Students commemorate Cesar Chavez with more protests

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 30, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

Students from High schools around San Diego County rallied Friday to protest pension immigration legislation and observe Cesar Chavez day. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Thousand gathered in Chicano Park and marched through neighboring streets, to commemorate Cesar Chavez who founded the United Farm workers Union. More than a thousand were students from San Diego city school district, where 43 percent of the students are Hispanic.

A handful of students was detained, but arrests and detentions were far fewer than in past days, when students were handcuffed by the dozen and taken away in patrol cars after marching off campus.
In North San Diego County, the streets of Oceanside and Vista were relatively quiet. Schools there have been closed since yesterday for fear of demonstrations turning violent.

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About 80 students from Carlsbad marched through Oceanside with Mexican flags. Several hundred young people gathered under cloudy skies at the statute of Cesar Chavez on the Campus of Cal State San Marcos and then dispersed quietly. In Oceanside, Alison St John KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.