In numerous cases, among students who spoke publicly and those who just disclosed their feelings privately, I am afraid their hyper exuberance — beautiful though it was to watch — often outraced their rationality.
We shall return to Mr. Vaquerano momentarily.
Without exception, every student I spoke with, from Venice, Culver City High and Hami — never found anyone from Culver Park — spoke of feeling wounded, degraded and disrespected.
Whatever I may think of the fairly secretive, long-reaching arms that orchestrated the weekend adult protests and Monday’s sprawling student response — I was struck by the teens’ bank of knowledge, their obvious candor and their sincerity.
Making Their Families Proud
Package that with the reservoir of enthusiasm required to execute this demonstration, and you have about three hundred and fifty teenagers of whom their families can be proud.
Now that we have warmed up, let us attend to the matter of exaggerating germ-sized facts and confusing perhaps a dozen strands of perceived grievances.
The program itself was heavily problematic. The planning was loose. It sagged, therefore suffered.
I am reminded of a family dashing out the door, running very late, grabbing every item in sight to take to Grandma’s house.
I would have confined my criticisms to the criminalization of illegal aliens and building the wall at the border. Research and pound away at those two arguments, and you have a chance of influencing the outcome if not prevailing.
Throwing everything at the wall was a tactical error.
Instead of focusing on two or three or four or five criticisms, they filled a large bucket with so many pea-sized gripes that the important ones were buried beneath an unseamly pile of clutter.
Every problem was monstrously large and frighteningly terminal.
As a barely surviving marriage veteran from several households, I can tell you this is a sure way to lose your argument.
There may be enough troubling issues to fill a book that matches the world’s largest encyclopaedia in weight.
But each of the grievances varies in its degree of importance. Everything is not shrill ten on a ten-scale, guys.
On Monday morning, I heard the smartest thinker I know tell a large audience that the immigration issue is very complicated, a view from which I distance myself.
Coach, Are You Kidding?
He reminded me of football coaches I have known who will tell you the strategy they are plotting is too dense for non-Ph.Ds to comprehend. I don’t think so.
My first problem with the City Hall protest was the several dozen flags the students were waving. Tellingly, none said U.S.A.
I interpreted the presence of one hundred percent of foreign flags — Bulgaria and Albania went unrepresented — to mean they felt allegiance to the lands of their ancestors. All right. And I like meatballs and spaghetti. How are the two related?
If your families left the Old Country tens or dozens of years ago, and you are marching because you have a gripe against this country, why would you tote a foreign object to the debate?
It not only made no sense, it was damaging.
The presence of foreign flags only could have inflamed potential sympathizers.
The flags were waved by students who looked jubilant as they raised supportive roars from the crowd.
I cannot summon a single compelling reason for trotting out flags from the Old Country.
If you wish to protest the proposed seven-hundred-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and the potential criminalization of illegal immigrants, strength to you.
But every wave of every flag weakened the students’ otherwise legitimate complaints.
Without mentioning names — or our discussion will become much louder than Monday’s rally — I once was married to a sweet thing with a perverse sense of humor. She did not even know the shape of a baseball, but periodically when we would disagree over the color of a towel, the Vietnamese War or the meal I was eating, she would dip into the bullpen and pull out her mother or her father. Since Sweet Young Thing inherited her curious values from her parents, you may presume that when we donnybrooked, the contest looked like something bizarre you see on those off-beat cable channels.
Where was I?
Unfortunately, I did not challenge any of the students about the flags.
A Statement of Beliefs
When we met, Mr. Vaquerano of Hami High indicated that he came to cheer for his friends and their cause, not because he had problems.
“I am here to support,” he said, “to show that we are not just anybody, that we came here to work.
“My parents came here twenty-five years ago, and they have their papers.”
At that point, Mr. Vaquerano turned to the favorite pounding point of the day, equality.
“I don’t feel it is right for me to put myself above everybody else,” he said, “just because (some immigrants) are here illegally.
“A lot of people, just because they are here legally, want to put everybody else down. They forget that once they were immigrants, too.”
From the standpoint of logic or rationality, it would be difficult to contest Mr. Vaquerano’s reasoning. The Mayor of Los Angeles has hammered this precise moral nail thousands of times, publicly and privately, in recent years. And don’t get me started on Cardinal Mahony.
What Mr. Vaquerano, the Mayor and the Cardinal all choose to ignore is that the established immigrants whom they are disparaging came because they obtained proper documentation.
No one is obligated or even forced to come to America. You can choose Poland.
All of the teenagers who were at Monday’s demonstration should have learned by now that every negative action carries a consequence. This is a law-based society. If the law is not followed, the lawbreaker must be punished — even if he is a nice person and works hard.
If you disagree, work to change the law. Just please do not equate immigrants who proceeded to America through legal, documented channels with immigrants — nice guys, hard workers — who say arrogantly they will not fill out the necessary papers. It is uncomplicated. Their dismissive act makes them lawbreakers.
