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This week, students around the country prepared for a nationwide walkout planned for Friday at noon. The event was planned by Students Demand Action in response to a shooting at a Catholic church and school in Minneapolis. The organization, a subsidiary of Everytown for Gun Safety, provided toolkits to help students put together local walkouts, advising them to work with school staff and administrators.
A few days ahead of the planned event date, New Hanover County Schools Superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes sent a message to families.
Barnes noted, in part, that “As always, our top priority is the safety, well-being, and dignity of every student. We recognize that our students have a vested interest in this subject, and often are passionate about issues that matter to them and may wish to express their voices. While we want to support students, we must also ensure that teaching and learning continue in a safe and orderly environment.”
Barnes told families that while students are “permitted (and encouraged) to share their views,” and can’t be disciplined for the content of those beliefs, they’re not allowed to interfere with learning, skip school, leave campus, or create unsafe situations – or they’ll be subject to disciplinary procedures. Basically, they can protest or demonstrate, but they can’t break the rules.
To that end, Barnes wrote that “while it is our expectation that students remain in class and in their designated area, I have also asked each principal to establish a safe location in each building for students. We will have administrators, counselors, and social workers available for students as needed, who will then be allowed to return to class without penalty.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what would look like, but I took it to mean that students would have a space they could leave class and go to, the way they might go to the restroom, the nurse, or a counselor on any other day.
Although I’ve spent some time in front of a classroom, I don’t think you need to be a teacher to imagine some of the ways this could still be disruptive. If you’ve got a tenth-grade English class, and two dozen students decide one by one that they want to go to this safe location – well, that’s going to pretty much bring your lecture on foreshadowing and symbolism in Macbeth to a fumbling halt.
On Friday, a little after noon, I drove around New Hanover High School and then past Laney High School, but didn’t see anything I could categorize as a walkout. A few of the education advocates I spoke to said they’d also not heard of anything much happening. Some people blamed Barnes’ message – with its suggestion of ‘disciplinary procedures’ – while others blamed insufficient local organization or even political apathy (not that teenagers don’t have enough to worry about without the messes created by adults, but I digress).
So, while other districts saw much more significant student participation, the planned walkout was kind of a nothingburger in Wilmington, part of a fairly dull news day where the highlight was shoddy bookkeeping by the Battleship North Carolina Commission (an actuarial adventure, I assure you, but not the most explosive story).
Still, it got me thinking.
Now, there’s obviously plenty to say about school shootings and gun safety laws, and maybe we’ll tackle that in another column. But I wanted to spend some time working through what we expect – and want, and fear – about a student protest. Or, to pull on that thread, how we think about protest in general.
What should a student protest be?
I put the question to Facebook (always a roll of the dice), asking broadly how people felt about student protests, but also how adults feel about ‘making a space’ for young people, and whether they thought the goal should be giving students the opportunity to ‘feel heard’ or students taking the opportunity to make a political impact. The former seemed to be the school district’s approach, the latter the organizer’s.
The results of this very unscientific poll were, to my pleasant surprise, pretty earnest.
A few people felt that students ought not be protesting at all, either because it was overly influenced by social media and not a sincere response from the students themselves, or because they felt it was inappropriate for students to be challenging authority (the latter, whatever you think of sentiment, certainly seems to misundertand or have forgotten what it is to be a teenager).
Most, including a few parents and teachers, felt like learning about protesting and demonstrating was an important part of a student’s civic education. Some were divided on whether that should extend to some form of civil disobedience – and on the school’s efforts to create a safe space for students. I heard from a few advocates who felt like the safe space was an attempt to co-opt or deflate the student protest, with the NHC Educational Justice Facebook group calling Barnes’ approach “disappointing and cowardly.” I ran into a group of students at the gas station near my house, and one told me, “they Nerfed the protest.” (If you’re wondering, that’s a term for when software developers update a video game, making some aspect of the gameplay – shields, armor, weapons, etc. – significantly weaker. If you’re my age or older, think: Nerfing the ghosts in Pac-Man would make them slower, less of a threat.)
But I heard from a lot of parents and teachers who said they appreciated the school district’s attempt to support the students, calling it “heartfelt” and “thoughtful.” Some voiced concerns about student safety, not just from regular hazards like traffic, but from more frightening spectres like politically-motivated violence. “There’s a lot of crazies out there,” was something of a refrain.
I do think there’s an unresolved tension here, an equation that can’t quite be balanced.
A student protest that plays by the rules is, ultimately, performative. And look, I feel for these kids. I don’t mean any disrespect – and certainly even a performative protest can be meaningful. Sometimes, it can be enough in terms of personal expression, catharsis, and community. But, as one of the commenters in my ad hoc Facebook poll noted, it’s been a long time since peaceful, by-the-books protest caused political change.
