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A group of Northwood High School students join with several demonstrators from WJ in a protest against ICE. The Northwood students marched over a mile to and from their campus for the protest.
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The group of Northwood students pass Georgetown square and enter WJ’s campus. Among them was SMOB candidate Leul Dawit.
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A police officer attempts to dissuade the protesters from entering WJ property. The officer was unsuccessful, but later successfully directed the crowd across the street.
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The march was part of a state-wide day of protest against ICE, in which many MCPS schools participated. An important aspect of the Northwood protesters’ mission was showing solidarity with other schools.
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The group’s energy remained high as they continued their walk past the front of the school building. Several cars honked their horns as they drove by, cheering the students on.
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As they marched, protesters displayed homemade signs. Written on them were messages of solidarity with immigrants and opposition to the Trump Administration.
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A student yells into a microphone as she marches. Several students took turns leading chants, using speakers, microphones and megaphones they had brought for that purpose.
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The crowd of students prepares to cross the street. Getting the large group across the street in one piece turned out to be an intensive process.
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The protesters, having successfully crossed the street, march along the opposite sidewalk. They planned to continue in that direction, but were stopped by police officers soon after.
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A police officer addresses the crowd, telling them to move back to the other side of the street. Several other officers backed him up as he directed the group.
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Complying with police orders, the group of students crosses the street back to WJ’s campus. Afterwards, the students marched all the way back to Northwood’s campus.
A large group of students from Northwood High School, including Student Member of the Board (SMOB) candidate Leul Dawit, marched over a mile to WJ’s campus on March 13 to protest the actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Joined by a handful of protesters from WJ, the Northwood activists chanted, played music and displayed signs with pro-immigrant and anti-authoritarian messages as they marched along the front of the school building.
The march was the culmination of several weeks of planning by Dawit and other Northwood students who aimed to stand in solidarity with immigrant communities victimized by ICE’s mass raids and deportations.
“At Northwood, we’re a very diverse school, and we have a huge Hispanic population,” Dawit said. “We saw what was going on nationally, on the state level, and on the county level, and decided ‘We’re not going to stand for this. We’re gonna walk out.’”
Northwood’s walkout was timed to coincide with a series of student protests taking place at high schools across the state of Maryland, including WJ, between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. on the same day. Upon hearing about WJ’s walkout plan, Northwood’s student activists decided to coordinate a joint protest the night before it was set to take place, despite facing possible repercussions from their school’s administration.
“I reached out to the Walter Johnson walkout Instagram account and said, ‘I would love to collaborate with you all, maybe we could walk to Walter Johnson, or you could walk to Northwood,” Dawit said. “[WJ’s organizers] were a little worried about administration and leaving campus, so we decided we could come to you.”
The organization of WJ’s own walkout was a complicated process. After originally intending to stage the walkout during fourth period, senior Olivia Fioravanti (who organized WJ’s first anti-ICE walkout in January) made the decision to move it to 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., the same time as other Maryland schools, as a show solidarity.
However, the postponement meant that the walkout would be in compliance with MCPS’ guidelines for student assembly, which do not allow for disruptions of instructional time. Although she was asked by WJ administrators to make the change, Fioravanti stated that their request was not the basis for her decision.
“I don’t care about pissing off admin,” Fioravanti said. “For the first walkout, they told me it had to be at 10:45 and I did it at 10:15.”
Still, the decision created a rift between Fioravanti and fellow organizer Haneul Kim, who strongly opposed the change, stating that such a disruption was necessary for a genuine show of civil disobedience.
“About 200 WJ students voted for the walkout to be during class, not during lunch, because that’s what actually makes a statement,” Kim said.
The disagreement culminated in Fioravanti removing Kim from the walkout’s Instagram page, after which Kim created another account to encourage students to follow the original plan to walk out during fourth period. Kim was later forced to take down the second account’s posts by WJ administrators.
Despite the last-minute disagreement between the two protest organizers, the joint demonstration garnered a relatively strong turnout. However, the ratio of Northwood students to WJ students was significantly uneven.
“There weren’t a lot of walkout students [from] WJ, there were maybe 30. The fact that Northwood came was really helpful.” Fioravanti said.
Still, the walkout as a whole was seen as a success by students of both schools and a testament to the power of student activism within MCPS.
