Thousands of people across the country protested Friday against legislation cracking down on illegal immigrants, with demonstrators in such cities as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta staging school walkouts, marches and work stoppages. (More)

At least 500 students at Huntington Park High School near Los Angeles walked out of classes in the morning. Hundreds of the students, some carrying Mexican flags, walked down the middle of Los Angeles streets, police cruisers behind them.

The students visited two other area high schools, trying to encourage students to join their protest, but the schools were locked down to keep students from leaving, said Los Angeles district spokeswoman Monica Carazo. (More)

Today I saw a lot of people walking down the street during sixth period and afterwards! It was crazy… Coincedentally today my history teacher wasn’t here so we had no teacher in the room at all, for a long time. So when all of these kids were walking down the street we all rushed to the window to check it out. Some of my classmates even opened the door to get a better scene (our history classroom was directly facing the street) There was a police car beside them and everything. Wish I took a picture…it would have supplemented this entry very well, lol. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture with my camera phone, oh well.

One of my classmates was like, “Hey, I saw my cousins!” lol.

So after a while, the classroom got pretty crazy… and Idalia and I went outside the classroom (inside the building) to see if there would be any teacher coming for our class. We saw some lady just walking by and we told her we had no teacher, so she called in another lady as a temporary sub, I guess. Finally our real sub came by…I’ve had him for a sub a lot! Someone said he got caught in the traffic. I wonder if that was true? lol, that’s kind of funny. Someone made a crack about Ms. Jordan (our history teacher) being outside in the protest walk. It was funny because she’s not the type to do anything like that.

“We’re sitting nice and quiet. We’re thinking and writing! Settle down, we’re calm and peaceful.”

If you say those phrases to anyone in my class we can tell you it’s Ms. Jordan right off the bat. haha. It’s funny when you see a teacher so much that you memorize their frequent phrases.

Oh yeah, the school was in lock down all the while this craziness was happening. “We are in school lock down for your safety,” said Mrs. Maher, our principal. After sixth period, we had our passing period and went into school lock down again. “Get to your classes quickly; step it up!”

After school ended, the teachers were supposed to walk us out. However, the gates were still locked and they told us to go back to class…. but then they just decided to shove us in the theatre, lol. We stayed there in a whlie and when it was announced “all clear” we were allowed to go home. Wow! This is the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like that.

What do I think of this? I really can’t say… immigrants make up a majority of the people that do jobs like working in the fields that Americans wouldn’t want to do. Without these people who would do them? How would our economy be? But the again, they aren’t tax payers and for example, if they went to a hospital they wouldn’t have to pay. And it would be wrong to turn them down while their arm was cut off or something…

As for the students walking out of class…I’m not sure if the majority of them are doing it because of their support for immigrants or just because they wanted to get out of class.

Classes For Next Year: But on another note, classes for next year! It’s gotten me, and quite a few other students, very stressed. For once, we actually can decide which major classes to take… and now we don’t want to choose! Before they gave us classes, but now that we have choices we have to stress over which to choose. Also, with our own decisions to make we can’t blame the school because we decided for ourselves, lol.

I know I’m taking this classes: AP Literature, AP US History, AP Chemistry, Spanish 3-4, Math Analysis. However…I’m not sure what to take for an elective. I’m done with my arts so I can take any class I want… Most people are taking physics…AND AP chem. CRAZY! I can’t even handle chemistry. That would leave me with 3 math classes. But anyway, I don’t need an extra science class because I’m for sure not going to be a math major…

So I decided these are the classes I’m interested in (priority in that order): Web Design (if I can’t take it over the summer), desktop intro (whatever the heck that is…I’m going to ask my councelor lol), musical theatre (but I don’t think you can audition unless you’re in choir or drama already), and finally yearbook. I would actually be interested in journalism, but it’s only offered as an extra class…not during the school day. I would so go for hockey if it was an option…but it was closed off last year because there wasn’t enough interest. Bummer.

So yeah. Tomorrow I’m registering…so wish me luck!