Even ratcheted up several notches to the level of nationwide civil disobedience – that is, students walking out of every school without descending into vandalism or riots – would a protest have an impact? Would parents on both sides of the aisle, reading evening news chyrons reporting that “15 million high school students walked out of class today,” set down their forks, and then their partisan affiliations, and push their elected officials to come to the table?
Maybe. But it seems just as likely that it would ‘take social media by storm’ for the weekend until another viral moment swept it away in the endless doomscrolling news river. On Monday, students would go back to class, and we’d all move on to whatever fresh hell came next.
For students to make an impact, to cut through the noise, the morass of apathy, the silo walls, they might have to do something truly revolutionary. It needn’t be violent, but it would have to be risky; there’d have to be skin in the game. It couldn’t be Nerfed. If millions of students committed to sitting silently in class without participating for weeks on end, if they refused to take proficiency or college readiness exams, if they forced administrators to send them to in-school detention, give them suspensions, and ultimately expel them – that might shake things up.
And certainly, that’s the age for that level of passion.
I remember my freshman year of college, taking a symposium on the history of the 1960s, and watching for the first time black-and-white footage of student activist Mario Savio’s speech at Berkeley. It was a masterclass in the righteous indignation of civil disobedience, and it shook each of us in the class to the core.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all,” Savio shouted from the steps of Sproul Hall.
At the time, I felt a headrush of emotions. There were, of course, things I was mad – mad as hell! – about at the time. Maybe I, too, could bellow passionately from the steps of Winants Hall at Rutgers. Maybe I should jump on top of a police car and address the gathering crowd (hopefully, like Savio, the former altar boy, I’d have the presence of mind to take off my shoes to avoid scuffing government property).
Of course, I felt that way. I was 18. You’d have to be dead inside not to.
If you remember your teenage angst with any clarity, then you remember it mostly simmered. When it burned, it burned hot and fast but not for long. Teenagers can be angry and disappointed with adults – often with damn good reason – but they also want to go to college, or get out of their hometown in some other way, to have the freedoms and fun that adult life promises (they’ll worry about the responsibilities that come with it later). Are they willing to trade all that in? Maybe. Not by the millions, though.
And what about us adults?
Protest style and substance
I think of the speakers who come to the New Hanover County school board meetings, often speaking month after month.
This week, activist Sandy Eyles tussled with the board over her insistence that she should have the right to criticize individual board members – even insult them. Eyles focused her comments on Republican board member Pat Bradford, of whom she has been critical in the past.
“If I choose to say that Pat [Bradford] or any other board member are dumb as rocks, my speech is protected, and unless I incite violence or make threats, you cannot silence me,” Eyles said.
Eyles argued by analogy that, because the board and its attorneys had allowed the hate speech of Renegade Cherokee during a recent meeting, then her own comments would certainly be allowed.
Board attorney Norwood Blanchard disagreed, citing case law and the writings of the UNC School of Government’s Frayda Bluestein (an eminent scholar of local government rules who, tragically, passed away in August). Blanchard clarified that speakers could address individual board members (a rule that has not always been clear) but could not cross over from policy critiques to “harassing” or “a personal attack.”
Blanchard contrasted Eyles with Peter Rawitsch, who helps lead the Love Our Children group that has, for years, pushed the district to end suspensions for young students. Rawitsch, who sometimes accompanies his addresses with an acoustic guitar, has been passionate and indefatigably persistent, but never hostile – which Blanchard noted, in the eyes of the courts, made his style of protest more effective. Eyles, meanwhile, has been distinctly more combative and was banned in 2023 after verbal altercations with Democrat Stefanie Adams, a decision that didn’t fall neatly along party lines.
“The Fourth Circuit also noted that people would be much more effective advocates if they didn't personally attack people,” Blanchard said. “[If they] stood up there and like Mr. Rawitsch, which I'll use that example, he's great at it, and calmly made their points and refrained from personally attacking people.”
Democratic board member Tim Merrick agreed, “like our lawyer has mentioned, Mr. Rawitsch, as an example, does so in a calm and even-handed way. So I agree, ‘box of rocks,’ no. Complaints about policy decisions, yes.’”
The decision sat poorly with Eyles, and you could understand why. Having watched Cherokee vilify the LGBTQ community for two minutes and being forced to accept that, however hateful his bigotry, it was protected by the First Amendment – surely her comments were less vitriolic. You could say “bag of rocks” is childish, sure, but it’s not nearly as hostile as Cherokee’s comments, which included calling for segregation of queer children and a ban on queer employees. But, that’s the way the free-speech cookie crumbles: broad assertions, even hateful ones, are more protected than personal attacks.
