VAN NUYS : Students Clash With Panelist Over Prop. 187

An opportunity for high school students to learn more about Proposition 187 turned into a heated debate Wednesday after youths from San Fernando High School clashed with a supporter of the controversial ballot measure at a forum to be aired over local cable television stations.

The Courtroom Television Network invited more than 100 students in the paralegal studies program at San Fernando High to its studio in Van Nuys to be the audience for a panel discussion involving community leaders, legal experts and political commentators.

But emotions flared among the mostly Latino students when they confronted David Horowitz, president of the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture, who spoke out in support of the voter-approved proposition.

The teen-agers contended that parts of the proposition, which denies non-emergency services to illegal immigrants, are racist.

Horowitz, in turn, accused the students of being un-American, adding that his own parents were immigrants to the United States.

“That guy (Horowitz) was totally against us,” said Galaxie Navarro, 17. “He knows that if this happened when his parents were young, they would fight against it.”

Horowitz accused San Fernando High Principal Philip Saldivar of encouraging the students to be anti-187 during Saldivar’s address at the end of the discussion, which emphasized the importance of voting and staying involved in the political process.

“I think they have been fed a bill of goods,” Horowitz said.

Saldivar said he wished the event had not been so confrontational.

“There was a lot of emotion demonstrated. This (forum) should have been more about what are the effects of the law,” he said.

The other panelists were Erwin Chemerinsky, professor of constitutional law at USC; Nancy Daly, head of the county Commission for Children and Families; Rudy Diaz, executive director of the Community Health Foundation; James Coleman, president of Americans for a United Strong America, and Julie Paik, staff attorney for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.