longer.blue

What happened at Woodbridge Senior High School in Virginia is not some isolated school discipline story, it’s a warning flare. Three hundred and twenty-three students were suspended for walking out in protest of the current immigration crackdown. Teenagers. Young American citizens. Kids who looked around at what’s happening in their communities, at ICE activity increasing, at friends living with quiet fear, at families wondering if a knock on the door might change everything, and decided to do the most American thing they could think of: they protested. The school warned them ahead of time. Leave campus and you’ll face consequences. And when hundreds did exactly what a walkout is designed to do, walk out, they were handed three-day suspensions. Three days out of school for saying, in the only language young people sometimes have, “We see this. We don’t agree.” This isn’t just Virginia. From Maryland to Utah, Oklahoma to Texas, students across the country have been walking out in solidarity with immigrant classmates and families. In some states, governors have applauded suspensions. In others, they’ve threatened funding cuts or floated arrests for students deemed “disorderly.” Adults talk about order and discipline while federal enforcement actions escalate in communities where children are simply trying to go to school without fear. Young people are watching their friends worry about deportation. They’re seeing immigration policy play out not as an abstract debate but as lived reality. In places like Woodbridge, where nearly half the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, this isn’t theoretical. It’s personal. And when something becomes personal, young Americans respond. I have five kids and ten grandkids now, ten, and every word I write is written with their faces in mind. For their safety. For their sanity. For the country they’re going to inherit. They are growing up in an atmosphere where cruelty has too often been rebranded as strength and authoritarian swagger is mistaken for leadership. They see it. They feel it. And they are not as numb as some would like them to be. When students organize peaceful protests, they are not dismantling democracy. They are practicing it. Yes, schools have rules. Yes, administrators enforce policies. But mass suspensions of peaceful protesters send a message beyond discipline. The message is: stay in line. Don’t challenge power. Keep your head down. History tells us that message never holds for long. What it’s going to take to stop the normalization of racism, the spectacle of deportation politics, and the steady erosion of democratic norms is not another exhausted lecture from my generation. It’s going to take young Americans who are about to turn 18, and those right behind them, saying clearly and unapologetically: We are young. We are American citizens. We will be voting. And we are not going to tolerate our friends being treated as collateral damage in someone’s authoritarian fantasy. That isn’t chaos. That’s civic courage. That’s constitutional muscle forming in real time. The older generation has made profound mistakes. We’ve allowed division to become currency. We’ve tolerated language that dehumanizes. We’ve flirted with authoritarian impulses as if they were political strategy. But the next generation doesn’t owe loyalty to our failures. They owe loyalty to the principles this country was supposed to stand for. If they walk out peacefully, speak up, organize, and then show up at the ballot box the minute they’re eligible, that is not the unraveling of America. That is the beginning of its repair. Silence, at this point, is complicity. And these kids are refusing to be complicit. — Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.