On 20 January, the anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, grassroots organizers are calling on people across the United States to walk out of their offices, schools and businesses to protest the administration and call for “a free America”.
In the wake of escalating ICE raids, attacks on gender-affirming care, cuts to healthcare and the deployment of national guard troops in US cities, the organizers behind the Women’s March are asking Americans to participate in the “Free America Walkout”.
As opposed to the large-scale weekend rallies that the Women’s March became known for following Trump’s first inauguration, organizers have planned a weekday walkout this year. The group says its aim is to show the administration that as it escalates its attacks “on our rights, our bodies, and our livelihoods”, that Americans can escalate in response.
“We really felt like it was important for us to have a mobilization that tested some additional tools in the toolbox,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March. “What will it look like if we do an action on a weekday? Where we are withdrawing our labor. Where we’re refusing no shopping, no working, no commerce.”
Although the Women’s March put out the call-to-action, local groups are organizing “walkout” events across their communities. So far, the group has tallied more than 600 events scheduled across the United States to take place at 2pm local time on 20 January.
“We are seeing people walk out and walk in – and what they’re walking into are very different,” said Carmona.
In Houston, she said, people are planning to walk out of school and work, and walk into their elected representatives’ offices instead. Other cities are planning mutual aid events, rallies, craft and conversation circles and talks with groups like Leaving Maga. Carmon said it’s important that each community assess its own needs.
“The movement can only get so big if organizations are always at the center of it,” she said. “Our goal is always putting the people at the center of it.”
How effective are walkouts?
Walkouts have long been a tool of activist movements in the United States, from the civil rights movement to calls to end gun violence. In recent weeks, hundreds of students have staged walkouts in Minneapolis and other school districts in response to ICE raids in their communities.
Like other organizing tools, however, it can take time to see the results.
In March 1968, around 15,000 students walked out of classrooms across East Los Angeles to protest discrimination in the education system against Chicano students. The groups that organized those protests eventually formed the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee, which went on to present a list of students’ demands to the Los Angeles board of education.
Although the Board initially rejected those demands, the walkouts created a cultural shift, showing the power of students and their commitment to racial justice in education. Over the ensuing decades, many of the students’ demands would be met: schools began integrating Spanish-language instruction and Chicano history into the curriculum, the percentage of Latino teachers increased, and in 1990, William R. Anton became the first Latino superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Organizers with the Women’s March are eager to study how effective the Free America Walkout turns out to be, and are partnering with American University sociologist Dana Fisher, who will collect and analyze data on participation.
“This is a stress test,” said Carmona. “We’re trying to see what we can do as a movement and what we need to continue to build on so that we can achieve the goals that we want to achieve, which is obviously driving fascism back away from American democracy.”
She doesn’t know what the results of Fisher’s research will show, but she has a hypothesis. “I go to the gym,” she said. “I know that practice builds muscle.”
Based on the number of events the Women’s March has vetted and counted so far, she can say: “This is the most engagement in action we’ve had in our organization’s history.” While many people are fretful about the state of American democracy, she says, that shows organizers that everyday people are “ready to lace up our boots and get out in the street”.
