IN MEMORY OF ANTHONY SOLTERO

We in the Coalition of Filipino-American Students for Justice and Peace condemn the persecution to death of the eighth-grade student Anthony Soltero, urge that his tormentor be brought to justice, and call for a stop to the fascist intimidation, inquisition and repression by authorities of student protesters for immigrant rights. We express our deepest bereavement to his parents, relatives, friends, classmates, and the hundreds of thousands of fellow student protesters he left behind.

Anthony Soltero, a leader of the heroic April 28 student walk-outs, committed suicide reportedly in direct response to threats by the De Danza Middle School vice-principal to jail him for his leadership in the protest actions. In a previous statement, we had already denounced the narrow-minded medieval policy of locking down schools and preventing student street protests as effective imprisonment of the students and as a denial of their right to the wider, real-life education in genuine democracy and civic citizenship that the pro-immigrant protests provide.

In that statement, we also had registered our opposition to the police-state tactics of sowing fear among students through acts of physical brutality, a policy paralleled by the psychological harassment of Anthony. Anthony’s suicide in a sense was a form of protest against and rejection of this policy.

His life has been short in years but long in meaning and depth. Anthony’s life and death illustrate that someone as young as he can acquire not merely the education, but more importantly the wisdom and integrity to believe in and join the struggle for social justice. We enjoin all freedom-loving students and parents to act to ensure that Anthony’s martyrdom will be not in vain.

Let us turn our grief into courage to carry forward Anthony’s principled fight for full immigrant rights to its just and adequate conclusion. Inspired by Anthony’s legacy of conviction and leadership, let us struggle for anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist justice for immigrants and students.

COALITION OF FILIPINO-AMERICAN STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE

In recent days, a young man in LA led his peers in organizing walkouts from school. His principal threatened to destroy every present and future piece on the gameboard of his life. So the young Christ shot himself, defying his principal to follow him off the board.

http://www.vrnirvananow.org/Baptism_by_Fire.html

A heart-headed knowman. “And when the beam bursts into infinity, then how large my heart?”


Fire has long been used in religious rituals; in this illustration, the flashlight depicts the sacred fire. From the infinite earth, materials are gathered; the Many finite, temporal, profane things return to fuel the One infinite, eternal, divine fire.

Smoke is the traditional conveyor of prayers; in this illustration, the light beam arises, becoming, with its human holder, the channel of peace that St. Francis sought, between the wheel of the earth and the wheel in the sky (when it’s calm, smokewheels in the sky may be seen topping the columns arising from chimneys).

As with the fuel, fire, and smoke, so too with us.

In baptism by fire, the initiate is required to quit all claim to the former self; suffering is exactly the attempt to cling to the previous form; bliss is burning for all we’re worth, simply hoping that others might be enlightened, not harmed, by our immolation (This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine!).

Was it in this spirit that Anthony moved himself beyond the destructive reach of his principal? It was in this spirit that Christ walked willingly to Calvary. In this spirit, some Buddhists undergo willingly baptism by fire.

Metabolism is the process of burning fuel; each and every one of us is burning alive. And the same heat, the same light, the same divine fire burns within us All: We consume the fruit of the earth, arise in its burning, and return from whence we came, our (only apparent) death and dismemberment continuing the cycle by returning us into fuel for the divine fire; whence we arise, thence we return; so, everywhere I look, I know:

There by the grace of God go I.

In this light, every bit as bright as the light of a burning Buddhist, life is not about quantity; life’s goal is not to hog all the fuel, nor to build a bigger fire, nor to petrify dancing plasma. In this light, life is about compassionate concern for the quality of all life, for no other reason than this:

Where we burn one, we burn All.

There is questions as to if he just skipped school or did in fact protest. Do you people know exactly what you are protesting? Do you really understand that we are in fact letting our children know it is okay to break the law? It is tough all over but does that condone breaking the law. If you want to become a citizen you have to do it legally. Seems to me this kid had problems way before the protesting but this is a good way to explain away the shortcomings of the adults that were interacting in his life and not seeing the real issue. His problems didn't happen over night.

Why howdy there!

This is David Root, activist citizen for reform from San Diego.

If there is anything that outrages me, it is the educational system that intimidated him with three years in the pokey if he went to a protest in lieu of classes. What is wrong with these educational administrators.

With crap like this, it is a miracle that I am not an advocate of school vouchers.

Please contact me for any new things on this, as well as what I can do.

In Friendship,

David Root

Please cite your sources if you want to be taken seriously. Other wise your commentary is easily dismissed as some one working for the school district and trying to spread false information in an attempt to create confusion about the case.

Also please show a little respect for the family and their loss.

(readers: please know that the suicide note has not been made public and that only the police, the family and their lawyers have read the suicide note. I think we can rule out two of these as the source of this comment)

I think he or she got it from today's Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2006

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teen15apr15,1,7388243.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
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Mother Blames School Official for Son's Suicide

Ontario police Wednesday night released the boy's suicide note to his family. Samuel Paz, the mother's attorney, said it corroborated the allegations against the vice principal. Paz and the boy's mother have declined to release the note.

"Ninety-nine percent of it is about his family, and how he's so sad to be in this situation," Paz said of the suicide note. "He says something extremely negative about the vice principal, filled with expletives … the only negative thing about anyone in the note."

Anthony did not tell his mother he was going to the protest and when she found out he was disciplined for skipping school, she was upset and told him she was coming home to talk about it, according to the attorneys. When she got home, she found him dying from a single gunshot wound to the head and tried to administer CPR, they said.