On Thursday February 5, a rare event occurred: Several hundred young people from high schools across the city temporarily left their classrooms and teachers behind to congregate in front of Seattle City Hall in solidarity with their immigrant classmates and their families. They chanted and held signs that expressed their collective disapproval of the mistreatment of immigrants and US citizens by ICE under President Trump. Their slogans included “No justice, no peace — Get ICE off our streets” and “Say it once, say it twice, Seattle doesn’t fuck with ICE.”
The crowd was demographically diverse, reflecting Seattle’s growth over recent years. Several students carried Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other Latin American flags, and some wore Pride-related clothing or hijabs. Although they came from different background and life experiences, they assembled peacefully in an act of community love and youthful defiance toward a system that unfairly targets the most marginalized among them.
The protesters also utilized their artistic creativity as an outlet for their frustrations. The hundreds of signs they brought along with them displayed various themes and plays-on-words: “The wrong ICE is melting” (with an iceberg motif) and “No one is illegal on stolen land.” Others used memes and pop culture references: one wrote “If you work for ICE, your mom’s a ho” and another drew the character All Might from the popular anime show My Hero Academia along with “Have no fear, let’s get ICE out of here.”
One young man told the SGN he had assembled his large “GET ICE OUT” banner on a long pole with $40 of materials from Home Depot. A group of teenage boys went shirtless, having written “Fuck ICE” with sharpie markers across their chests, akin to sports fans that paint themselves at football games.
Marching in the streets
Around 30 minutes into the demonstration, students began to fill into the section of Fourth Avenue in front of City Hall. Not long after, the crowd began to spontaneously march toward oncoming traffic and Pioneer Square at first, then turned and proceeded up Third Avenue before wrapping back around near University Street and down Fourth toward Seattle City Hall once again.
Passing cars and onlooking pedestrians were generally supportive of the protesting students, as they honked and cheered them on. One man in a parked SUV with his family fist-bumped a group of teenage boys as they made their way past.
On the return to City Hall, a young man named Timothy approached the SGN and said he was the editor of the newspaper at Lakeside School. He shared that he had been interviewing adults who were there to show their support for the students, and was working on his own story about the day’s events.
Speakers and organizers
As student demonstrators steadily filed back into the courtyard and steps of City Hall, several climbed onto the ledge to give speeches through a megaphone. They took turns in sharing their critiques of and grievances against the current political climate in America.
“Who here is an immigrant, or the child or grandchild of an immigrant?” asked one student from the Northwest School. After sharing her experiences of being raised in an immigrant household, she added, “We need to be brave enough to follow in the footsteps of those before us who stood up.”
A young man had wider systemic criticisms of economic hardships, saying, “We are dealing with an issue of capital and capitalism.” He also called out US foreign policy on Gaza, and also the Seattle Police Department’s previous cooperation and trainings with Israeli security forces, shouting “Shame!,” to which the crowd enthusiastically joined in.
Another student, from Franklin High School, pointed how the Trump administration’s use of ICE as a tool to target communities of color was both historical and by design, saying, “Racial profiling is built into our system in America… These are political choices.”
At the end of the event, the SGN met with one of the student organizers of the demonstration, Amara Aalfs-Weinbaum, who shared how pleasantly unexpected the large turnout had been and the group was planning to organize more events.
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