It has now been over a month since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and students are still trying to make their voices heard all across the United States. There have been two nationwide school walkouts since the tragedy, with a third taking place today, or rather the day that I am writing this.
Naturally, there has been a lot of talk about the merits of these walkouts, and what, if anything, these students hope to achieve by making their voices heard. This is not the topic of this article - I am not even going to touch that subject with a ten-foot pole, but what has peaked my curiosity is the nature of the protests themselves. More specifically, whether they are even protests at all.
A good example of the point that I am trying to illustrate is the walkout that took place at Schaumburg High School on March 14. Instead of students walking out of class on their own, the school carved out time for the students to leave the building, spend at least seventeen minutes outside (one minute for each of the victims of the Parkland shooting), and to go back inside.
A section of the parking lot was also carved out for the students as a protest zone. Additionally, there were no classes scheduled for the time that the protest was to take place. While students were perfectly free to stay inside and not participate, the student walkout essentially became a school-sponsored event.
This brings me to the crux of what I want to ask regarding these protests - if there is no risk in protesting the thing that you are protesting, then is it really a protest?
I mean, when people protest something, there is usually a certain amount of risk wrapped up in the activity. Civil Rights protestors were beaten, assaulted by police officers and K9 units, and arrested. In 1999, protestors against the WTO in Seattle had their constitutional rights stripped away from them, the city being turned into a police state for several days. Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement were arrested during their protest.
Protests are just that because you are taking to the streets and sounding off WITHOUT the approval of the social institutions that you want to change.
I'm not saying that students don't care about the issue of gun violence in this country, but if you truly do care, you should be willing to accept the consequences of walking out of school.
If you're only going to protest when you're allowed to, then it defeats the whole point of a protest because they're letting you do it! I'm glad that these students are allowed to exercise their first amendment rights, but this isn't really a protest.
If you want to convince me that you actually care, walk out on your own, with no help from the school because it's not a protest if you only do it when you're given permission by the powers that be.