Last evening I got the following email from the local high school parent-teacher association:
Hello Parent Friends,
I want to invite you to a rally/protest teachers are holding on Thursday at 7:00AM. We will gather in front of the main entrance and march up and down the sidewalk to send the message that we will stand up for students who may be affected by the terrible messages coming from the president-elect. We will have poster-sized “shields” provided by UTLA [United Teachers/Los Angeles] with messages vowing to protect various groups who have been attacked by Trump, such as immigrants, LGBT people, and Muslims. I’ve pasted a bit of copy below from the UTLA website. Thanks for all your support over the last couple of years, and I hope you can join us.
________________________________________________________________________________________
The message from UTLA:
On January 19th, the day before the presidential inauguration, we will stand up for our values as public school educators with actions at school sites citywide. We will show that educators are united with our students and our communities against Trump’s racially charged and anti-immigrant proposals and that we will continue to fight attempts to privatize public education.
Join tens of thousands of students, parents, educators, school staff, and community members in morning school site actions where we will hold picket lines and rallies with “shields” against the attacks that our students and our schools face and join a mass Tweetstorm against trump by sending personal messages written on an oversized letter from each school to him via Twitter with the tag #schooltrump.
This is a public high school is in a very progressive neighborhood in Los Angeles where most of the kids qualify for free or low cost lunch. It’s ~3,000 students are decidedly multi-ethnic. There are several “small learning communities” including a “School for Advanced Studies” and “magnet” as well as blind students.
They have been calling parents of students ever since the election to reassure them that the school will defend every single student, no matter their ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation, or religious faith, and offering counseling and emotional support to their students.
7AM is a bit tricky for me as I’m supposed to be at work at 7:30 myself, but maybe somebody will be there in the early a.m. rain and get a photo for me to share.
Meanwhile, at least kids in LA public schools know they have the support of their teachers, no matter what’s going on in DC on Friday.