15, were glad to talk with us about their protest.
Thousands of students walked out of some 100 high schools across Georgia that day, WRDW-TV News reported. Students had walked out of Tri-Cities on Jan. 27 as well, Ozuna told us. Some of the teachers supported the students’ action, he said. A number hid the students’ signs when they got to school until the walkout started.
“We can see people being killed by ICE,” Ozuna said. “The constitutional rights of many others are being violated. My parents have been here 25 years. It’s not right that they shouldn’t be able to become citizens.”
“My mom, who’s been here 17 years, works so hard to support me and my two sisters,” Sandoval said. “The higher-ups have done a good job of dividing people, but we’re protesting against that. The teenagers are standing up for what’s right.”
“We can help to overcome those divisions by fighting for amnesty for immigrant workers,” Potash said. The students said they’d never heard of the demand for amnesty and were interested in learning more about it.
“The attacks on immigrants by the wealthy capitalist rulers and their government are aimed at keeping working people divided,” Potash said. “But there’s broad support among working people and the unions for equal rights for immigrants and their families that a fight for amnesty could mobilize.”
She explained that two amnesties had been won in the past, covering millions of immigrant workers.
The students said they had heard about the fight of Kilmar Ábrego García, but they hadn’t heard about how his union, SMART, has championed his fight for asylum since day one, or that a number of unions played a big role in building the Jan. 23 demonstration of thousands against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attacks and deportations in Minneapolis, making sure it was a peaceful, disciplined action.
The students were determined to organize their protests despite threats of punishment by the school administration. “They can’t expel us all,” Abdush-Shakur, who is African American, said.
The students took copies of the Militant to learn more about the fight for immigrant rights around the country, as well as other world developments.