Across Oklahoma, in urban areas and rural, students alarmed by the Trump administration’s sometimes deadly anti-immigrant crackdown are walking out of Sooner classrooms to make clear their opposition. Unsurprisingly, the fact students are exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and assembly alarms the Oklahoma Legislature’s Freedom Caucus.
Those hard-right ideologues are not only demanding state Superintendent Lindel Fields investigate the walkouts to determine whether students violated state truancy laws, but also whether teachers were complicit in promoting or facilitating the protests.
Oklahoma, of course, has a rich history of student action – think: Clara Luper and her students protesting racism and bigotry and promoting civil rights through their lunch-counter sit-ins – now immortalized in downtown Oklahoma City with 15 life-sized bronze figures representing Luper, her students and a Katz Drug employee and a four-ton, 16-foot bronze lunch counter.
For this week’s Observercast – Anti-ICE, Anti-IA – Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Michael Brooks-Jiminez joins us to discuss efforts to – in effect – silence students and threaten teachers, part of a broader 30-bills-plus anti-immigrant agenda that includes a proposal that could criminalize houses of worship and non-profits that aid the undocumented – threatening fines up to $50,000 and five-years in prison.
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