On Friday, Feb. 13, at 1:10 pm, most H-F students came together to do a walkout to get rid of ICE.
The top question is, was it worth it?
ICE is the U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement, they enforce federal laws for governing border control and immigration.
However they have expanded during this year and have been wrongfully convicting others, tearing them from their families, and causing many problems in multiple cities around us.
Sophomore Shamira Carthan organized this walkout. She believed that it was important to speak out on the continuous injustices that harm our society.
“I think the walkout was worth it because it opened more people’s eyes to how evil ICE truly is,” Carthan stated. “I hope people understand that the concept of ICE is not the problem; the actions of ICE are, and I hope this walkout conveyed that well,” Carthan said.
For Carthan, actions speak louder than just simply talking about it and this walkout was an opportunity for students to make that stand.
“Speak out against things you don’t believe in! Anybody can say they don’t like ICE, but to actually speak out, move against the current and actively advocate for the defunding of ICE is another thing in itself,” Carthen added.
All of H-F coming together to fight against this issue should be sufficient for change in our society. Looking from the outside, it looks like students are eager to get rid of this system from our state.
The walkout was worth it to most, but others feel like it wasn’t. Some students felt that most students only participated just to skip class instead of supporting the cause of getting rid of ICE in Chicago.
We asked some students how they felt about the walkout. Some of them had mixed feelings about the walkout and its meaning.
Armoni Knight, a student here at H-F, said “The reason I went is, I think nobody should be taken from this country, and nobody should be treated like they don’t belong here. So that’s the reason I went to protest against ICE because I think it’s wrong. And nobody should be treated in that manner.”
Meanwhile, other students who felt the cause wasn’t taken seriously by some students because they saw it as a way to get out of class.
Sophomore Branko Ivancevic said, “It’s not me saying that nobody can go out and protest because that’s definitely a right we have, but that’s me saying that a lot of those people out there went out just to get out of class.”
Overall, the protest highlighted unity and was carried out in a safe way to address a serious issue that is currently occurring in the United States.
.
