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This week on Uprising —

• Tens of thousands of students nationwide walkout of their classrooms to protest harsh immigration measures.
• Activists and farmers are victorious on extending a global ban on terminator technology.
• Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow shares “Dispatches from the Country formerly known as America.”
• Plus the Black Commentator on the immigrant uprising

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Students Walkout of Schools Nationwide

GUESTS: 17 year old Carlos Montero, and 16 year old Sergio Mendoza from Grover Cleveland High School, Piero Giunti, 20 year old “veteran” activist, graduated student at John Burrows High school, involved in walkouts, 16 year old, Jose Covarubias from Garden Grove High School.

On Monday March 27th tens of thousands of students all across the state, and even country, walked out of class rooms to protest harsh immigration legislation. The protest even eclipsed the famous student walkout for Chicano rights in 1968. In Southern California, where Uprising is produced, students marched onto Freeways in Los Angeles and surrounding regions, briefly halting traffic. They were waving Latin American flags and many motorists honked and cheered on the students. More than 1,000 students rallied at Los Angeles City Hall and were addressed by LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. In Santa Ana, CA, officers used nightsticks and pepper spray to control students throwing bottles and rocks.

The walkouts continued for the entire week in various parts of the nation. They appear to be loosely organized, with students learning about them through mass e-mails, fliers, instant messages, cellphone calls and postings on myspace.com Web pages.

Activists Discuss Follow Up to Historic March 25th Demonstration

GUESTS: Carlos Montes, SEIU Local 660, organizer with Latinos Against the War, Jesse Diaz, Professor at UC Riverside, organizer with Coalition Against HR 4437, Alvaro Huerta, Director of Community, Education, and, Advocacy at CHIRLA

As this program is being recorded, President Bush is in Cancun, Mexico, at a two-day summit with leaders from Mexico and Canada. The issue of immigration is at the top of his agenda. Meanwhile, immigration issues dominate the news and Capitol Hill. The U.S. Senate is debating a bill to overhaul immigration laws, including a proposal by Bush to allow workers from Mexico and other countries to work legally in the United States for up to six years. None of the prospective bills are particularly progressive. Bush’s proposal has put him at odds with members of his own Republican Party. Protests on the streets of US cities continue. After the largest march in Los Angeles history last weekend, organizers are now strategizing on how to follow it up.

UN Convention Rejects Terminator Seeds

GUEST: Lucy Sharvatt, with the Ban Terminator Campaign

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity is a two week forum being held in Curitiba, Brazil. Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva addressed attendees blaming industrialized nations for the “unsustainable patterns of production and consumption… It is unacceptable that poorer nations continue to suffer the main burden of environmental degradation.” Meanwhile activists celebrated a major victory at the Convention which firmly extended the global moratorium on Terminator technologies or genetically engineered sterile seeds.

For more information, visit www.banterminator.org

Black Commentator on Latinos Marching
Glen Ford, co-publisher of The Black Commentator

The Black Commentator is an online political magazine bringing you commentary, analysis and investigation from a black perspective. Today’s commentary is about Latinos marching.

The Black Commentator is online at www.blackcommentator.com.

Hell in a Handbasket

GUEST: Tom Tomorrow, political cartoonist, and author of “Hell in a Handbasket: Dispatches from the Country Formerly Known as America.”

Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow’s graphic commentaries, “This Modern World,” have appeared for years in the New York Times, US News and World Report, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Nation, and many other publications. Now for the first time, her has published a full color compilation of his work in a new book “Hell in a Handbasket: Dispatches from the Country Formerly Known as America.” Tom Tomorrow’s work has been especially crucial in the years after 9/11, when he has looked unflinchingly at the Bush Administration’s drive toward the war on Iraq, and Republican and Democratic Party politics. Michael Moore says of him, “The next time I see Tom Tomorrow, I will thank him for helping America laugh while the world laughed at us. I will thank him for never backing down, no matter how dark and crazy the times were. And I will beg him never to put down his mighty pen or we shall all be doomed. Hail Tom Tomorrow!”

For more information, visit www.thismodernworld.com

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” – Abbie Hoffman.