Students Walk Out; The Adults Follow

Hundreds of New Haven high school students walked out of classes Monday to a downtown ​“sanctuary” church — with the support of school officials but very much on their own terms.

The students came from Wilbur Cross, Hillhouse, and Common Ground High Schools to support Nelson Pinos, a factory worker from the Annex neighborhood who took refuge at the First & Summerfield Church across form the Green 294 days ago rather than heed a federal order to return to his native Ecuador. His three children, including Cross junior Kelly Pinos, attend city public schools.

School administrators decided that they would support the students by working to ensure their safety, according to Board of Ed spokesman Will Clark. They deemed the walkouts a ​“field trip” and arranged for buses to ferry Cross students to the church.

Rather than wait to ride buses, many of the students emerging from Wilbur Cross headed downtown on foot … 

… marching down Orange on the sidewalk, then taking to the streets on Grove, walking amid traffic (as shown in these two videos taken by Lucy Gellman).

Eighty-five Common Ground students took the 243 CT Transit bus to the church, where Yale and Hillhoue students joined the Cross students. (Simultaneous rallies were organized at Southern Connecticut State University and Wesleyan.) Rally co-organizer and emcee Vanesa Suarez (pictured) of Unidad Latina en Acción told the First & Summerfield crowd that school administrators at Cross ​“harassed us” by trying to have the students take the buses. ​“It’s not a ​‘field trip,’” she declared. ​“What’s happening here is real. … The students have the right to take to the streets and protest.”

“This is our movement. [Adults] have to support us,” Yale junior Larissa Martinez, whose family came to the U.S. from Mexico in 2013 and remains undocumented, told the crowd.

The Board of Ed’s Clark noted that the schools are legally responsible for students’ safety during the school day. He said the district has consistently supported student actions like these and strive for a ​“positive collaboration” with students when they choose to speak out. He and other administrators said they were supporting the students, not trying to harass or thwart them.

Suarez waded into the crowd to offer the mic to students like Cross junior Annyeliris De Jesus, who declared: ​“My friend Kelly deserves to be with her dad!”

New Haven activist Norman Clement offered the students a history lecture different from what they might hear in the classroom. ​“No one is illegal on stolen land,” which the United States is, he told them. He noted that Pinos is ​“indigenous to these territories” and said Pinos has as much right as anyone to live here. ​“My people had no borders,” said Clement, a descendant of the Penobscot tribe and designated Quinnipiac ​“confederate.” He urged students to join an Oct. 13 march to Fair Haven demanding that a school on Grand Avenue no longer be named after Christopher Columbus, ​“that rapist, that murderer! He was an idiot; he got lost!”

Nelson Pinos watched from the sanctuary of the church’s front landing (where by policy, immigrant agents don’t tread) as the students left the scene. ​“It is pretty emotional for me to support of all these kids,” he said. ​“I know a lot of them. They know the pain. That’s why they’re out here supporting me.”

With cops protecting their rear flank, students marched east on Elm Street. Speaking into a megaphone from the passenger side of an accompanying car, Suarez urged them to continue to Orange Street.

But chants drowned her out. The students led themselves to the steps of City Hall. Suarez and other adults joined them there, where chanting continued:

What do we want?
Nelson’s freedom!
When do we want it?
Now!
And if we don’t get it?
Shut it down!

Unofficial school chaperones like Alan Gibbons (pictured) hung back. Gibbons, an ESL teacher at Cross, pronounced the students’ action an ​“excellent” learning opportunity.

Before marching back to the church, the students stopped in front of the U.S. District Court for more speeches and chants. Suarez urged the crowd to lobby New Haven’s mayor and alders to pass an ordinance officially declaring New Haven a sanctuary city.

Common Ground High’s staff youth organizer Z Bell (pictured) listened from a distance. Bell and other school officials had helped coordinate the students’ CT Transit bus trip, provided them Subway sandwiches for lunch, and contacted their parents to let them know where their kids were. ​“I wanted their parents to know they were safe,” Bell said. ​“I wanted to respect student agency.”

And, Bell said, ​“I wanted to support Nelson Pinos.”