High schoolers refuse to stay silent

Hundreds of Fremont Unified School District (FUSD) students participated in a district-wide walkout on Friday, Feb. 6 to protest current actions by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, showing support for the city of Minneapolis and its recent protests.

Walkout participants consisted of students from the five high schools in FUSD (American, Irvington, John F. Kennedy, Mission San Jose and Washington) as well as Newark’s Newark Memorial High School and James Logan High School in Union City.

The idea started with the Associated Student Body (ASB) monthly interdistrict conferences. According to Mission’s ASB president, Kalena Dai, it was a collective decision to hold the district-wide protest.

“I felt a responsibility as a student leader to create a space for all my classmates to come together peacefully and be heard,” said Dai. “Especially because in the Bay Area, more than half of our families are immigrants. I see how much fear and uncertainty this causes for all my classmates. Organizing this was about making sure that my classmates knew they weren’t alone.”

ASB presidents regularly communicated, planning their respective protests while ensuring unity was demonstrated across all campuses. Despite each school having different schedules and times when they would protest, the structure was the same across the district.

Walkouts consisted of an introduction, a moment of silence, speeches and chants. To spread the word about each of the protests, the Instagram account @tricityagainstice was created, serving as an information hub for FUSD students.

At around 10:20am, Mission students filed out of their classrooms, gathering on the front lawn of their school. Cham Yu, a junior at Mission and fellow organizer, delivered a speech to hundreds of his classmates.

“I didn’t realize how many people actually went out until I delivered my speech,” said Yu. “I had to stand on a bench, and I just saw hundreds of people. That was very unexpected. It felt really good that our school is mobilized on these efforts, people do care.”

Many of the organizers for the Mission walkout had similar feelings. “It was really surprising. Mission is a school that is really focused on academics,” said junior and class officer Melody Gao. “A lot of the students are really sheltered, especially because our parents are more conservative than those at other schools. We have a way higher concentration of immigrants, so they’re all pretty conservative, but we had a really huge turnout.”

The walkout took place during Mission’s READ period, which isn’t a part of instructional minutes. Students also did their research, ensuring they wouldn’t be penalized for missing class, utilizing Senate Bill 955, which allows one excused absence per year, per student, for those who engage in civic events during school hours.

Across Fremont at Kennedy High School, a walkout was also starting during the school’s Response To Intervention (RTI) period. Led by senior and ASB class president Rodrigo Guzman, Kennedy’s walkout extended into lunch, skipping their second block.

“At Kennedy, [around] half of our population is Hispanic students, and we also have a really big English learning population,” he said. “I felt that it was a very strong message that needed to be heard by a lot of students and a lot of people.” 

He continued, “My goal was to make people know to stay engaged and educated on what’s going on, and not be ignorant. I hope to bring people together and maybe start conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”

At Mission, once the speeches were over, students marched around the front of campus, chanting “no justice, no peace, no ICE in our streets,” “ICE out now” and “Say it once, say it twice, we will not put up with ICE!”

Students walked arm in arm, chanting and holding up signs, some reading “Immigrants make America great,” and “Ice belongs in my boba, not the streets. Crush ICE!!”

Among the protestors was junior Megan Chu. “I chose to walk out because I felt like it was the right thing to do,” she said. “There’s this quote from Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ That quote has just stuck with me for the longest time. I felt like going out there on Friday was really important. It showed that if I care, maybe my friends would care too, and they did come [to the walkout].”

For many of the students, participating in this protest hit close to home. Guzman and Dai’s parents are both immigrants and have seen the impact of ICE’s actions weigh heavily on their family members.

Dai said, “It felt very liberating [to protest]. It felt really nice to use our First Amendment rights—essentially everything that I learned in my civics and history classes. It felt good to put that knowledge to use.”