On the morning of March 31, 2006, thousands of high school and middle school students walked out of their schools and filled the streets of El Paso, Texas. Holding signs and protesting in both Spanish and English, the students marched excitedly through the city, stopping traffic on their way to the San Jacinto central plaza in downtown El Paso. For many students, some of whom walked from schools more than 20 miles away, the walkouts were the opportunity to join the immigrant-rights marches organized to influence congressional debates over House Bill 4437.2 Despite threats from teachers and administrators, students left their schools on this final day of the 4-day walkouts to demonstrate solidarity with friends and family members who negotiate the difficulties and fears of living without papers in the United States.3 One student explained: “This is about my grandmother who came, who worked, who raised us but who has no papers. Now they want to make her a felon” (Fonseca-Olivas 2006). Though some students found the series of marches the occasion to meet with friends or miss assignments and classes, the student activists who participated in the walkouts were an inspirational reminder that many young people are highly political actors that recognize the boundaries of their powerlessness.
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López, A.R. (2009). Walking Out of Colonialism One Classroom at a Time: Student Walkouts and Colonial/ Modern Disciplinarity in El Paso, Texas. In: Kempf, A. (eds) Breaching the Colonial Contract. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9944-1_6
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