Protesters, participants in Maria Carrillo skit find common ground

There was agreement, not confrontation, Friday at a protest in front of Maria Carrillo High School, staged in response to a school rally a week earlier that some students said was racist for stereotyping Latinos and satirizing immigration.

About 50 students, most of them Latino, left class early to participate in the protest staged by the North Bay Organizing Project and its Latino Student Congress.

Standing on the lawn in front of the school, they held signs with such slogans as “I don’t know you but we need each other to create a new world,” “We are one race” and “Enough is enough. How long must our people be picked on?”

“It was a good event,” Principal Rand Van Dyke told Omar Medina, a North Bay Organizing Project leader, as the protest broke up.

All students who left class early will receive a demerit, which is unlikely to affect their status, he said.

Jose Ramirez, the senior who conceived the dance performance skit, also met with Medina, an unsuccessful candidate for the Santa Rosa City Schools board last year. “Had you not done your skit, this wouldn’t have happened,” Medina said. “You got attention.”

In an interview, Ramirez, 18, who did not participate in the protest, said he was happy that it happened.

“I feel like we’re all on the right page,” he said. “We’re trying to make people aware of what’s going on with immigration.”

The skit, which was captured on video that appeared on YouTube, opened with students dancing to Latin American music, interrupted by a student dressed as a police officer breaking up the dance and blowing a whistle. All but one of the students flash “green cards,” the colloquial term for an ID that proves permanent legal residency.

The lone dancer who does not produce a card, a white student, is taken to the floor and apprehended.

Ramirez, who was undocumented for 12 years, said the performance was intended as satire, based on the concept that “laughter is the best medicine.”

But he also said he could understand why some people disliked the skit. “Immigration can be a sensitive topic to some people,” he said. “We’re not all the same.”

Gisselle Flores, 15, a sophomore and Latino Student Congress leader, said she felt “offended and disrespected” by the skit. “My family has been separated because of deportation and I take it very seriously,” she said in an interview.

The Maria Carrillo student body is “pretty much divided,” she said, adding that Latino, black and white students “don’t congregate together.”

Sophomore Jasmine Villanueva, 16, another Latino Congress leader, said she found the skit offensive, but not intentionally so since all but one of the performers were Latino. What bothered her was the actors’ wearing ponchos and sombreros as stereotypes of Latinos, Villanueva said.

Medina called for an ethnic studies element in the curriculum at Maria Carrillo and high schools throughout the county, and for a “restorative circle” bringing together the skit cast members and students who were offended by the skit.

“Collectively, they have the same interest,” Medina said, noting that the skit was intended to be positive.

Brigette Mansell, an English teacher and Healdsburg city councilwoman, told Medina the school’s freshman humanities course could possibly include an ethnic studies component. “We can work on that,” she said.

Van Dyke, the principal, said curriculum issues are ultimately decided by the school board, but that school staff “can look at an instructional need ” in the context of “the totality of what we teach here.”

He also responded to the complaint voiced by some protesters that the school administration had not commented on the skit.

Van Dyke said he had intentionally refrained from public comment and would continue that course. “I think it’s important to have an opportunity to work through and around these issues outside of the influence of adults,” he said.

Van Dyke said he met Monday with 12 students, including skit cast members and some who were offended by the performance. “We aired and shared,” he said. “It’s not the end of the conversation.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.