By Madeline Will, Education Week, July 5, 2019.
HOUSTON — On Independence Day, hundreds of educators marched to a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children, chanting calls for freedom.
The protesters are delegates to the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. The NEA is holding its annual representative assembly here July 4-7. But the protest was not sanctioned by the NEA—it was a grassroots march organized by educators, who were horrified to learn their convention was blocks away from a facility for immigrant youth.
"The experiences these children are going through are going to scar them for life," said Gladys Márquez, a Chicago-area high school teacher of English-language learners and the chair of the national union's Hispanic Caucus, who helped organize the march. "As educators, we know that that will impact everything, from their learning, their social-emotional well-being, their sanity, their livelihoods—everything. And we just don't stand for that."
Educators marched down to the shelter decked out in red, white, and blue, and American flag clothing, holding signs and chanting slogans like, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "Down, down with separation, up, up with education."
The facility is called Casa Sunzal, and it is run by Southwest Key Programs, a controversial nonprofit that houses migrant children who are unaccompanied or who have been separated from their parents. The group says on its website that its mission is to provide a safe and friendly environment for children. Meanwhile, government-run immigration detention facilities have come under fire recently for squalid and overcrowded conditions.
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