‘Walkout’ Protest Actions Respond to Rising State Violence in Minnesota

TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

SANIYAH YOLANDA: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

SCOTT HARRIS: So there are two actions planned. One tomorrow, a walkout, America Free, a walkout that we’ll talk about with Tamika. And then there’s a student walkout plan for Friday to coincide with a general strike in Minnesota in New York City this Friday that we’ll get to both of those. And I would ask you, Tamika, to briefly tell our listeners about Women’s March and the work your group has been engaged in since the great Trump inaugural protest in Washington, D.C. across the country and the world in January 2017. You guys have been doing a lot of work since then, but I think that’s certainly a date on the calendar we’re all going to remember. But tell us about the work you’re doing and certainly mention tomorrow’s action, the walkout that’s planned for tomorrow.

TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Absolutely. And please forgive me. I am coming down with something, so I sound terrible today. But Women’s March is a mass mobilization organization that really has at the center of its mission moving everyday women into action. And so we try to build and mobilize feminists. And we’ve been in that work, as you said, since 2017 was the first of the women’s marches. And so shortly after that, Women’s March really formed as an organization and our main priority has been thinking about how we mobilize and build the protest muscle of everyday folks, in particular everyday wo And how we move those folks from sort of being activated around a particular thing that they’re seeing happening in the news, to being able to be in leadership and really taking up action in their communities, in their networks. And so we do that in a number of ways.

One, we do a ton of online trainings. We have our digital defenders training program where we train folks to combat misinformation and disinformation in their own networks. We also have been running a number of trainings actually as a part of our Free America ark. Over the past week, we’ve had a number of non-cooperation trainings that we’ve done in person in several cities. We’ve done it in Memphis, in Oklahoma City and Amarillo, Texas, in Chicago, in Portland. And then also have been partnering with Free D.C. to do one in D.C. as well. And so we’re really moving and mobilizing this ark where we’re inviting folks to be in this fight against fascism with us and really skill up so that we can take back our power, so that we can take back our labor, so that we can take back our money and we can say we actually don’t comply.

And in order to do that, in order to demonstrate our lack of compliance with what this administration has been doing, we’re inviting folks into non-cooperation with us starting tomorrow with the Free America Walkouts. And so right now, we have about 850 walkouts on our map. And of course there will be tons of walkouts that won’t actually be on the map. There will just be a few folks in the workplace that are walking out together. And so we’re really excited about all of these folks who are taking up the call and saying, “Yes, I will pick up the mantle and resist and fight back against what’s happening in this administration, what we see happening in Minnesota, in D.C., in Chicago, in Portland, in Mansfield, in Charlotte, in all of these cities across the country.”

TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Yes. The website is Freeameri.ca. So it looks like a Canadian website, but it’s freeameri.ca. Or you can also find it if you go to our website, Womensmarch.com.

SANIYAH YOLANDA: Yeah, of course. So ultimately, Get Free is a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color) youth-led movement that is driven towards reckoning the past harms and establishing equity, equality and freedom for all marginalized communities in the United States. We want to ultimately repair the harms that were done to black and brown people through recognizing the legacy of slavery, its previous and current systemic impact and making reparations the new common narrative and political priority, while also removing any ongoing barriers that would stop us from that progressive change towards equality and equity.

So particularly with everything that’s been going on in this modern fascist regime that we can acknowledge, MAGA has been unleashing modern-day slave patrols on the communities and terrorizing black, brown and immigrant communities from Memphis, Minneapolis, L.A., D.C., Chicago and Charlotte. And now they have been threatening to escalate attacks on New York City. So because of that, NYC students have recognized that enough is enough. After what happened with Renee Good, so many Americans are realizing how white supremacy threatens us all. So we as New York City’s students have decided to rise up and refuse to comply with the injustice, which is why we are aligning with the general strike that Minneapolis is holding next Friday on Jan. 23rd to do the walkout. We’ve seen the way that walkouts in the past with students have been effective and the way that we can actually maximize and mobilize to take a stand and fight back.

SANIYAH YOLANDA: Yeah. If you want more information, you can go to getfreetogether.org. There we have a link to our sign-in pledge that you can sign, which can give you more information on us, what we do and how you can get involved with the organization and this upcoming walkout on Friday.

TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Well, first and foremost, I will say that I think that we like to talk about protests as an on-ramp, a low barrier to entry into the movement. And so for so many people who are seeing what’s happening on the news, they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to get involved, they’re intimidated. It is no easier entry point into the movement than showing up at a rally with a sign. And so we think that’s really, really important. We think it’s really important to welcome new folks into the movement if we’re going to build a mass movement. And also, if we’re learning from how folks have fought in defeated authoritarians across the globe, we have to pay attention to the fact that they had a diversity of tactics. They use non-cooperation. They use humor and ridicule. They use a number of different tools.

And so we in the U.S. have to be taking a look at what are all the tools in our toolbox because as you were saying, the administration is not only not deterred, it is escalating. It is increasing the level of violence. It is increasing the threats. And so we have to be prepared to take a look at what it requires for us to fight back against authoritarianism. What does it require for us to have and build a free America? And so, and that requires, that means that we have to take a look and prepare ourselves and build our muscle to take action in a lot of different ways. It cannot just be the ballot box and it cannot just be mass marches. It has to be a number of different tactics. And we know that effectiveness of non-cooperation, we’ve seen it across the globe. We’ve seen it in the U.S., as Saniyah was saying earlier about the impact of walkouts.

We’ve seen that with student walkouts, going all the way back to the ’60s, we’ve seen it with boycotts going all the way back to the ’60s and beyond. We’ve seen it with strikes. And so it requires us to take a look at all the different ways that we can be cogs in the engine every single day. And we have to be taking up that work of being cogs in the engine. So I think that is really why we are expanding our toolbox and we’re really thinking very strategically about what it is that we can experiment with in this time that builds our capacity to resist and builds our capacity to practice the democracy that we are trying to build.

SANIYAH YOLANDA: Oh, yeah. I think particularly when it relates to us New York City students and how we plan to enact these walkouts, we do have a lot of younger people who will be also on board. So that is something we did have to consider with potential safety and things of that nature. So we are taking a more joyful defiance and solidarity approach to it. So with these walkouts, the purpose is to create an effective contrast to the story that the MAGA regime wants to tell or create. So we are ultimately modeling the effective walkouts that were led by D.C. students, like we had mentioned recently to spark mass refusals to comply with the occupation of their city. And we want to ultimately show that New Yorkers, through our joy and through our community as a response, doesn’t give regime forces the visuals that they want for that crackdown.

And that’s ultimately why the walkouts that we have are planned outside of our schools and are away from areas that will likely have military or ICE mobilization, just out of the protection of people who are potentially underage. But two, also to give the same effect to show the same things that we want them to get, that we will mobilize, we will rally together and that we can maximize the people.

In relation to the civil rights movement, there was a lot of more, I would say, impactful resistance that a lot of people were engaging in. I think we are also taking that approach as well through these walkouts. We have many different schools that are participating, so we’re having multiple different forces at the same time. So we’re really trying to get that effect of we’re all taking a stand, we’re all not complying and at the same exact time, I guess kind of similar to the civil rights movement and how everyone at the same exact time felt the effects of racism.

TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Absolutely. All across the country, 2:00 p.m. local time, you can find a walkout action near you on our map, which is located at freeamer.ca, F-R-E-E A- M-E-R-I.c-a.

SANIYAH YOLANDA: Yes. So this upcoming Friday, Jan. 23 at 11 a.m., we’ll be having a New York City student walkout and we will be meeting for a mass rally and block party at Washington Square Park. For particulars, you can go to getfreetogether.org and we have a link at the top that says sign the pledge to get free, which you can sign that form, which will put you in contact with us that will give you more particular information on the walkouts, updates, a little bit more about our org and how you can get involved.

SCOTT HARRIS: All right. Well, thank you both Tamika and Saniyah. Appreciate all the important work you’re doing. It’s of critical importance now more than ever and I hope we’ll stay in touch because I know what we’re going through this crisis is far from over, but thank you both.

TAMIKA MIDDLETON: Thank you.

SCOTT HARRIS: Take care.