Since the Trump Administration’s harsh crackdown on US immigration, people all over have been protesting against the civil liberties that their agents have been defying.
Children, like Liam Conjeo Ramos – who was taken from his preschool on January 20th – are being ripped from their homes and separated from their families all around the United States. Not only that, but elderly folk, pregnant women, and people with disabilities are all being forced into the overcrowded and unsanitary ICE detention centers. However, what has really enraged people is the outright illegitimacy of many of these ICE raids. Many detainments have been based on false, biased pretenses. Just this year, there have been over 170 cases of US citizens being detained, according to reports by ProPublica.
So, in true American fashion, people took to the streets. Protests have erupted all over the country over the past few weeks; some of the most notable ones have been in cities heavily affected by the raids, such as New York, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.
In addition to these protests, many students have led school walkouts. Many of Clinton’s own students participated in these protests. One Clinton eleventh grader, Ava Melrose, said she felt, “it is incredibly important to perform walkouts, especially at the high school level. Walk-outs as activism create such a large wave of mobilization of the younger generation, raising even more awareness to issues at hand.”
Some people seemed to feel nervous about police and other law enforcement interaction with the protestors; however, Melrose described the protest with Clinton as, “quiet and intimate, as only a small group of seven of us participated.” But still, as most protests go, “there was a noticeable tension toward the mass amount of law enforcement encircling everyone.” Melrose described how students definitely felt more aware and fearful of the police because of the recent Alex Pretti and Renee Goodman shootings. And so, her and her group decided to stay together, “protesting in a peaceful manner.”
Some students had also felt slightly nervous about how school staff might respond, with Melrose explaining that she was “getting very mixed signals from teachers. “Some encouraged it and cheered us on when we told them what we were planning to do, while others tried to talk us out of it and reminded us there were repercussions for our actions.” Nevertheless, Clinton students still showed up, alongside the many other students staging walk-outs from their own schools.
These protests did not just occur in New York, however; one student, Gaia Ben-Yoar, living in Atlanta, Georgia, shared that her school also participated in these rallies. She felt that, as a student living in a predominantly Republican state, “it’s important to show up for students who are too scared to come to school or go outside because of ICE.”
In the past, Ben-Yoar also explained how her school has had many other protests, supporting causes like Black Lives Matter and stricter anti-gun laws. Roughly 300 students showed up to the most recent ICE protest, some of whom Ben-Yoar felt were not there for the right reasons. “There were definitely students who came just to skip school,” Ben-Yoar explained.
It was especially scary for students at her school as they had been hearing about a protest at a different high school within their county, where a man unaffiliated with the school pulled out a gun on a student.
With everything going on in our country, it’s important for students to use their voices and speak up against issues they feel are pressing. However, it is also crucial that students account for their safety and well-being at these protests, especially against law enforcement.
