Threatened with suspension, Lincoln Prep middle schoolers in KCMO refused to back down and joined the growing student movement to denounce ICE and the proposed ICE concentration camps planned to be built in Kansas City.
When Lincoln College Preparatory Academy administrators discovered the students were planning the walkout, they did what school officials so often do when confronted with young people exercising their political voice: they tried to contain it.
The principal called the organizing student into the office. They claimed they wanted to “support” her. They offered a weakened alternative: stage a more quiet and subdued event in the auditorium instead.
By morning, an email went out to families. The walkout had been sanitized, redirected indoors, rendered toothless, but the students refused.
“What’s the point of that?” one organizing student told her parent after seeing the school’s attempt to co-opt their action. She and her classmates made a collective decision: they were going forward with their original plan.
The walkout was strategically scheduled for the final 20 minutes of the school day. The students had done everything possible to minimize disruption while still making their voices heard. It didn’t matter. When they moved toward the doors, an assistant principal stood blocking the exit. “Nope, you got to go to the auditorium,” he told them.
They opened the door and walked out anyway.
Not everyone made it outside. Some students were told they would be suspended if they joined the protest. School security rushed out to corral the young people back inside.
What they found waiting for them was a group of parents.
At least ten adults had shown up to support the students. Upon seeing the adults, security retreated back into the building as students continued their march, chanting, moving from the front of the school to the side to avoid being cornered in one location.
“I told my daughter, let them try and do something. I’m gonna be up there first thing tomorrow,” one parent told The Defender in an interview. “I made sure that she knew… I’m gonna be advocating for them.”
This is a developing story.
