Iowa City Community School District students held a sizeable walkout on Thursday, Feb. 5, protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) presence in communities across the nation.
The event, run entirely by students at Iowa City West High School, was attended by high school and middle school students, University of Iowa students, and members of the wider Iowa City community. The students staged a walkout from class and gathered at the University of Iowa Pentacrest around the lunch hour, called “Melt the ICE.”
“It’s important that we step up for our immigrant neighbors when things are too unsafe for them to,” Sasha Ackerman, a senior at Iowa City High School, said. “We have the privilege to speak up and protest and be fairly safe doing it, so we should use it.”
More than 100 people attended the protest, which student organizers said took about a week to plan.
“[Jack Overholt] came up to me in one of my classes because I’m a very political person,” West High junior Moss Stutsman, who helped organize the walkout, said. “They were like, ‘Hey, I want to plan a protest. Can you help me?’ and I was honestly really honored.”
Stutsman and Overholt communicated via Instagram to arrange protest details, involve other students, and design posters and social media posts.
“It’s definitely very stressful, but I would do it tenfold just to get half this amount of people out here,” Stutsman said. “I am so proud of all these people. I’ve almost teared up like three times because I did not imagine all of these people would come out, to be quite honest.”
By protesting, Stutsman hopes to see “change to the justice system.” The walkout serves as a “thinking pool” that allows other community members and people in positions of power to know how protestors feel.
Stutsman said “almost all” of his teachers posted posters promoting the walkout in their classrooms because they knew other students would be interested, which allowed students with similar beliefs to join.
“It’s not justice. It’s barely a system, to be quite honest,” Stutsman said. “I really think it’s the start of, ‘Hey, you have community in thinking this. Now let’s go out and make change.’”
Toby Morlan, a freshman at City High School, decided to participate in the walkout after learning about it from a friend. He had no idea a protest was happening, but wanted to express his feelings in a public place and thought Thursday was the best way to get involved.
“The more that I find out about [ICE’s actions], the more that I want to help,” Morlan said. “And the more I want to, as a freshman from Iowa, help prevent and stop it from happening, as much as I possibly can, because there’s just too much hate in the world right now.”
Concerns about an ICE presence, including a constant stream of rumours, remain in the public eye. But for students like Ackerman, Stutsman, and Morlan, actions like walkouts and protests are the first step towards change.
“Someone said this at the protest: ‘If they’re not listening, just get louder and louder until all they can do is listen,’” Morlan said. “And that’s what we, as a people, as the younger generation, need to project and let them know.”
Lily Rantanen is a senior at Iowa City High School. She is the executive editor and feature editor for the student newspaper, the Little Hawk.
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Iowa City students hold ‘Melt the ICE’ protest, initiate walkout
Reporting by Lily Rantanen, The Little Hawk, Iowa City High / Iowa City Press-Citizen
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
