On February 6, both Downey and Warren High School organized a walkout against the ICE raids that were happening all over the nation.
The protest was organized by the Instagram account “Rally_the_youth” run by Warren High School seniors Daniel Arias and London Blanco while Downey High School senior Ulysses Ayala organized and led the protest for Downey.
Blanco stated she thought of the idea stating “I thought of it and I texted a couple friends they told about Daniel and he also agreed to organize a walkout.”
London later stated that they made the “Rally_the_youth” account and made a post-organizing. Arias said at first organizing a protest like this was a bit difficult with him.
“Well in the beginning it was kind of unorganized we didn’t really know what we were doing but it literally just started in social media,” said Arias.
Arias continued, “We got the word out by repost, stories, I mean social media is powerful when it comes down to spreading the word.”
Ayala wanted in on the action “I don’t want to sit around and be nobody – I want to help, I want to do my best,” he said.
“I walked out of my class and began chanting and figured out where to go and that’s when I heard about meeting up with Warren. I helped lead the line to come up here and meet up with Warren with these two [Daniel and London] and from there we walked out to city hall,” Ayala stated.
The Protest saw over 1,000 students from both schools meeting on the corner of Firestone Boulevard and Paramount Boulevard before marching down 3rd Street heading towards Downey City Hall.
When asked about the turn out the protest Daniel said, “Well honestly I’m very proud of my fellow students, especially from Downey I’m happy that they came out and show support.”
Daniel also stated that he wasn’t expecting a big turnout with him as he said “We were not expecting this turnout, We had 338 signatures this morning [Feb. 6] and that’s all we were expecting we weren’t expecting that many people but once we spoke on the senior stage and why were doing it and they just followed.”
The students were chaperoned by many school officials such as school security and teachers with one teacher being history teacher Erin Hanohano she stated that she was proud of the students protesting.
“As a human being as a mother of two Hispanic daughters as a teacher to these kids I am so proud there has been zero issues, they all followed direction, they been very super peaceful, very respectful, and I believe in their cause and i believe their teachers and their parents support them and believe in their cause.”
