Kendle Coleman had planned to use her painted orange banner for “senior sunrise” — a popular high school tradition among seniors — at the beach last summer.
Months later, she repurposed it for Friday’s school walkout protesting the Trump administration’s continued mass deportation campaign.
“Nobody is illegal on stolen land,” said Coleman, 17, a senior at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School in Little Village.
Coleman was among hundreds of students who left their classrooms Friday afternoon, some walking, others taking public transportation, to gather in downtown’s Federal Plaza to protest recent immigration enforcement actions.
The students rallying at Federal Plaza were among those expected to leave school on Friday in other cities, including Los Angeles, New York and Austin, Texas.
“We called this nationwide walkout … because the first thing is being able to step up and fight ICE. We need to do that collectively,” said Lauren Valice, 28, who helped organize the walkouts in roughly 11 Chicago high schools with the activist group Dare to Struggle.
“We believe that starts with the youth,” she said.
It was the latest in a series of school walkouts that have taken hold of Chicago in recent weeks, especially after Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions in Minneapolis, which saw two American citizens shot and killed by immigration officers.
Earlier this week, hundreds of students from Proviso’s three high schools — Proviso Mathematics & Science Academy, Proviso West High School and Proviso East High School — left their classrooms on Wednesday morning and marched down Roosevelt Road near Broadview’s ICE processing center.
On Feb. 2, hundreds of Chicago’s North Side students walked out of their classrooms in solidarity with Minnesota and against the immigration crackdown.
The next day, dozens of East Aurora High School students marched out of their school in the western suburbs in protest of ICE. Subsequent walkouts occurred in the suburbs in the following days — in Elgin, Naperville, Waukegan and Hammond.
Some are going up against the advice of school officials, the police and others in the name of making their communities more aware of what’s been happening, citing personal connections to the recent immigration detentions and a desire to make their voices heard.
At schools, their desire to protest has seen little pushback from teachers, students at the rally told the Tribune.
“It felt very liberating,” Sophia Meade, a freshman at Columbia College, said about the walkout. “Because our teacher did it with us.” Students at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute also participated.
Chicago Public Schools said in a Friday statement that it is committed to allowing students to “respectfully deliberate issues” and “safely participate in civic action.”
“CPS allows for students to participate in planned civic actions, including walkouts or protests, for a period of time during the school day,” according to the statement.
At Federal Plaza on Friday, a sense of community was present. The students gathered amid the banging of drums and street vendors selling candy. Some students wept as they hugged their classmates. Others whooped when a new wave of students crossed the sidewalk and joined the crowd.
After taking a 20-minute bus ride to the rally with friends, Coleman said she felt good being around a group of students who, like her, were rallying for change.
“Seeing people my own age getting out and speaking — it’s refreshing,” Coleman, 17, a senior at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School, said about the rally.
When Ethan Zaleski, a senior at John F. Kennedy High School, learned on social media that there would be a school walkout on Friday, he immediately reached out to the organizers. A day later, he led the walkout for over 40 students at his school.
Zaleski, 18, who has family who came to Chicago from Mexico, said immigration enforcement is “ripping families apart.”
“It just sucks because a lot of people came here to make a life and to start a family here because the American dream existed,” he said. “Now it feels like the American dream is dead.”
Zaleski feels the impact of immigration activity acutely at school, he said.
“There have been days where almost no one shows up to school because they’re afraid,” he said. “It’s just really scary.”
The Tribune’s Kate Armanini contributed reporting.
