Local students are working to keep the spirit of Cesar Chavez alive in Colorado.
On Friday, more than a hundred high school and college students and community members walked eight miles from Boulder to Lafayette to honor late activist Cesar Chavez and promote the DREAM Act.
In 1966, Chavez led striking farm workers on a 250 mile march from Delano, Calif. to Sacramento, Calif. to bring demands to state government and raise awareness.
The Cesar Chavez Celebration in Lafayette has been an annual event for some time and includes a short march in the town. This year, an extension of the march was organized by Centaurus High School students involved in Public Achievement, a program led by University of Colorado students as part of the Access Colorado program.
Liz Bury, a 20-year-old senior sociology and psychology major, works as a coach for Public Achievement. Bury mentors the six Centaurus High School students who planned the extended march, who she calls “her kids.”
Bury said that their project for the year was focused on immigration, and that the annual celebration was a proper place to promote the DREAM Act.
“We are really supportive of the work that Cesar Chavez stood for…human rights in general,” Bury said. “We feel like education is a basic human right.”
The DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act is legislation that was introduced in both chambers March 2009, according to the DREAM Web site. If passed, the act would offer an application process for qualified, undocumented students to receive six years of conditional permanent resident status, allowing them to attend college at in-state tuition costs and enter a path to citizenship after two years in the higher education system or military service.
Daniel Escalante, the coordinator of the Lafayette Cesar Chavez Celebration, said he agreed that there is a connection between the students’ issue and Cesar Chavez. Chavez supported education for all people so that its benefits return to the community, Escalante said.
“If you talk to these kids they talk about going to college, getting a degree, getting a good job then giving back to the community,” Escalante said.
The high school students that worked with Bury and other Public Achievement coaches to plan the march said family and friends in their community who face issues of documentation constantly inspired them.
“A group of us chose immigration because most of us have family members who don’t have papers,” said Jonathon Sosa, a 16-year-old junior at Centaurus High School. “My older brother is undocumented, he got a scholarship for graphic design and they didn’t accept him to any college because of paper issues, so that’s why I chose this.”
The event inspired action from some younger community members as well.
Nikola Yager, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Casey Middle School in north Boulder, and a few of her friends missed school to walk the march. They carried a sign that read: “All we want is a just, practical immigration policy.”
Yager said being a student at Casey has opened her eyes to different people, and that many of her classmates and friends may be undocumented. She said these people inspired her to support the DREAM Act.
“I can’t imagine them not fulfilling their lives,” Yagar said.
Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Molly Maher at maherm@colorado.edu.
