On Tuesday, February 4, students from John Marshall High School joined other Los Angeles high schools in a widespread walkout for immigration and immigrant rights. Following the February 3 ‘Day Without Immigrants’ and various student-led walkouts, Marshall students walked out of the Tracy Street entrance in the early Tuesday morning. Around 100 students left the main entrance after first period and began walking to the Griffith Park Boulevard and Hyperion Boulevard intersection. Holding posters, speakers, and with voices full of enthusiasm, the students were met with overwhelming support from passersby who agreed with their message. After spending some time at each of the four corners of the intersection, the group of students reconvened and began walking toward the bridge on Waverly Drive — above Hyperion Boulevard — to continue their protest. I was able to interview a few students for brief moments during the protest. When I asked one student (who asked to remain anonymous) why they were protesting, they told me “I think it’s important that everyone shows up and shows support, we have to do something.”
Marshall Students were not alone in this walkout. All over the city, high school students organized walkouts to protest President Donald J. Trump and his administration’s immigrant and deportation policies. Students from nearby schools held mass walkouts and united at City Hall and the historic Olvera streets, coming together to form an even larger protest that gathered the attention of countless news channels across Los Angeles and the greater LA county. These widespread walk-outs have drawn comparison to the 1968 East Los Angeles walk-outs, in which 15,000 high school students walked out to protest the unfair treatment of Chicano students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
John Marshall High School is no stranger to student-led walkouts. In the past few years, students have organized numerous schoolwide walkouts each year to protest relevant pressing issues. Walk-outs have been held to protest immigration laws, loose gun control laws, and violence that took place on the school campus. With four more years of Donald Trump’s presidency, we will likely see many more student-led walkouts and protests in the near future.
