The New Vietnam Generation
Huge youth-led demonstrations in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC over ICE
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) in North Carolina have reported 30,000 absences across the district. These students have walked out and are protesting ICE in their area.
This will be a sea change for these young people.
I was politically radicalized during Vietnam when I started protesting that guys I went to High School with were coming back in droves in body bags from that brutal, idiotic and deceptive war.
The ICE raids are generating a new Vietnam generation of radicalized young people, I believe.
These young people in North Carolina are not just walking out. They have organized through group chats, campus clubs, and social media, connecting with with parents and local advocacy groups.
Students are not just staying home, they are making signs, and sharing stories of neighbors and friends too terrified to leave their homes.
This will grow exponentially as social media tends to feed awareness (for good and for ill). Parents are quoted as supportive. “I think this is a direct contact for students to be able to say something and voice their opinion in a positive way,” said parent Portia Jones.
Border Patrol agents were seen in Charlotte over the past few days as part of their immigration operation “Charlotte’s Web” as they have decided to call it, leading to a protest by Martha White, the granddaughter of E.B. White, the author of the classic 1952 children’s tale “Charlotte’s Web.” Ms White said the wave of immigration arrests goes against what her grandfather and his beloved book stood for.
“He believed in the rule of law and due process,” she said in a statement. “He certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons.”
There is almost literally nothing this administration believes it cannot steal including a beloved children’s book title.
Just as Vietnam was an undeclared war, ICE warrantless arrests have been deemed illegal in Chicago. A federal judge has given a consent decree limiting warrantless arrests and has extended it. The judge found that ICE has been violating the decree, which requires warrants or probable cause for arrests, and ordered the release of hundreds of people who were unlawfully detained. In response, some ICE activities have been deemed unlawful in Chicago,
I hope the same will happen in North Carolina and around the country.
We must support the young people who are protesting these abhorrent ICE activities.
The far-right is mobilizing young people for its own twisted agenda. In the Vail Valley in Colorado, for example, schools are being allowed to form “Turning Point USA” clubs in two public high schools. This is the name of recently deceased Charlie Kirk’s far right organization, and it will inevitably lead to far right radicalizing in public schools. The Vail Valley has a large percentage of Latino/a immigrants.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has detailed Kirk’s many connections to far-right extremism: “Several weeks after the 2024 presidential election, Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), proudly embraced a white nationalist conspiracy theory while celebrating then-President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation.”
Young people are on the front lines of this struggle both for the rule of law and for the illegal oppression of certain groups.
This new Vietnam generation is in a struggle for democracy as they should be. It is their country to grow into.
The parallell to Vietnam protests is striking, especially how students are self organizing through social media rather than waiting for institutions to respond. Its powerful to see 30,000 young people finding their political voice this way. That Chicago consent decree you mentiond shows there's legal ground to push back on warrantless arrests too.