When I see a room of students of one or many backgrounds, I see a graceful, able-minded and bodied youth with the potential of rising up for worthy causes in the world, on campus or in a nearby community. I see young Americans just a few texts and speeches away from being overrun with energy (or anger) and fulfilling their American citizenship by being agents for the welfare for the country that they love. 

As part of the NC State Latinx organization, Mi Familia, and Students For Immigrant Rights, it’s been brought to my attention that an alarming North Carolina Senate bill has been filed and is slowly making its way through the North Carolina General Assembly, to be voted on by a committee soon.

It is known as Senate Bill 145, and its purpose is to facilitate law enforcement agencies’ efforts to seek out and deport working undocumented people for not having a legal ID, as well as allow designated state law enforcement to brandish the responsibility of the federal government by acting as immigration officers. The most concerning tenet of the bill, however, is that it would prohibit the UNC System from having schools become sanctuary campuses, which is a campus that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws on undocumented students. Resolution 60, for example, the bill voted on by Student Government last semester, was a recommendation toward making NC State a sanctuary campus. 

This column serves to inform readers about this bill, but my motive behind writing this does not lie in promoting my own political views, but to promote the mobilization and radicalization of students against any cause they deem valuable.

I am writing this column to display student defiance against the Republican senators that are sponsoring this bill, who likely do not think significant action by millennials will be taken. I want to let everyone know that it can be done and they can do it too. I am talking about the weaponization of two things that they may forget they possess: a passionate mind and a medium, the will to try and a pen in hand, the effort to reform and a word processing program, and the glorious access to the opinion section of a student newspaper.

Unfortunately, there’s other anti-immigrant legislation that’s in the works, such as Senate Bill 188, which would make municipalities not eligible for receiving state funds for infrastructure should laws prohibiting sanctuary ordinances be violated, or House Bill 63 which would also allow police to act as federal immigration officers, alongside making the use of false ID (which undocumented immigrants may carry to work and drive) a class G felony, except if it is an underage person buying alcohol.

Convenient, is it not? 

But also unfortunately for those state senators and representatives, they don’t know they’ve got another thing coming — the youth. I’m organizing soon with many student unions beyond the Latinx and Hispanic ones to take action against this bill through conducting a mass calling and emailing event to the committees voting for this legislation.

I took to seeing the near hundred Latinx students who gather to socialize at Mi Familia meetings, as well as the other ethnic student unions on campus as a beautiful group of bodies that longs to do some good in the world and to be a cause for positive change. I see them as students of color and allies of students of color who should be immersed in the writings of great Mexican figures like Emiliano Zapata and Cesar Chavez, or the great black leaders like Malcolm X, Huey Newton and even MLK, Jr., instead of filling their minds with the petty distractions of things like social media and popular culture.

I have hope for organizing and making a significant impact on campus because I see a mass number of students who don’t know me or my cause, but would join in the efforts of a cause like mine if they knew what kind of literature is in the bookshelves in some of their state representatives’ offices that they abhor, and if they knew that they could truly take action and be in a union of hearts and minds against an inequality that they can’t see go on.