One photograph from the dozens I've seen since Saturday burns into my brain. It shows 15-year-old Michelle Marquez, an Irving, Texas, eighth-grader, wrapped in an American flag and being taunted by other Latino teens waving Mexican flags.

It disturbed me not because of the legions of readers perplexed that more protesting students didn't wave American flags, but because the kids miss the point.

I'm not surprised that the sight of so many Mexican flags angers so many Americans. The flags reinforce the widely held fear that Latinos, especially the ones here illegally, reject assimilation — even though assimilation is inevitable.

And as if I'm one to talk. In college, I hung a Mexican flag in my apartment, not that I could recite the Mexican pledge of allegiance or sing the national anthem. To me, that flag reminded me of my parents' homeland and what they sacrificed for me.

So I understand the confusion between Michelle and the other students ditching class to protest proposed changes to U.S. immigration laws. Hyphenated Americans are squeezed between two worlds and often forced to choose. But the Mexican flag is a symbol of cultural pride, the same orgullo felt by the Irish, Polish and Germans when they were new to our shores. It doesn't make a person less American, just a bit more complicated.

As I studied the photo, I thought back to watching the half-million souls peacefully marching through downtown Los Angeles over the weekend, how that visual left me energized and inspired. Cesar Chavez once rallied tens of thousands, but the Latino community's forte never has been turning out in big numbers to protest.

"We're used to taking it," many young protesters in Dallas told me. "It's about time."

Other spectators scratched their heads from afar, wondering how illegal immigrants could have the audacity to demand rights, to protest in the open, after violating U.S. law by sneaking across the border.

For the record, many of those marching across the country were not "illegals," only their children and grandchildren. In their eyes, just because something is illegal, it doesn't make it immoral. Like me, they believe in our social responsibility to take care of the children and poor.

The Sensenbrenner immigration bill passed by the U.S. House in December would criminalize illegal immigrants and those who help or employ them. It also threatens to rip apart families, and how un-American is that? The Senate Judiciary Committee came back last week with a much more compassionate version, but the fight is far from over.

In Dallas, as in Los Angeles and elsewhere, college and high school students marched beside busboys, lawyers, teachers and waiters holding signs that read, "Loving my family is not a felony" and "Compassion is not a crime." Student demonstrations continued last week, thanks to MySpace.com and text-messaging campaigns. (And they say these kids aren't assimilated?)

The kids have plenty of reasons to protest.

More than half of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants are members of families, and nearly two-thirds of their children were born in the United States. This debate transcends immigration policies and big corporate interests; at its core, we can't forget that it's about people, millions of them children.

I once taught high school, and I don't know what I would have done if two-thirds of my class walked out to protest as they did last Monday. But I know that by Tuesday — the day kids were swarming Dallas City Hall and going for swims in the reflecting pool — I would have said, "You've made your point." A protest is only productive if it is done in peace and with purpose.

I'm sure teachers today are using the protests to explain how a bill becomes a law and how laws affect real people.

Students, if you want to continue the revolution, value your education. Get good grades. Go to college. Register to vote — and vote.

Then come back and help others do the same.

Macarena Hernandez is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist.