Detail from Lincoln's handwritten Gettysburg Address When my undergraduate students have seemed particularly distracted, self centered, or disrespectful, public school educators I know remind me these are "millenium kids" - used to computers, vivid visual cues, short attention spans, and materialistic overload. These are the children born on the eve of the millenium.
The friends of Juan Sebastian Gomez have shown that millenium kids may just be needing something to hope for (and work for). --- a cause that is worthy. As they make their phone calls, send their emails and boldly confront lawmakers in Washington, they are not just keeping Juan Sebastian from being deported. They are trying to save the society they live in - to keep this country what it was (at least on paper) designed to be -
I am not sure that elementary school children are still expected to memorize the Gettysburg address as they did in the 1960s.
...our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...
Lincoln did not specify citizens, resident aliens or undocumented people.
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Juan's friends harness power of idealism
Mon, Aug. 06, 2007
By ANA MENENDEZ
amenendez@MiamiHerald.com
Immigration policy is so complex, so mind-bogglingly difficult that before any action can take place, reams of studies must first be produced, whereupon experts will be retained to weigh in on the details, followed by a complicated association of politicians, lobbyists and blowhards who will turn the entire thing -- which began as a simple human drama -- into an impenetrable, dehumanized tangle of numbers and formulas that everyone will then be forced to call a solution.
Whatever.
A kid's best friend was going to be deported and he refused to accept it. That's the other way.
The week-old saga of Juan Gomez and the school friends who have temporarily halted his deportation is a story of bold youth, new technology and the kind of courage that comes with inexperience.
'We were told, `Don't expect to see your friend again unless you're going to Colombia,' '' Scott Elfenbein, 18, told me Friday afternoon. ``That wasn't a good enough answer to me. It's not what I wanted to hear and I'm too young and naive to think that I can't always get what I want.''
AGENTS FOR CHANGE
The Save Juan campaign illustrates a paradoxical truism of American life: When intellectuals and demagogues talk an issue to the point of sclerosis, the best hope for clarity will come from a child.
A generation ago, kids forced a rethinking of the Vietnam War and the way America viewed race. And for all the talk of today's self-involved, apathetic youth, some of the best changes in Miami in the last years have come out of the unrealistic, untiring efforts of those still in their teens and twenties.
The very young helped force the issue of fair janitor pay at the University of Miami. Idealistic young activists agitated about affordable housing back when the responsible adults in this town were still getting drunk on free open house martinis.
Now a group of teenagers, armed with the technological trappings of their generation, have done what everyone told them was impossible: keep their friend in the United States a little while longer.
A text message from Juan first alerted his friends that immigration police had picked him up. The teenagers could have accepted fate. Instead, they pooled their technological resources and got to work, producing a Facebook page and uploading video.
''I don't think anyone thought to use a social site to start a revolution,'' Scott said. ``My mom still doesn't understand parts of how we did this.''
When the hate began to stream in, Scott maintained his equanimity.
'They tell us, `You're condoning crime,' '' he said. 'My response is, `Did you go to school every day and try to get an education? Did you get a 1400 on your SAT without even trying? Have you always looked to better yourself? If you haven't, then we should be deporting you and not Juan.' ''
POINTING THE RIGHT WAY
The immigration fiasco is undeniably complicated. But complexity is a poor excuse for inaction.
The world needs theoretical thinkers -- landscapes would be impossible to maneuver without the abstraction of maps. But it also needs people who will cut through a mess of obfuscating theory to point the right way.
The children have led, now Congress should follow. Pass the Dream Act that allows students to stay in America. It hurts no one and helps many. If the hate mail starts pouring in and the details begin to overwhelm, legislators can stop, take a deep breath and draw inspiration from Juan Gomez and his teenaged friends.
Seven days from deportation to hope. It was simple.
http://www.miamiherald.com/418/story/194000.html
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