Amid escalating ICE raids and attacks on gender-affirming care, organizers ask people to join \u2018Free America Walkout\u2019<\/b>
\nAmid escalating ICE raids and attacks on gender-affirming care, organizers ask people to join \u2018Free America Walkout\u2019
On 20 January, the anniversary of Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration, grassroots organizers are calling on people across the United States to walk out of their offices, schools and businesses to protest the administration and call for \u201ca free America\u201d.
In the wake of escalating ICE raids, attacks on gender-affirming care, cuts to healthcare and the deployment of national guard troops in US cities, the organizers behind the Women\u2019s March are asking Americans to participate in the \u201cFree America Walkout\u201d.
As opposed to the large-scale weekend rallies that the Women\u2019s March became known for following Trump\u2019s first inauguration, organizers have planned a weekday walkout this year. The group says its aim is to show the administration that as it escalates its attacks \u201con our rights, our bodies, and our livelihoods\u201d, that Americans can escalate in response.
\u201cWe really felt like it was important for us to have a mobilization that tested some additional tools in the toolbox,\u201d said Rachel O\u2019Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women\u2019s March. \u201cWhat will it look like if we do an action on a weekday? Where we are withdrawing our labor. Where we\u2019re refusing no shopping, no working, no commerce.\u201d
Although the Women\u2019s March put out the call-to-action, local groups are organizing \u201cwalkout\u201d events across their communities. So far, the group has tallied more than 600 events scheduled across the United States to take place at 2pm local time on 20 January.
\u201cWe are seeing people walk out and walk in \u2013 and what they\u2019re walking into are very different,\u201d said Carmona.
In Houston, she said, people are planning to walk out of school and work, and walk into their elected representatives\u2019 offices instead. Other cities are planning mutual aid events, rallies, craft and conversation circles and talks with groups like Leaving Maga. Carmon said it\u2019s important that each community assess its own needs.
\u201cThe movement can only get so big if organizations are always at the center of it,\u201d she said. \u201cOur goal is always putting the people at the center of it.\u201dHow effective are walkouts?
Walkouts have long been a tool of activist movements in the United States, from the civil rights movement to calls to end gun violence. In recent weeks, hundreds of students have staged walkouts in Minneapolis and other school districts in response to ICE raids in their communities.
Like other organizing tools, however, it can take time to see the results.
In March 1968, around 15,000 students walked out of classrooms across East Los Angeles to protest discrimination in the education system against Chicano students. The groups that organized those protests eventually formed the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee, which went on to present a list of students\u2019 demands to the Los Angeles board of education.
Although the Board initially rejected those demands, the walkouts created a cultural shift, showing the power of students and their commitment to racial justice in education. Over the ensuing decades, many of the students\u2019 demands would be met: schools began integrating Spanish-language instruction and Chicano history into the curriculum, the percentage of Latino teachers increased, and in 1990, William R. Anton became the first Latino superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Organizers with the Women\u2019s March are eager to study how effective the Free America Walkout turns out to be, and are partnering with American University sociologist Dana Fisher, who will collect and analyze data on participation.
\u201cThis is a stress test,\u201d said Carmona. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to see what we can do as a movement and what we need to continue to build on so that we can achieve the goals that we want to achieve, which is obviously driving fascism back away from American democracy.\u201d
She doesn\u2019t know what the results of Fisher\u2019s research will show, but she has a hypothesis. \u201cI go to the gym,\u201d she said. \u201cI know that practice builds muscle.\u201d
Based on the number of events the Women\u2019s March has vetted and counted so far, she can say: \u201cThis is the most engagement in action we\u2019ve had in our organization\u2019s history.\u201d While many people are fretful about the state of American democracy, she says, that shows organizers that everyday people are \u201cready to lace up our boots and get out in the street\u201d.<\/p>\n