Ixel Aguilar My First Protest
When I woke up on April 11th, 2014, there was only one thing on
my mind: it’s field trip day! I put on my favorite neon orange shirt that had a soccer ball dead in the center and my favorite pair of jeggings… yes, jeggings. I was a fifth grader at Ridgetop Elementary, a small and predominantly Hispanic school, who happened to have the best teacher on the planet, Ms. Adams. My class was fortunate enough to have had her for three years. I 100% believe that she influenced my passion for activism and learning about human rights. Because our school was so small, we didn’t always get the funding we needed for extra activities, but when you had a teacher like Ms. Adams, there was always a way. So what did we do? We took the city bus downtown to the University of Texas. I remember feeling so grown up walking down the street with all of my friends to the bus stop, hearing the laughter of twenty little hispanic kids and “stay on the side of the road!” from Ms. Adams. Once we finally got on the bus, relieved from the Texas heat, the mood took a turn. As we all sat down we began to talk about the things we were going to do and why it was important for us to really comprehend the situation we were in. We were about to be a group of 5th graders protesting deportations under the Obama administration. Like myself, many of my friends came from immigrant families. As ten and elevenyear-olds, this topic could feel like a heavy weight on our shoulders, but it was important for us to acknowledge why we were there and who we were there for. When we arrived, we saw hundreds of passionate activists, and one scene particularly caught our attention. A group of four hispanic college students gave a speech by the MLK statue. As they were talking, they asked my friend Gerardo and me to chain them up all together around the statue. This felt like a very surreal and powerful moment. I specifically 56
