On Jan. 30, students all over the country took part in walkouts in protest over the increased power and encroachment over individual rights by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In even the red heart of Texas, there were protests held to defy the chaos committed against people whose skin is brown, who spoke Spanish, or voted blue.
There was a protest in solidarity in our very city of Corpus Christi. And where there is the people’s voice to be heard, there is a senior citizen of power to yell that the sound is an affront to his ears. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is our elected elder and was displeased with the recent assemblies, and specifically with Austin Independent School District. Their protest was no different than others, except the fact that the school opted to ensure their students’ safety as they went to protest off campus grounds and be safely monitored by Austin ISD Police.
For Abbott, that was not the right thing to do. He fumed on social media, deigning to say that “AISD gets taxpayer dollars to teach the subjects required by the state, not to help students skip school to protest,” and that he would be directing the Education Commissioner to investigate.
We’ll attempt to put ourselves in his shoes for a moment as governor, and say we understand that he would like students to not miss school to protest his presidential buddy’s federal agency. But as former students ourselves, we’re sure students would prefer their right to protest not be stripped away by the state. They would prefer their protests stay peaceful and civil. They would prefer their school care about their safety enough to warrant protection while simultaneously knowing that treating them as pageantry citizens in their own community with no right to express their own ideas is not the correct place to stand. To ask a student of learning for inaction with that knowledge (as we know many men and women who truly stood for something in life never did) is antithetical to the theme of progress we pride ourselves on. But what truly inspires only more good trouble, is to say that these kids forfeit their right to be protected by their educators and their peace officers. Another right to be stripped away from them, for the sin of acting as we would ask of them in their future as responsible, concerned citizens.
We saw the result of what comes when not protecting protesting minors. In the town of Buda a 45-year-old man got in a conflict with protesters of the same cause, and with no police presence, was free to fight a group of students protesting against his own viewpoints, leading to his prompt arrest for doing so. We take no side here, other than resources should be used to ensure no physical altercations needlessly escalate for those who wish to speak their mind.
True protestation should not be convenient for all involved. Let it be peaceful but do not let it be meek. As all the good trouble-makers who brought to us our evolved sense of principles know, rules are not to be taken as always right, but as guides to what is found to be the moral truth. The truth we strive to speak today: we believe children should always be protected by the community in which they live when exercising their freedom of speech.
Right or wrong in whichever way their collective body takes them. The solution is not to punish the schools for not treating students like property of the states’ will, by seeking to not properly pay the schools on the days students effectively rebuke the actions of the current federal government.
Editorials reflect the collective opinion of the editorial student staff members of the Foghorn News, Del Mar College’s student media outlet.
