415 Unidos for Freedom
During the 2017-18 school year, students at JJSE established a new immigrant rights group they are calling 415 Unidos for Freedom. Small Schools for Equity facilitated partnerships with Faith in Action Bay Area and Immigrants Rising to support the students’ work. During the year, dozens of youth leaders from several San Francisco high schools participated in educational field trips to immigration court, deportation defense accompaniment efforts, “know your rights” trainings (students were trained and then led trainings for their peers), and monitoring implementation of the new SFUSD Sanctuary Schools policy which was written by students the previous year. In May, the students led a public campaign to secure the release of Hamid, a teenage asylum-seeker from Afghanistan who had been held for six months in an adult detention center. This news video describes the students’ work on Hamid’s case.