Over 30 Students Walk Out from East L.A. High School on Anniversary of Trump Election

November 9, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a member of the Revolution Club, Los Angeles:

Over 30 students from Mendez High School in East Los Angeles marked November 8, the anniversary of the fascist Trump getting elected, by walking out of school and taking to the streets with banners and signs. Coming off of November 4, early Monday morning, we stood outside Roosevelt High School in East L.A. calling on students to walk out on November 8. We had a large-screen TV set up to show the film of Bob Avakian’s talk, “THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America: Another World IS Possible.” One student who watched the trailer for the film went to a different high school, Mendez, about a 25-minute walk from Roosevelt. She said she wasn’t good at talking to people, and we told her she could spread the word on social media.

On November 8 we went back out to Roosevelt early in the morning and passed out fliers that called on students to meet outside the school. We heard an announcement over the loud speaker telling students and faculty that the school was “on lockdown” because of a “dangerous situation outside.” We then saw over a dozen students walking toward the meet-up spot—but they weren’t Roosevelt students, they were coming from Mendez High. They picked up the “Trump/Pence Regime Must Go” signs and banners and marched around Roosevelt. One of them then called on others to go back to Mendez before the break was over, so we jumped on a train back to Mendez with a bunch of rowdy students chanting, “No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”

We got to Mendez as students were being called back into class and starting chanting “Walkout! Walkout! Walkout!” We then started doing agitation on why they should walk out and told them that doing the right thing right now meant breaking the rules. Security tried to stop them, but kids started hitting the gate anyway and yelled back, “fuck you...” to the security guard while others made it to a side door to get out. The students were taking a lot of initiative on deciding where they should go to call out students and led us to another entrance that was being guarded by school police and staff. One student walked right over a police car as we made it to the guarded entrance and gathered right in front of the authorities that were trying to keep these young people locked inside the school. They defiantly called on other students to find another way around to get out.

Then we headed toward downtown and took the street as we chanted “Trump and Pence Must Go! Trump and Pence Must Go!” The people in cars that went by honked their horns in approval and raised their thumbs as they rolled by.

We stopped for a break and took the opportunity to ask the students why they walked out. One young woman started talking about how she hated Trump and everything that he was doing, and how he was so sexist. A couple of other students said how they were afraid that their parents were going to get rounded up and deported. These groups of students weren’t going to just sit by and be afraid, not today—they started discussing where they should go next and started texting their friends who were still in school calling on them to walk out as well.

They decided to march back to Roosevelt, where we found pigs parked outside in an effort to intimidate these students. Some of the youth started yelling insults at the police and later spoke bitterness about how the police always mess with people, how they kill people and always get away with it. We talked to them about how Trump made a speech where he told cops “please don’t be too nice” and how the genocidal thrust of that statement further highlights the need to drive out the whole regime.

Throughout the day we made sure to emphasize the fact that we needed to rise above petty squabbles and be really on a mission to drive out this whole regime. We’re going up against a fascist regime and its storm troopers, who would rather the students be well-behaved children in the face of the catastrophic danger that this all poses to all of humanity. And there’s the shit that the masses of people are caught up in themselves. A Revolution Club member had to pull back a couple of youth from getting caught up in gang bullshit and struggled with them to see that this is about something much bigger. At another point an older gang member complained about how these youth were “going to make the spot hot” and that they needed to get out of his hood. The Revolution Club member told him to think about what it would mean if this fascist regime consolidates power and how instead of complaining about these youth he needed to join them.

Before people dispersed, we let the students know what we started on November 4 and how they were now part of this movement to drive out this fascist regime. They plan to walkout again next Wednesday and really build for the next one so that this keeps growing.

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.