Florida students walk out in protest of anti-LGBTQ legislation

Some Florida students are opting to skip class for part of Friday, choosing to learn a banned history lesson instead.

Hundreds of high school and college students across the Sunshine State are walking out of classrooms as part of a protest organizers say is against the state government’s censorship and erasure when it comes to race and gender identity in education.

At noon, they’ll check their voter registration status, send a letter to local school board members and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis pledging they’ll use their vote to defend students’ rights, and take part in a five-minute banned history lesson that will focus on censorship and historic figures in Black and LGBTQ history.

It’s all part of Walkout 2 Learn: a youth-led statewide walkout and rally in defiance of Florida’s crackdown on lessons surrounding race and Black history along with a string of anti-LGBTQ laws that are impacting students.

About a dozen youth activists including Zander Moricz, Anya Dennison, and Gaby Diaz, all current college students and recent Florida high school graduates, organized the movement. Moricz notably went viral last year after school officials warned the then-senior class president “don’t say gay” during his commencement ceremony speech. He delivered a speech that used his curly hair as a metaphor for his queerness instead.

Moricz, Dennison, and Diaz said they felt compelled to help students in their home state. The rest of their coalition is spread out across the country with the goal of mobilizing young people to speak out and vote GOP members with discriminatory views out of office.

According to the walkout’s organizers, students from at least 300 high schools, every Florida HBCU, and 90% of Florida’s colleges have signed up to participate.

Madeline Scotti, a senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Fla., said she’s walking out after school officials abruptly shut down her theater company’s production of Indecent — a queer Jewish love story that centers around how a Yiddish play was censored in the 1920s.

“I became immersed in the realities of harsh censorship in Florida,” she said. “I am walking out in the spirit of Sholem for those impacted by theatre censorship.”

There are also larger-scale evening rallies, which are open to the public, with speakers and local performers in Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Sarasota. Supporters outside of Florida are encouraged to sign an online pledge or donate to the Social Equity Through Education Alliance.

Activist and programmer Alexis Williams will be speaking at the Jacksonville rally.

“What do Ron DeSantis and I have in common? Not a whole lot, but we both love talking about gay and Black people,” she told her 97,000 followers on Instagram. “For me, it’s because I’m a part of both of those communities. But [DeSantis is] trying to make it really really hard and even ban talking about those communities in schools. Learning about marginalized communities is such a pivotal part of our education system. That’s why I’m going down to Florida with Walkout 2 Learn to support Florida students who also believe that diverse education is important.”

DeSantis and his administration have made headlines for his bans on teaching critical race theory, implementing — and now expanding — a bill regarding gender identity in schools that has infamously been nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay,” and barring public schools from participating in College Board’s Advanced Placement course on African American Studies.

Diaz said when she attended a private Florida Episcopalian high school, her administrators prohibited the school’s Gender Sexuality Alliance from advertising the club, didn’t allow students to use affirming pronouns and lacked a Black Student Union.

“Our sexual education was also fairly limited,” she said. “We barely had any resources to begin with, so what’s next for Florida students?”

Diaz cited several bills in the Florida legislature that are driving her concern, including proposals to fight “indoctrination” in colleges; restrict health education, including discussion of periods; and regulate pronoun use in schools.

“For me, Walkout 2 Learn is the one day we can all activate our power to save the communities and histories we love and identify with,” she said.

Friday’s walkout marks the latest example of young people mobilizing. In Kansas City, Mo., students walked out in support of their schoolmate, Ralph Yarl, the 16-year-old who was shot in the head by an 84-year-old man after mistakenly knocking on his door. Last week, Philadelphia high school students gathered in LOVE Park as part of a climate strike.