NYC high schoolers protest Trump administration's policies on education, immigration
NEW YORK — Several hundred New York City high school students walked out of class Tuesday to protest the Trump administration's threats to immigrant students and higher education.
Around noon, students from at least 25 schools, including the Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School and Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, descended on Union Square Park with a shared message to protect democracy and oppose recent actions by the federal government.
The teens took turns passing along a megaphone behind signs that read: 'We the Students' and 'Protect Our Schools.' They shared their fears — as well as their hopes — for the future. Some sported red, white and blue 'war paint' under their eyes; at least one student wrapped himself in an American flag.
'This isn't something happening to someone else,' Nava Litt, a senior at Bronx Science, told a lively crowd of her peers. 'This is our future to protect — or our future to lose.'
In a break from standard practice, a public schools spokeswoman would not provide an initial estimate of how many of their students walked out of class. Some organizers believe it could have been more if not for a chilling effect from federal action.
'I have friends who really support what we're doing here today and helped us make posters, or really wanted to be involved, but they couldn't come today because they're not citizens, and they rightfully don't feel safe standing up and protesting — and that is unacceptable in the United States of America,' Litt told the Daily News after her speech.
The walkout, which had been in the works for the last couple of months, happened to take place less than 24 hours after news broke of the first known New York City high school student detained by federal immigration authorities in the second Trump administration. The story of ELLIS Prep student Dylan, 20, alarmed students who learned of his arrest the next day.
'I don't understand how any high school student could sit around and let that happen — it's a stain on all of our moral conscience,' said Naomi Beinart, a junior at St. Ann's. She worried it could happen to any immigrant family with shaky legal status, noting, 'These things are not executed with logic. They are random and destructive.'
Beinart added that she was motivated to join the protest because of federal cuts to higher education: 'Defunding universities is not protecting Jews,' she said. 'If anything, it's putting us more at risk and more unsafe. That's one of the reasons that drove me out here.'
Nomi Solmsen, a sophomore at School of the Future, raised the fact that she and her friends will be eligible to vote in the next presidential election.
'To actually educate yourself is really, really important, especially to me,' Solmsen said. 'I don't want to treat it like a trend. I want to be aware about the (threat of the) removal of habeas corpus, about the increased demonizing of illegal immigrants.'
In a statement, Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said students should remain in school, though expressed her respect more generally for students voicing their opinions.
'We are committed to supporting every child and family — regardless of immigration status,' she said, 'and we respect the voice of students as they speak out on the difficult issues of our time and advocate for their peers.'
Any student who left school before their dismissal time will be marked absent from class, according to the statement, which did not threaten any disciplinary action against the protesters.
Lior, a tenth-grader at High School of American Studies at Lehman College who did not give her last name, was most concerned that while she cannot yet vote, she is still significantly impacted by the actions of the Trump administration — while most people, she said, are just 'sitting back and watching.'
'We need to let it be known that, if the adults aren't going to do something about it, then we will,' Lior said, 'because it's still our country.'
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