To the point of this week’s column, though, there’s a lot to be said for Rawitsch’s style of protest. He projects an affable, slightly professorial, and grandfatherly vibe with more than a touch of Guthrie (maybe more Arlo than Woody, as I can’t quite see him painting “this machine kills fascists” on his guitar). He’s been fairly effective – far more so than louder, brasher, and cruder activists on either side of the aisle. I think you could credit that to his style, but also his dedication and focus: Rawitsch has one main issue, on which he’s well-educated, and he has politely hammered on it for years.
I get that, for advocates with fire in their bellies, it might be hard to stomach Rawitch’s Fred Rogers geniality. I know some on the left and the right would likely tell the Fourth Circuit to … well, let’s say they would appeal that assessment.
Though my job requires me to keep an even keel, I can relate. I think we all could, now and then. Who among us hasn’t seen a politician spouting absolute nonsense, and wanted to go full Muntadhar al-Zaidi, hurling our shoes – one after the other – at our own personal President George W. Bush.
But I have to say, whether you’re strumming a ukulele, throwing shoes, or spitting nails while you’re at the podium, it’s still kind of performative. Bush ducked (twice, it’s still shocking how seemingly ready he was to have two shoes thrown at him). You probably shouldn’t throw shoes at a board member, but you can throw two minutes of your most lacerating criticism at them – and they, too, can duck. Or fiddle with their phone, or stare into the middle distance. It takes more than that to change an elected official’s mind, believe me.
Again, there’s sometimes value in that kind of performance. It’s nice to be heard, even if it’s by your own community. It’s good to be seen by people who might think they are alone in feeling a certain way. Performance can be meaningful – and when it comes to election season, it can certainly help rally the troops. (For our municipal elections, with turnout hovering around an embarrassingly low 20%, even a few votes can make the difference; in 2019, a Wilmington city council seat was decided by five votes.)
For all these reasons, maybe being demonstrative – demonstrating – is enough.
But I know for some, it is not.
Rage against the machine?
Going back to my Facebook poll, more than a few commenters said they felt the point of protest was to make things uncomfortable or difficult for other people, to disrupt their routine and peace of mind. For them, the end goal isn’t to be heard or build community but to make enough people uncomfortable enough that they take action they wouldn’t ordinarily – either because they’ve been forced to reckon with an issue they’d previously had the luxury of ignoring, or to appease the protestors and make them stop so they can return to their status quo.
That can sound noble, but I think you lose a lot of people on the way to that kind of protest.
For one, you run the risk of licensing yourself to commit violence. If you don’t take your shoes off before you jump on the cop car, so to speak, you’re on a certain path. If you can justify vandalism and violence, even in the heat of the moment, what else can you justify? And this isn’t always just academic – over the years, I’ve had conversations with people who ended up admitting they were earnestly contemplating more drastic forms of protest. That includes pro-life, police reform, anti-vax, and other advocates. (And I think there are things each of us might believe, even if just privately, are important enough to ‘go there,’ but we don’t agree on which ones.)
In each case, I politely shut down the conversation, reiterating that I don’t support violent demonstrations. I do understand — at least to some degree — what pushes people in that direction, but I also know it’s a slippery slope.
Meanwhile, on the path of nonviolent disobedience, there’s just an incredible amount of time, energy, and patience necessary. Raging against the machine is easy, putting your body upon its gears is hard work.
And there’s serious skin in the game: people get arrested for civil disobedience. They lose friends, jobs, and housing. It’s not Nerfed, at all. An irony, perhaps, that one friend pointed out: “most people have just enough to lose to be scared of losing it.”
So where does that leave people? If you’re passionate about an issue, and you want to see change – meaning you want to change other people’s minds and behavior – what can you do?
Usually, this is the point in the column where I try to pull things together and give you some answers. Not this week.
I can say, my own experience has been that when it comes to specific issues — the opioid crisis, affordable housing, environmental regulation, criminal justice reform, even climate change — the trench warfare of partisan politics doesn’t get us very far. It can, in fact, feel like crawling across No Man’s Land, pushing the trench line an inch an hour, two feet a day — only for the other side to get the upper hand, and start to roll things back.
What has helped? Someone was the first to put the gun down. Someone picked up the phone. Someone apologized. Someone cracked a joke. Someone let themselves be even a little bit vulnerable. They bonded over a shared loss, a common enemy, or a mutual goal. These moments are small, and sometimes awkward, but in some special cases led to bigger things.
But I’m not naive, and I know there’s probably no bipartisan kumbaya on the near-term horizon. Things are so divided, so entrenched. And those that cross partisan lines, well, they often end up with knives in their chest and their back.
So, I leave it here, not with a resolution, but a question for all of you: is there something you’re passionate about? What do you do to try to move the needle? Protest? Boycott? Something else?
Let me know.
