This afternoon, during 4th period, self-organized and self-motivated students walked-out. Now kids ditching or skipping out on school is nothing new. And definitely nothing new at Lincoln HS, let me tell you. But I could see the conviction of why the kids were doing it.
The air was almost electric by the time the passing period between 3rd & 4th period came about. Walking through the crowds of students I heard the word ‘walkout‘ so many times. Whether they were telling their class to walkout, or whether they knew about it, or whether they were participating it was on the tongues of many.
Why did they walkout? To be in solidarity with some of the teachers that have received ‘pink slips’ from the district. They were in classes making signs reading:
- “Education 1st!: No Pink Slips!”
- “Students care about teachers: No layoffs!”
News of the walkout spread quickly with the use of text-messaging; something that teachers and adminstrator often admonish the students for doing in class.
In the end I am not too sure of the number that walked out or whether the students are facing any repercussions. I will post an update tomorrow.
Thanks for sharing this important info! Glad to see Eastside students carrying on the traditions of their parents/grandparents!
Please give us updates.
When I was in Junior High a couple of girls organized a very successful walk-out because they weren’t going to let us have a year book that year.
To think of all that energy wasted for a darn yearbook! We could have been fighting for something bigger than ourselves.
Very cool to see kids stepping up in this way.
A big, Right On! for the students of my old school, who were the first to walk out during the blow outs of the sixties, lead by the great teacher Sal Castro.
Historical Lincoln High School always first.
It’s good to see high school kids with a political conscience. It cracks me up when people accuse them of using the walkout as an excuse to ditch…because ditching school is so hard otherwise ?!? Being a perpetual ditcher myself in HS, something like this is what we’d avoid. We wanted to go to McDonalds, and, you know, do other things. High school students willing to go out and be on camera for a political cause mean business. It’s not something they’re exactly wired for at that age.
That photo looks familiar.
Do you have any idea if students at other schools walked out?
I was in Chinatown and saw this go down! It was pretty awesome. There were patrol cars following alongside them, which at first led me to beleive it could be a parade of some sorts. It wasn’t until I saw the signs and heard their chants that I realized what it was. Pretty cool.
I remember at Garfield High in East LA they were called blow- outs or something like that,I remember seeing a bunch of Garfield High students leaving the campus and hanging around Atlantic Park just south of St Alphonsus Church, I was a young kid at the time, not a teen ager, and I remember smelling the marijuana, and seeing the young couples drinking wine and kissing. It was cool!!