Students Walking Out Against “Don’t Say Gay” Bill in Florida Defend Themselves Against Violent Trump Supporters Screaming “White Power!”

Florida Youth Liberation Front (YLF) reports on a violent attack by Trump supporters against a walkout by students at Western High School in protest of the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. Check out the original post with more pictures and videos here.

This timeline of events during the Western High School walkout of March 11th comes from the direct testimony of several students and YLF affiliates present, coupled with video and photo evidence included below.

It is first necessary to provide some background. Western High School is located in Davie, one of the most white schools in Broward County and certainly almost all of South Florida as well. It is also a high concentration, therefore, of more right-wing and pro-Trump elements in an otherwise solidly Democratic area.

An Account of the Fascist Attack on the Western High Walkout

This timeline of events during the Western High School walkout of March 11th comes from the direct testimony of students and YLF affiliates, coupled with video + photo evidence included.https://t.co/uupHdxmaLt pic.twitter.com/YkGU1MVm0A

— Florida Youth Liberation Front (@fla_ylf) March 12, 2022

Students had organized a walkout at Western to occur in the parking lot. This organization was entirely independent of any kind of club, even Western High’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance, which stated in an Instagram story that they were not going to endorse the event under any circumstances. The walkout had begun to gather peacefully in the parking lot, and given its organic organization, had far more enthusiasm than Cypress Bay’s walkout 2 days prior.

Promptly, a group of white (assumably straight) boys got on top of a pickup truck, holding a Trump 2020 flag and chanting “Fuck Joe Biden!” They then began to throw projectiles at the crowd of walkout participants, and, Western High being a super majority-white school, many people began to switch over to their side.

Video of the Western High clashes between the Don't Say Gay walkout and right-wing agitators.
Timeline and additional footage is available below:https://t.co/uupHdxmaLt pic.twitter.com/7tfH2mgWhw

— Florida Youth Liberation Front (@fla_ylf) March 12, 2022

What followed next was a series of savage attacks by the crowd of right-wingers against the walkout. Rocks were thrown at the walkout participants, and the roaming horde of fascists-in-training flipped over tables and threw trash cans on the ground while engaging in fistfights with protesters, many of whom fought back effectively and bloodied at least one right-winger.

It did not end there. The crowd of right-wingers eventually pushed through the crowd, cornering a walkout participant on the 2nd-floor balcony, who jumped off and broke his leg as a result. The pro-LGBT+ crowd re-consolidated itself, taking out several pride flags, with an immediate response by police who arrived and confiscated the flags but left the pro-Trump rioters unscathed.

‘Don’t Say Gay’ walkout gone wrong held at Western High in Broward, which was also the site of last year’s graduation speech gone wrong. https://t.co/g4cIPfyR9b

— Scott Travis (@smtravis) March 12, 2022

Police then kettled the protest, and pushed the crowd back inside before school ended. The school then sent out a subsequent email talking about walkout participants starting fights, with little to no mention of fascist attacks and provocations. Many students present reported chants of “Fuck gays!” and “White power!” coming from the crowd waving a Trump 2020 flag, but these concerns have not been acted on by the school.

Many people considered it egregious that property was destroyed during the walkout. This is not a concern that we share; we choose to focus on the fact that a group of several dozen proto-fascists felt the audacity to attack a demonstration in support of the LGBT+ community on campus.