"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. And you cannot oppress a people who are not afraid anymore. We are the future, and the future is ours."
Erica Fernandez has memorized these words, originally spoken by Cesar Chavez, and put them into action. Beginning in Oxnard, CA, Erica used the power of PROTEST to rally against a large energy corporation that planned to erect a liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline around affluent California coastal communities and through Oxnard, primarily occupied by monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Not only would the LNG pipeline cut through the agricultural land vital to the economy of Oxnard, it would bring millions of tons of pollutants to one of the most beautiful areas in California.
This video is part of a series produced by Not In Our School's parent company, The Working Group, for the Institute for Advancing Unity. This series focus on extraordinary people whose personal choices have inspired others to join in tremendous collective achievements.
Get the Quick Start Guide to start a Not In Our School Campaign in your school
Series Executive Producer: Edith Crawford
Concept Designer: Stephanie Francis
CEO, Institute for Advancing Unity: Dr. Robert M. Harris, Ph.D.
Immigrants
Each year, Facing History teacher Jane Wooster asks the students in her classes to take on a "social action" project of their own choosing. This year, several of the students have chosen to conduct a lunch-time demonstration to draw attention to the use of the word "illegal" to describe undocumented immigrants, and start a school-wide conversation about the way immigrants are perceived in their community.
Joe Lobozzo's class at Lakewood High School in Ohio discuss the trailer of Light in the Darkness.
The students of Newcomers High School in Long Island City, which specializes in teaching recent immigrants, and those of St. Luke's, a private middle school in Manhattan, have come together to dialogue about difference and combat bias. The Building Bridges project was created through a collaboration between Newcomers teacher Julie Mann, and St. Luke's teacher Kim Allen, who met ten years ago through a Facing History workshop. Ms. Mann's class of English-learners exchanged letters with their St. Luke's "buddies", and in the first of several meet-ups this year, received help editing their personal immigration stories. In return, St.Luke's students are preparing research papers on immigration informed by the interviews they conducted with their Newcomers buddies.
This has been one of our most viewed videos. In 2013, Houghton Mifflin licensed use of it for a new digital textbook.
The student video diaries, a book of their stories and more information about their project can be found here.
To turn on closed captioning for this film, click play, then click the Subtitles/CC button on the bottom of the video player.
Learn how to start a NIOS campaign at your school with our free Not In Our School Quick Start Guide.
This student-created video promotes the film, Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness, with three simple words to counter hate: I Am Human.
Created by high school students from American University's Discover the World of Communication Summer Program held at University of California Berkeley during the Summer of 2011.
This trailer features scenes from the Not In Our Town PBS special about how a community responds to the hate crime murder of an Ecuadorean immigrant by seven local high school students. (3 min 48 sec)
Not In Our Town: Light In The Darkness follows a community in crisis after the fatal attack of a local immigrant resident. Stunned by the violence, diverse community stakeholders openly confront the crime and the divisive atmosphere, and commit to ongoing actions to prevent future hate crimes and intolerance.
Educators can utilize the full length (60 minute) or condensed (27 minute) versions in their classroom.
After a series of anti-immigrant attacks by local teenagers ended with the hate crime killing of local immigrant Marcelo Lucero, art students at Patchogue-Medford High School wanted to do something positive for the Lucero family and spread a message of peace. Over the course of a year, students gathered after school to create We Are All United: No One Walks Alone, a mosaic dedicated to Marcelo Lucero.