EVERETT — Chanting “Immigrants are welcome here! No hate! No fear!” a group of students from Cascade High School stood with signs in hand Friday afternoon along Evergreen Way near Bruin Boulevard, just north of the school.
One student kept the beat with a drum while another led the chants using a megaphone, and they all cheered, drawing honks of support from drivers passing by.
“We’re all students from Cascade High School, and we skipped last period to walk out of our school,” said Brienne Quiroz, one of the young students lining Evergreen Way. “On the last day of school, we chose to go to the walkout that we organized.”
Sophomore Sohna Manneh and freshman Shane Martinez were among those who organized the protest of recent actions by President Donald Trump and his administration – specifically mass deportations.
“Originally, we wanted to start a club at school called Equality, where students come to talk about politics and social issues,” Manneh said. “We host events like this where we bring awareness to the public about social injustice issues.”
Martinez said they wanted to see more young people speaking out against what they were watching happen in the news and on social media.
“We realized that something wrong was happening in our country and that we didn’t see enough youth standing up for it,” Martinez said. “So, we decided that we could plan something and that we could bring Cascade High School students together to show the community that the youth care and that the youth are educated about what’s going on.”
Martinez said they scheduled it for the last day of school to minimize the disruption to their education.
“We had probably close to 200 students out here missing class on the last period of the day to show that they care and that they know that what’s going on with ICE’s policies and actions aren’t right,” he said. “And we’ve been out here chanting for probably an hour and a half, maybe two hours, just trying to show the community that we really think what Trump is doing and what ICE is doing is wrong.”
Some of the students told The Daily Herald they were motivated to share their concerns after seeing news coverage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles and the protests that followed. Others also shared their concerns over the possibility of the United States entering another war. Those concerns grew a day later when the United States carried out a bombing attack on three nuclear facilities in Iran.
“What is going on right now with deportation and what’s going on with wars is not OK, and we as a society cannot sit here and normalize that and act like this is nothing because these are our people,” Manneh said. “These are our people. We are all one.”
Sophomore Jamilet Rodriguez said it is important that more young people speak up.
“I think it’s very important, especially people who have come from immigrant parents and know their stories and know that they came from nothing,” Rodriguez said. “They came here and sacrificed themselves, coming here with nothing in order to give us a better opportunity and a better life and give us what they never had.
“It’s just really unfair to all the little kids that are going home and they’re not coming home to their parents because people think that they are criminals and they are doing something wrong, when in fact they do the hard work,” she added. “America wouldn’t be America without immigrants.”
Aaron Kennedy: 425-257-7444; aaron.kennedy@heraldnet.com
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