Latino License Protest Hits Schools

School districts from the Bay Area to Orange County recorded record absences Friday as hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets to protest the state’s repeal of a law allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses.

In a planned daylong boycott of the classroom and workplace, demonstrators beat pinata images of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and urged workers to stay home and not purchase commodities such as gasoline.

The protest came in response to the Legislature’s repeal action last week and as part of an effort to highlight the economic contribution of California’s Latino community, the nation’s largest. The protest was planned to coincide with the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

“We already had this law won, and Gov. Arnold came and took it away. And we know he’s an immigrant,” said Blanca Duenas, who marched with roughly 100 other demonstrators along Cesar Chavez Avenue in Los Angeles. “He may have become a citizen, but he remains an immigrant.”

The protest’s impact on the workplace and marketplace was hard to gauge. Dozens of retailers in San Francisco, and one apparel manufacturer in Los Angeles, decided to close their doors, but other businesses appeared unaffected. Retail sales were not heavily affected in most areas.

Duenas, 46, was one of a number of protesters who said she had pulled her children out of school Friday in response to the repeal.

Officials in heavily Latino schools said more than half of their students cut classes Friday, but questioned just how committed the students were to the driver license issue.

“A lot of kids are opportunists,” said Victorio Gutierrez, assistant principal at Roosevelt High School on Los Angeles’ Eastside. “A lot of them didn’t really understand the concept of the [driver’s license controversy] and the complexity of it. They just wanted to get out of class.”

On a normal Friday, Roosevelt would see roughly 300 absences. On Friday, more than 1,700 students failed to show up.

Officials such as Gutierrez complained that students were harming themselves by refusing to go to school, because a district loses $40 in state funding for each student who cuts class. “They say missing a day isn’t going to make a difference. But sure it is. Latinos have the highest dropout rates,” Gutierrez said.

Santa Ana Unified, Orange County’s largest and most heavily Latino school district, also experienced a spike in absences Friday, according to district spokeswoman Lucy Araujo-Cook.

The district tried to combat the boycott by raffling off a color TV for students who attended class -- it was won by 7th-grader Christian Tavares. But that and other measures didn’t stem the tide of absences. While totals for the district’s 60,000 students were not available, Araujo-Cook said that at 10 schools polled, absences more than tripled on Friday when 1,400 students failed to show up, compared to 444 on Thursday.

“We were really hoping it wouldn’t be this dramatic,” Araujo-Cook said, “because there is a lot lost -- opportunity especially, but also important funds.” At a rate of $40 for each absence, Santa Ana lost about $56,000 in state funding from the absences at the 10 schools alone.

But there were students who sat out the boycott. One was Marcos Ramirez, an 18-year-old senior at Loara High School in Anaheim, who said that he wanted to honor the protest but not at the expense of class time.

So he bought 10 white T-shirts and some red paint, and on the front of each he wrote, “My education matters to me” and “That’s why I’m here” on the back. Nine friends who felt the same way he did donned the shirts, too.

He made the shirts, he said, to make a statement: “Children should not be used for these purposes. We just want to be here.”

Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Assn., had called for a general strike among Latinos and immigrant workers. He and his supporters urged Latinos and immigrants to stay away from work, not send children to schools and not shop anywhere.

While many heeded Lopez’s call, others, like Jesus Gonzalez, 40, a cosmetologist in Hollywood, did not. Gonzalez said Friday he had no plan to participate in the boycott.

“This isn’t being done the right way. It’s very hard -- without much unity, before the holidays, when we need money to eat, to buy presents -- to not show up for work,” he said.

In downtown San Jose, more than 150 people marched from Guadalupe Church to the city’s Plaza de Cesar Chavez, where they met other protesters who began their march at the Department of Motor Vehicles building.

In San Francisco’s largely Latino Mission District, dozens of taquerias, record stores and clothing stores closed for the day and displayed signs supporting the boycott in their windows.

A crowd of about 100 people gathered in front of a BART station for a rally to denounce Schwarzenegger’s decision. Day laborers, activists and high school students sang Spanish songs about “El Norte,” carried handwritten signs and cheered when passing trucks honked in support of demonstrators.

“We’re out here because Arnold said ‘No’ to driver’s licenses,” said Ramundo Sanchez, 35, a day laborer.

At Bronco Cleaners in Tustin and Orange, only two of 14 employees showed up for work. Of the 12 missing employees, about eight were not born in the United States and four do not drive, said owner Bill Coleman.

Coleman knew on Monday that the eight workers were not going to show up to clean and press because a manager who felt guilty about the employees’ plan told him. Because Coleman had the warning, he told customers in advance about possible delays in the return of their clothes. Only three customers chose not to wait.

“It was not as big an issue as I thought,” Coleman said, adding that he never thought his employees “had a political bone in their body.”

In Los Angeles, Dov Charney, a senior partner with American Apparel, said his company shut down its manufacturing operations, which employ 1,200 workers, to demonstrate sympathy with the protesters.

“You can’t operate in California any longer without this population,” Charney said.

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Times staff writers Holly J. Wolcott, Lynne Barnes, Jennifer Mena, Joel Rubin, Julie Tamaki, Chris O’Connell, Jean Merl, Azadeh Moaveni and Monte Morin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.