You think DC area high school students have no knowledge or understanding of what our federal government is going right now regarding immigration enforcement? Mine sure do! |
| Isn’t the whole point of a walk out to get punished? |
How naive of you. This is 2026 and not the 1950s. We have more effective tools now, even for K-12 kids. |
From what... reading the papers? Quoting what their parents tell them? Talking to other teens in a 95% blue city? How do your kids think we should secure the border? How do they think asylum claims should work? Visas? What services should illegal immigrants have access to and why? How exactlty should the law be enforced? Should families be separated or kept together? What if one's illegal and the others aren't? If your kids have fully-developed views on all these things as part of a moral and rational framework that actually hangs together... then I don't know how they'd have a minute left for any of their classes. |
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My personal view - kids should have no role in activism on any issue. No adult I know asks teenagers for life advice, with good reason.
I can't imagine what life skills people think kids will develop by being encouraged to dig in their heels on complex and sensitive issues that they probably never even thought about before a year or two ago, and never having had any real responsibilities, never had to make hard decisions, no instinctive understanding of compromise or the limitations of their knowledge or worldviews - and on and on. It does seem like a good way to produce more sanctimonious and narrow-minded adults though! |
Great questions! |
You need fully developed answers to every policy question in order to care about an issue? That’s not what the First Amendment says! High school students have seen what unfolded in Minneapolis. They know right from wrong and when the government is abusing its power against its own citizens even. That is enough for a basis to get engaged in social action and protest. Mine is 18, old enough to vote, and knows what’s up! |
Draft the kid and put them on border patrol/illegal return duty asap! |
“Shifted the discourse” is the vaguest participation trophy phrase in modern politics. School shootings shifted the discourse … full stop. Protests and walkouts can amplify attention, absolutely, but for incredibly brief and fleeting moments. Remember, correlation isn’t causation. Just because laws passed after rallies doesn’t mean they passed because of them. |
Oh please. Invoking the Civil Rights Movement every time someone questions modern protest strategy is intellectual cosplay. Yes, sustained effort matters … but sustained effort toward what, exactly? The Civil Rights Movement paired protest with litigation, legislative drafting, voter registration drives, and ruthless political strategy. “Momentum” without a concrete policy pathway is just noise with a longer shelf life. |
Bingo - the real protests everyone holds up as models were about specific laws. |
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And the protesters expected to be arrested for their civil disobedience. Black men and women arrested and jailed. In the south.
And you think your privileged students should get a hall pass for skipping school against school policy. |
Bingo again - pure cosplay |
Parkland was the straw that broke the camel’s back for high schoolers. Most couldn’t vote and were fed up with the Trump administration so they did what they could: they protested. And it started with a walkout. Many of them! And those students created March For Our Lives, which absolutely has had an impact on gun safety in America. It also has had an impact on those students who became voters. https://marchforourlives.org/about-us/ |
| At a Catholic school where no students walked out. Really sad that they aren’t “walking the talk” of their mission and goals. Feeds into the idea that the school, and the families that choose it, care more about appearances than substance or action. |