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NOVEMBER 1998

Student family members claim UFW behind walkout

ACLU weighs in on I-200 protest

SUNNYSIDE (Friday, 11-6-98)--The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington has advised Sunnyside High School administrators to cool their response to Wednesday's student walkout.

 

Lupe Gamboa, director of the United Farm Workers Union here in Sunnyside, said Wednesday he intended to contact the ACLU. He did.

 

ACLU staff said in Seattle today the group was responding to Gamboa's "request for information".

 

In a letter to SHS Principal Bob Thomas and Supt. Mac Chambers, ACLU chief Kathleen Taylor noted SHS handed out three-day suspensions to 175 students following the kids' 10:30 a.m. mass walkout.

 

Students shortly thereafter rallied at UFW offices.

 

Taylor urged local school administrators to "treat the students with compassion in the face of the serious personal blow that they have experienced," as a result of Washington voters' passage of Initiative 200, the anti-affirmative action measure.

 

"We request that you shorten the student's suspension to the time already served and eliminate from their student records any references to this incident," Taylor said.

 

"While we understand the need to maintain discipline and order in the school, we also sympathize with the students' concern about the potential effect of Initiative 200 on their lives" Taylor wrote.

 

School administrators did whittle students' suspensions down to two days from three. But SHS Principal Thomas said it wasn't because they knuckled under to the ACLU.

 

"We didn't have time to give each student due process in this matter. So we decided to cut (suspension time) to two days," Thomas said.

 

ACLU's request to expunge student records won't cut it, either.

 

"We don't change public records at anyone's request," Thomas said. Walking out will remain in the written record of every student who participated in Wednesday's flap.

 

While Kathleen Taylor is ACLU's top banana for Washington, some rank- and-file ACLU members vehemently disagreed with her assessment of I-200's effects.

 

"During the I-200 debate, I found many top-level ACLU representatives to be the kind of people I thought we were fighting against," said Yakima ACLU's Roger Erickson.

 

"These so called leaders want unequal rights written into law. It's law that that allows some to plunder others, based on outright bigotry, like gender and skin color," he said.

 

And Erickson, Libertarian party chief for Central Washington, is very unhappy with ACLU's evolution over the years.

 

"It's supposed to be an organization dedicated to protect people attacked by unequal law, and created to defend constitutional rights. I find many top-level ACLU leaders fighting against these very principles," he said.

 

Some Sunnyside family members indicate their highschoolers have the UFW to thank for the black mark on their SHS student records. Some said they "know" the UFW conceived and precipitated the walkout. UFW denies it.

 

A coalition of Sunnyside's UFW, Granger's KDNA radio, plus Seattle's El Centro de la Raza and Sea Mar health system recently organized the unsuccessful takeover of a state Job Service office in Mattawa.

 

Some observers believe the students' I-200 walkout--which also occurred in Yakima--is another symptom of a statewide "organizing" strategy or "movida" formulated recently by the coalition.

 

They warn there will be "more incidents to come" in months ahead.