East Los Angeles Chicano student walkout of high schools protesting Trump

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East Los Angeles Chicano student walkout of high schools protesting Trump (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=7444604c8d&e=d323598fe4)

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By staff

Los Angeles, CA - Several thousand high school students walk out of over six schools to protest Trump. Chanting, "Not my president," "No deportations," "Sí se puede," the students kicked off their march by first assembling at Mariachi Plaza, then marching to LA City Hall. Once at city hall, students held a large rally where they were met by more students, many of whom walked for over eight miles. The students, many from undocumented families, are angry with Trump's call for mass deportations, doing away with DACA, and putting up an additional border wall. There were no arrests.

The participating high schools included Garfield, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Sotomayor, De la Hoya, and others.

The student-led and organized walkout, march and rally was supported by parents, several community groups including Inner City Struggle ,a local nonprofit; Centro CSO, and the Labor Community Strategy Center.

One student who declined to give his name due to potential retaliation said, “I am here to support my family and protest Trump, he is not my president.”

East LA has a history of student walkouts on many issues, including the historic Chicano movement’s East LA high walkouts of 1968 demanding quality education.

Students have not stated whether an upcoming walk out is planned.

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/16/prot-n16.html


High school walkouts, protests against Trump enter second week

By our reporters

16 November 2016

Anti-Trump protests in the United States continued into their seventh day on Tuesday, including further walkouts at high schools and protests at campuses in cities throughout the US.

The protests are motivated by a broad hostility to the racism and bigotry of Trump, concern over the right-wing policies he is pledged to implement and opposition to plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. They follow the announcement over the weekend that Trump was appointing as his “chief strategist” Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who has direct ties to fascistic and white nationalist organizations.

The sentiment of the protesters stands in sharp contrast to the response of leading Democrats to the election of Trump. In a press conference on Monday, President Barack Obama praised his “cordial discussion” with Trump and called on Americans to “reconcile themselves” with a Trump presidency. (See, “Obama defends Trump at White House press conference”)

In Washington D.C., more than 2,000 high school and middle school students left class Tuesday afternoon and marched from one of Trump’s hotels to the US Capitol and the Supreme Court. The protest was initiated by students at the Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, the largest comprehensive public high school in the nation’s capital. Students from others schools joined in.

The principal of Wilson High, Kimberly Martin, released a statement saying that “school or district administrators were not involved in or consulted with during the planning of this event and students are expected to be in school throughout the day”

In nearby Beltsville, Maryland, students walked out of High Point High School and blocked area roads for about half an hour.

In New York City, several hundred high school and college students marched down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon. Among the slogans chanted were, “Education not deportation” and “We reject the president-elect.”

Across the country in Northern California, about 200 high school students walked out of class at 1:50 pm and staged a demonstration in Palo Alto. Several hundred college students at Stanford University, located in Palo Alto, also walked out of class at noon to participate in a demonstration against Trump.

Protests were also organized at various college campuses throughout the country as part of a “say no to Trump” national day of action. A similar nationally coordinated series of protests is scheduled for today.

In Chicago, Illinois, several hundred students walked out of classes at both the University of Illinois at Chicago, a public university, and the University of Chicago, a private university.

The protests on Tuesday followed a series of high school walkouts on Monday, including 800 students at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Springs, Maryland; 5,000 students at several high schools in the region in and around Seattle, Washington; more than 1,000 students in Los Angeles, California; and hundreds of students in Denver, Colorado.

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/17/pers-n17.html


As anti-Trump protests spread, Democrats scramble to contain opposition

17 November 2016

Protests against the incoming Trump administration continued to spread throughout the United States on Wednesday. High school students and youth have come to the fore in the anti-Trump movement, staging walk-outs against plans to deport millions of immigrants and Trump’s appointment of the fascist provocateur Stephen Bannon as his chief political adviser and strategist.

On Wednesday, students from at least six high schools and two universities in Miami-Dade County, Florida walked out to demand that their communities be declared “sanctuary cities,” where authorities refuse to carry out deportation orders against immigrants. Students at two high schools in San Diego also walked out of class. This follows walkouts earlier this week by thousands of students in Washington, D.C., New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver and other cities.

These protests point to the development of a significant political movement in the United States. An entire generation of youth is becoming radicalized by the coming to power of the most right-wing government in American history.

Since losing the popular vote by over 1 million votes but securing the Electoral College last week, Trump has reaffirmed his war on immigrants, pledged to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court with an anti-abortion zealot and made clear he will pack his cabinet with law-and-order reactionaries and warmongers.

In the face of growing opposition to Trump, top Democratic Party officials continue to preach accommodation and “unity.” Newly elected Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said Wednesday that Senate Democrats were “ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with Republicans, working with soon-to-be President Trump on issues where we agree.”

Vice President Joe Biden gave the incoming administration his full support, telling reporters Wednesday after meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence that he's “confident on day one everything will be in good hands.” Biden said he would be available “24-7” to advise Pence after he takes office.

Hillary Clinton, in her first public appearance since her concession speech last week, spoke for 20 minutes at a conference of the Children’s Defense Fund without mentioning either Trump or the mass protests against him.

