Students organize May Day walkouts

Donning a T-shirt reading, “It’s OK to punch Nazis” and a DIY punk style baseball cap, Lincoln Fricon yells to a crowd of his classmates, “Guys! We’re walking this way!”

Fricon, a 15-year-old student at Rochester’s School of the Arts, organized a walkout on May 1 to protest the Trump administration and celebrate May Day, or International Workers Day. The 150-student-strong march, which began at SOTA and ended at the offices of WHEC TV-10 in downtown Rochester, briefly disrupted downtown traffic on Friday.

“The start was the ICE killings (of Renee Good and Alex Pretti), and then the committing of war crimes and bombing Iran without going to Congress, along with mass funding of Israel, so they could bomb Lebanon and overtake Palestine,” says Fricon.

Regarding issues closer to home, he says “the idea of ICE trying to come in here, building a detention center in Batavia, trying to build one downtown, the idea that people who are my classmates could be, you know, taken from their families is not a thought I like to live with, so it’s either I sit and be quiet or I use my voice.”

Other students echoed Fricon’s concerns in chants that voiced general opposition to Trump, his administration’s immigration policy, and the president’s rhetoric, viewed by many as racist and homophobic.

Also helping to lead chants was Bug Carrigan, another student activist in their sophomore year, 

“My mother is an activist. I’ve been with her to other protests before and she’s out of town, so I’m here to make her proud,” Carrigan says. 

Though the demonstration was escorted by adults associated with the No Kings protests who also coordinated with school safety officers, it was organized by Fricon and the student body.

“We are doing this because crimes are being committed in this supposedly free country. … You have to prove that you are more than just a couple of high schoolers who are trying to get out of school,” he says.

Data from the Crowd Counting Consortium show an increase in the number of anti-Trump or left-leaning demonstrations from 2017 to 2025, Trump’s initial year in office during his first and second terms. Though demonstrations have remained largely peaceful, high-profile incidents of violence have occurred, most recently at anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement mobilizations in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. 

“There is always a fear that something will happen, not because we are going to escalate, but because the people who are supposed to be keeping things divided and equal and safe are going to be the ones to escalate, and we have seen that happen in other protests, where they are the reason a peaceful protest has escalated to violence,” Carrigan says.

At James Sperry High School in the Rush-Henrietta School District, students planned to join Carrigan and others at the SOTA walkout. However, they were warned by administrators about the consequences of leaving campus.

According to organizers of the walkout, school administrators supported students’ right to demonstrate. Still, they warned them that the minimum penalty for leaving campus during school hours is a one-day suspension. In this case, suspensions would take effect on today, when AP exams are scheduled to occur, precluding academically inclined students from participating. 

“The majority of our participants are dedicated students and wouldn’t have been able to attend (with the risk of suspension),” says Susanna Sherman, a student organizer at RH-HS.

Student organizers instead chose to keep the demonstration on campus, where they rallied on environmental, social, and economic issues. In a statement to the Beacon, Raina St. John, a student organizer of the walkout at RH-HS, said: “We want to send a message that the youth of America will not simply stand by while rights are stripped from our neighbors and families. We are ready and willing to fight for what we know is right.”

Carrigan, who hopes to be more involved with such events, would like to help “figure out what to do, how to get more people involved, and how to teach them what to do, how to not panic, how to stay organized, how to stay together, because we are stronger in numbers and we never will be alone.” 

In addition to the walkouts, a rally was held at Washington Square Park in downtown Rochester, followed by a march that ended at Austin Steward Plaza, where speakers from several advocacy groups and labor unions gave speeches. 

Speakers included Dan Maloney of the Rochester Labor Council, Elizabeth Davila of SEIU 1199, Christina Christman of the Federation of Social Workers, Gabriel Marcano of the Worker Justice Center, Roy Porter of AFGE Local 3342, and Luis Torres of Metro Justice.

Speakers spoke out against Trump’s immigration policies and their impact on farm workers, cuts to funding for health care and social work and corporate power, and advocated for taxing the rich and abolishing ICE. 

Additionally, some organizers were there to raise awareness about an upcoming general strike in two years, when several major union contracts will be up for renegotiation. Advocates for the strike handed out fliers referencing the Rochester General Strike of 1946, in which thousands of workers successfully struck in solidarity with city municipal workers who were fired in retaliation for labor organizing.

Also in attendance was Luis Jimenez Alianza of Alianza Agricola, who spoke about the case of Dolores Bustamante Romero, a 54-year old grandmother and Mexican immigrant who was seized by ICE during a routine check-in in Buffalo. Romero was in the United States legally while contesting a deportation order.

David Wazana is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s second cohort.

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