On May 30, New Haven students walked out to disrupt business as usual and take a stand against Trump’s right-wing attacks. 

Socialist Alternative members helped organize a school walkout of hundreds of high school students across at least six schools in New Haven, CT to demand an end to Trump’s attacks on education. Three hundred students marched from all over the city to the New Haven Green, before turning to march on Yale’s campus to the college president’s house to demand the institution pay its property taxes to fully fund New Haven public schools. 

The students’ key demands were for fully-staffed and fully-funded schools, fair pay and support for educators to address the teacher shortage, and taxing Yale and New Haven big business to end inequality in their communities. Students called for solidarity with their trans and immigrant classmates, demanding gender affirming bathrooms and school sports teams, non-cooperation with ICE and DHS, and mass mobilizations to defend community members from deportations. 

Describing why they walked out, Adriana from Career High School expressed that it was “to protest for our school funding and to tax the rich…[for the] people who are struggling to put food on the table, that’s why I walked out for school funding.” 

Other students described how “our schools are literally falling apart. We have bathrooms that aren’t working, broken ACs, and our teachers are leaving. We want change!” and the rampant impact of teacher shortages: “I’m sick of going into classes with no teacher there and no substitute.”

The flyer for the walkout read: “Donald Trump’s attacks on public education have spurred a funding crisis in New Haven. Faced with cuts to Title 1 funding, the Board of Education is imposing $17 million of cuts to New Haven Public Schools (NHPS). Concretely, this means laying off 120 staff including all library staff, 1/4 of all arts teachers, and 27 other teachers. If Yale paid their property taxes, that would be $150 million more per year. The money to fund NHPS exists: it’s just being hoarded by billionaires like Elon Musk and institutions like Yale.” 

The action had many powerful speakers, including high school students from schools across the city; Leslie Blateau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers; and Jen P., a former NHPS student and member of Socialist Alternative. 

In their speeches, student organizers emphasized the crumbling conditions of their school facilities, the lack of up-to-date learning materials, and the impact of underfunding on their learning in the long-term. Several students talked about the wealth that Yale extracts from New Haven and the sharp contrast between the learning conditions of students in wealthy districts of Connecticut in comparison to NHPS.

As protestors marched on the Yale administration, student Makayla Spell pointed out the contrast between Yale and NHPS facilities: “I’m sure they have all nice bathrooms… We don’t have soap in our bathrooms.”

How Students & Socialist Alternative Members Organized A Walkout

After high school students reached out to New Haven Socialist Alternative, our members organized citywide meetings to organize against the $14.5 million budget deficit in the already underfunded New Haven Public Schools. Socialist Alternative organizers emphasized the need to situate these cuts amongst Trump’s attacks on workers, immigrants, and trans people. 

Drawing from the experience of a walkout our members helped lead last spring, Socialist Alternative helped facilitate citywide structures and a school-based coordinating committee, working with the school system’s student reps organization, and flyered at schools across the city to build the walkout. In preparation for pulling off a successful, ambitious walkout, students led citywide organizing calls where demands were democratically discussed and decided on and built several school-based organizing committees to keep momentum up on each campus. 

Students, along with Socialist Alternative members, passed out hundreds of flyers in the lead up to the walkout, including materials translated into Spanish, to be able to get into conversations about what conditions need to be improved at school, and the most effective ways to fight for them. When school administrations threatened students with academic consequences and even arrest, we responded by spreading the word that mass action is the strongest defense against repression and committed to building the largest, liveliest walkout possible. 

At the walkout, Socialist Alternative member Jen discussed her experience when she was a student in NHPS. Back in 2018, budget cuts shut down her magnet school—and this was justified by saying that her school served “too many” Black and brown students. Students at the time organized a walkout with the support of their teachers against the closure, and succeeded in uniting the whole school behind it. 

Jen explained how such closures are part of the inherent violence of this capitalist system, which relies on putting down poor black and brown working people and youth to the benefit of the billionaire class. She said that is why we need a new party of the working class and youth—one where we fight for a socialist program to be taken up: 

“Because we need to build a socialist movement for a society where the economy is democratically run by the people, for the people—not for profit, and our struggle for justice must be combined with the fight to save our planet! Only a united, mass, multiracial, multi-gender movement, one that stands against all forms of oppression, can take down Trump, and the system that enables him.”

New Haven Socialist Alternative will also be hosting a follow-up public meeting to talk about what it would take to build the movement necessary to win major gains from big business and wealthy institutions like Yale, and why walkouts like this set a crucial example of the kind of tactics needed in a genuine mass movement.

If you want to organize a walkout at your school or learn more about joining Socialist Alternative, email us at [email protected] today!