At the same time, a section of the Democratic Party leadership is making criticisms of Trump in an attempt to restore the shattered credibility of the Democratic Party and contain the growth of social opposition. Predictably, this effort is being led by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Sanders called for a fundamental reassessment of the Democratic Party and gave what was billed as a major speech on the incoming Trump administration Wednesday night at George Washington University. It turned out to be an elaboration of the conciliatory statements he had made over the weekend.

Sanders listed a series of demagogic promises Trump made during the campaign to capture the votes of economically distressed workers, and said it remained an open question whether he would make good on them.

“The first thing that will be resolved,” he declared, is “whether he was hypocritical or sincere, and we will find that out soon enough.” As though there were any doubt that the new government would intensify the attacks on the working class!

“What you will see on Capitol Hill,” he continued, “is that many Democrats will be prepared to work with Mr. Trump if he turns out to be sincere about the promises that he made.”

Warren, for her part, sent a letter to Trump dated Tuesday criticizing him for packing his transition team with bankers and Wall Street figures. She wrote: “The American people are watching to see if you were sincere in your campaign promises to look out for the interests of working families, rather than the interests of the rich and powerful. Now it is time to live up to those promises.”

Warren’s indignation toward Wall Street is selective. Only a few days before she was making campaign speeches for Clinton, a multi-millionaire candidate who had received the vast majority of Wall Street campaign funding and been paid tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees by the big banks.

Neither Warren, nor Sanders mentioned the anti-Trump protests taking place across the country.

To the extent that there is content to the overtures by Sanders and Warren to work with the Trump administration, supposedly to improve the lot of workers, it is agreement with Trump’s program of economic nationalism and trade war, with which the trade union bureaucracy has also publicly solidarized itself. This is a reactionary policy to pit American workers against workers in other countries and line them up behind their “own” bosses.

This empty posturing is designed to politically disarm the working class and youth as to the immense dangers they face from a Trump government and, above all, keep social opposition and protest within the confines of the Democratic Party.

Workers and young people must not be fooled again! In the Democratic Party primaries, Sanders won the votes of millions of workers and young people because of his calls for a “political revolution” against the “billionaire class.” As the WSWS warned, Sanders did not speak for the interests of the working class, but for a section of the ruling class that was seeking to divert anger over falling living standards and rising economic inequality would not take an independent political and anti-capitalist form.

By throwing his support to the Wall Street favorite Clinton, Sanders ensured that anti-establishment sentiment among large sections of working people would be captured by the right. Now, as opposition is developing against Trump, Sanders is again being called forward to corral opposition.

Significantly, Sanders has been promoted into the leadership of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. Warren, already in the leadership, has been elevated to become its co-chair. The Democratic Party is seeking to give itself a face-lift even as it moves further to the right.

All attempts to present this party of Wall Street and the military/intelligence complex as capable of being “pushed to the left” and made to serve the interests of working people are fraudulent. The most basic and critical lesson of the Trump election is the urgent need for the working class and youth to carry out a complete break with the Democratic Party and take the road of independent political struggle against the capitalist system that both parties defend.

Barry Grey

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

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[Petition] Stand with undocumented immigrants in Chicago


TELL YOUR MAYOR:

Stand with undocumented immigrants in Chicago and protect sanctuary cities.

Trump has said he will deport millions, and anti-immigrant harassment is already out of control. It is time for all mayors to issue a public statement to declare America's cities and towns as sanctuaries of safety that will not allow local police to do the work of immigration agents, and for mayors to do all they can to stand with immigrant communities.

In a sanctuary city, officials implement policies to restrict local police from turning immigrants over to federal immigration agents and declare in no uncertain terms that immigrants are welcome. Without these measures, undocumented immigrants are left vulnerable to racial profiling, detention, and deportation.


SIGN THE PETITION (http://act.moveon.org/go/6759?t=1&akid=173372.7761820.F44m0B)


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St. Petersburg, FL marches against Trump (http://fightbacknews.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a29530af96a02fc55d345e735&id=47a9109542&e=d323598fe4)

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By staff

St. Petersburg, FL - On Nov. 13, the recent wave of nationwide anti-Trump protests crashed the shores of downtown Saint Petersburg, when over 1000 people gathered at Demen’s Landing. The protesters marched to nearby Williams Park and back during Sunday evening’s mass-demonstration. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)-St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay Alliance for Positive Change cosponsored the protest.

Chants from the crowd such as “Stand up, fight back” and “The people united will never be defeated,” could be heard from blocks away as the protesters marched through the business-heavy portion of the city. This display of unity attracted both support and disapproval from local bystanders at nearby bars and restaurants.

A wide array of organizations such as the Tampa Anti-War Committee, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and SDS-St. Petersburg were represented at the rally. Overall, the groups in attendance maintained that the election-night win of Donald Trump brought a variety of different injustices to the table.

Heather Henry of the Tampa Anti-War committee said, “He is going to put more money towards the growth of our military and our police forces, furthering our militarized presence at home and abroad, leading to more violence.”

Jorge Pedroza from SDS-St. Petersburg maintained that there was still work to be done after this week’s mass protests, saying that “the struggle wasn’t won or lost on election night.” He explained that it was due time for the people to “raise class consciousness through active participation” and to “build a truly united front to fight back against the common enemy shared by the working class.”

A brief open-mic session followed and the event cosponsors closed by leading the chant, “Power in the streets, power to the people.”

Read more News and Views from the Peoples Struggle at http://www.fightbacknews.org. You can write to us at [email protected]