This commentary originally aired on WAMU, American University Radio in Washington, D.C.

By Nicholas Eckenwiler

Being a public school student in Washington, D.C. is like learning to play soccer on a field of dirt and pebbles, just as some of the game’s best players have done. Let me explain.

Yesterday tens of thousands of marchers converged on Washington DC calling for immigration reform. Youth Radio DC at the the Latin American Youth Center sent us these images from the March for America.

[Photos by Alexi Calderon.]

An estimated 900 buses from 28 states are fueling up in advance of Sunday’s immigration reform march in Washington DC. March For America organizers expect to surpass their goal of 50,000 attendees, but with health care reform stealing headlines, Youth Radio’s Denise Tejada asked Shuya Ohno, Deputy Communications Director for the coalition of march organizers, if there’s any chance they’ll achieve their bigger goal – getting immigration reform on the 2010 legislative calendar.

Denise Tejada: One of the things that makes the March For America unique is that so many immigrants are outing themselves as illegal. Why are so many young people doing that when it puts their futures at risk?

Shuya Ohno: Their futures have already been at risk. Many of them have known only this country; they don’t even remember having been born in another country. I meet young people all the time who were brought here as infants, one year old, two years old. So they grew up here and feel completely American, this is the only country know, the only culture they know. And yet because they don’t have that number, that social security number – just a few digits – they’ve had to live their whole lives in fear… Their coming out has been an incredibly powerful and empowering experience, even though you’re right that they are putting themselves at risk of being deported to a country that they’ve never known.

More after the jump

Side Hustlin'- The first episode of Youth Radio's series about those extra money getting hustles we get into when our pockets get empty. New Options Host Venus Morris interviews Howard University Senior Pendarvis Harshaw about what he did to make ends meet during the last school year.

It’s midday on Howard University’s campus, and as students bustle from class to class, Gregory Jenkins stands in a courtyard preparing to launch a 6-foot red balloon. A couple of students stand near him, holding miscellaneous equipment, expectant.

Jenkins, a Howard University professor of atmospheric science, has made a career studying large-scale climate models for the atmosphere above vast regions of the planet’s surface, like the way monsoons form over West Africa or how ozone is released into the sky above the tropics. His red balloon, on the other hand, represents a more modest project: monitoring chemical in the air just above Washington, D.C.

Attached to the balloon is a device called a Radiosonde that takes readings of air pressure, temperature and chemical composition as the balloon floats through the sky. It transmits the data via radio waves back to Jenkins and his students on the ground.

The Latin American Youth Center’s Joel Carela attended the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. this month and sent a photo and some brief thoughts.

During the National Equality March, I was surrounded by some of the most dedicated queer rights advocates. Everywhere I turned there were people from places as close as Baltimore, Maryland and as far as San Francisco, California. To see all of these advocates converging on to the nation's capital both sent chills down my spine and raised my confidence.
 

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