During the afternoon of November 10th, Suzanne Shimek – Lick-Wilmerding English teacher – sent out an email to her senior students with a subject that read, “What happens when you leave an English teacher alone in a classroom for 75 minutes with no students.” This rung true: no students attended her class and many other classes due to a walkout protest organized by LWHS seniors Nigel Berkeley, Bonnie Castleman, Matt Clifford, Daniel Holzman, Leila KashaniSabet, Kelby Kramer, Gianni Martinez, and Oliver Mancini.
Walkouts around the United States began on Wednesday, November 9, following the election of Donald Trump. In the Bay Area in particular, that Wednesday, 2000 Berkeley High School students walked out, inspiring schools such as The Urban School of San Francisco to follow suit. As a result, on Thursday, November 10, LWHS seniors kept the movement’s momentum strong, inviting other LWHS grades and faculty members to participate.
In the morning, students spent all of first period making posters. Some included phrases such as “Love and Optimism,” or “Love Trumps Hate,” which also turned into chants during the protest. Others read, “The Future is Female,” in reference to Hillary Clinton’s loss and Donald Trump’s actions regarding women’s rights and sexual abuse. Similarly, one sign read, “No es mi presidente,” a phrase in Spanish that translates, “He is not my president.”
After the first period, the LWHS community flooded through the front entrance on Ocean Avenue. Some 300 LWHS community members stormed down Ocean Avenue, onto Mission Street in pursuit of City Hall.
About ¼ of the way through, LWHS students received news that many San Francisco Unified School District students walked out and were headed for City Hall as well. In turn, SFPD put City Hall on lockdown and contained crowds at Civic Center.
But this news did not hinder LWHS, as they powered forward chanting, “My Body, My Choice!” or “I believe that love will win!”
Shimek, in her email, wrote, “As your decision to walk out demonstrates, you are all seeking options for action.” Actions reflected by Holzman when he posted around 10:00 pm on Wednesday, November 8th in the Class of 2017 Facebook page asking whether or not people would be in support of a walkout. According to Berkeley, “the support from the class was overwhelming.”
Berkeley, on Election Day, “was feeling pretty down. But seeing the flurry of people working on posters really brought an exuberant smile to my face,” and according to Leila Shokat ‘17, “Wednesday was a day of sadness and Thursday was a day of action. I think that really encompassed what we were saying and why we did what we did.”
There were a variety of reasons students and faculty did or did not attend the walkout. Many faculty stayed at Lick due to their obligation as a teacher. Many joined students. For LWHS English teacher Catherine Fung, “Seeing students go from feeling absolutely defeated one day and empowered the next was just what I needed to reinvigorate my motivation. I hope, though, that the walkout doesn’t end up being just one isolated action that our community did together. I hope that the walkout becomes the start of a life of activism for the students. I hope that students here feel motivated to protest injustices that are happening in our society all the time.
The protest’s foundational values were articulated by Kashani-Sabet. The goal for the LWHS community was to, “stand for something versus against something. It was to show support for minority groups. To show solidarity with people who have been targeted by the rhetoric and themes that have been cropping up over the election.”
Many wholly embodied this motto, such as Castleman, who embraced the crowd at City Hall, representing the Lick-Wilmerding Organization of Women along with Nora Stacy ‘17, Meredith Fry ‘17, and Olympia Francis Taylor ‘18.
“It was really great to bring LWOW to a bigger audience than normal and get some people involved that normally don’t come to meetings. Unfortunately, we had a big group, a quiet megaphone, and my voice was shredded, but we got some great responses. As a matter of fact, in the past few weeks, all of the LWOW leaders have been getting asked a lot of questions about what steps we can take moving forward. In particular, questions about Planned Parenthood, and I think it’s really important to address what we can all do to fight back as a community. ”
Many students did not attend the protest. For Jake Lennett ‘17, he didn’t participate because, “I just felt partially that the protest was preaching to the choir and that people in the Bay Area generally have the same political viewpoints. As a result, I felt like it wouldn’t have the same impact as in somewhere like rural Kentucky where people might have had different outlooks. But, it was also more of a personal thing. Although the result sucks, this is the nature of American democracy, and what the majority wants is what the majority gets. It’s a personal thing for me that I just move on and operate and try to be successful, no matter who is in office.”
In a follow up class meeting held on Monday, November 27, seniors were notified of more controversial opinions of the walkout. Oscar King – Junior and Senior Dean – shared the responses to an activity from Junior and Senior advising meetings. Students were asked to write a sentence or two about their general sentiments towards the walkout. Of those responses, several cited students’ frustrations that there was passion for this protest as opposed to passion for movements such as Black Lives Matter. Similarly, one student felt as if the interactions between LWHS and SFUSD students were “representative of our own privilege, as we separated from the public schools because their goals were different than ours.” Along the same lines, several students and faculty alike felt as if the encounters with SFUSD could have been handled more smoothly.
Regardless, the protests by SFUSD students and Lick, along with schools such as The Bay School and The Convent School of San Francisco, garnered media attention. Amongst the outlets that reported on the San Francisco walkouts were CNN and Buzzfeed, who live streamed the event from helicopters and had reporters interviewing Lick students such as Zeli Grey ‘17, who reflects on being interviewed by such mainstream outlets. “I was wearing a ‘Nasty Woman’ shirt, so they asked me about what a Trump presidency would be like for me. I had so much to say that it was hard to condense it into one statement.”
Several outlets interviewed many other LWHS students, such as Amie Baumgartner ‘17. Similarly, CNN conducted an interview with Ariana Holmes ’20, who describes being featured on the live stream. “The reporter came up to me and asked me why we were doing the walkout. I told him that we wanted to make a stand and show people what we believed in, and that we as people who will soon be able to vote, aren’t happy with having Donald Trump as president.”
Holmes, along with being one of several students featured on social media, was one of a handful of underclassmen who participated. As an underclassman, “it was awesome! To stand up for what I believed in with so many other young people was incredibly empowering. Especially as a freshman, it was nice to see that so many people at my school shared the same ideas as me and were willing to make a stand.”
Although some were thrilled with the media coverage, others were upset that the coverage incorrectly depicted the LWHS protest as one against Trump, despite the efforts to focus on making a stand for social justice and for groups threatened by Trump’s campaign.
