These San Francisco High School Students Are Recruiting Teachers To Resist Trump
Alarmed by Trump's win, students at one predominantly black and Latino school are teaching adults a few things about social-media activism.
Sixteen-year-old Brianna Carreno dreams of being a nurse one day, but for this daughter of a Latina hospitality worker, who grew up attending events at her mom's union hall, career ambitions and political organizing are intimately intertwined. So when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton last month, despite losing Carreno's home state of California by about 30 percentage points, she knew she couldn’t just sit back and be silent about an election process that seemed to gloss over her needs.
Aspiring nurse Brianna Carreno is a first-generation Mexican American.
"We're just sick and tired of how older generations are trying to control the newer generation," Carreno told a packed auditorium of over 100 teachers from around San Francisco, Alameda, and San Jose.
They traveled on a cold Thursday night last week to Leadership High School, a charter school in the city's working-class Excelsior/Mission Terrace neighborhood, where Carreno and her classmates fear that Trump’s election victory will encourage a rise in racism that could crush their dreams. Social and political protests have long been the domain of university and college students, but here in San Francisco, it’s high-schoolers who are leading the movement against President-elect Trump—and they’re bringing teachers along with them.
"I’m resisting by showing them I'm going to continue my education by becoming someone, by becoming someone very successful," Carreno says. "To me that's my best way of resisting, by showing I have power for myself and no matter the obstacles you place me in, I will overcome."
Carreno has plenty of company. In the days following the election, thousands These San Francisco High School Students Are Recruiting Teachers To Resist Trump | Fast Company | Business + Innovation:
