Hours before a three-day-long protest organized by Iowa City Students for Justice in Palestine began on the Pentacrest Friday, a similar demonstration was already underway two miles to the east.
Even before classes began at City High on Friday morning, City Students for Palestine (not affiliated with the group above) were building a temporary encampment with tents on the school’s front lawn and posting signs for their day-long School Strike.
“This is not a protest against our school,” Kalea Seaton, a City High senior and one of the group’s leaders, told Little Village. “It’s just standing in solidarity with the university students across the country, who are standing up to their universities and asking them to divest from the genocide in Gaza.”
“We’re trying to speak up for what we believe is right.”
Seaton and her fellow organizers were inventing their fellow students “to spend the day, an open hour or just a few minutes with us.” By the end of the day, about 35 students had joined the temporary encampment at some point, Seaton said.
This was not the first protest that City Students for Palestine has organized. On Jan. 26, the group led a walkout of City High students who marched to the Pentacrest to join that weekly Friday afternoon protest by Iowans for Palestine. In April, the group was an organizer of a protest at Collins Aerospace in Cedar Rapids. Collins was purchased by United Technologies in 2018, which later merged with Raytheon to create what is now called RTX. a major defense contractor, and an important supplier of parts to the Israeli military. Between those protests, the students organized a dinner featuring traditional Palestinian dishes at the Iowa City Public Library in February.
“We also did a week of action at our high school, where we offered an educational event every day,” Seaton said. “Things like writing letters to our elected representatives, and watching films about Palestine.”
Seaton said she and other students involved in City Students for Palestine have been active in other social justice movements and protests during their high school career, but explained the formation of the group came about “kind of by accident.”
“There have been weekly protests on the Pentacrest for quite a while,” Seaton said. She and her friend and fellow student Penelope Wilmouth “wanted to go and participate. Then two more friends said they would join them. As they continued to discuss the idea at school, more students became interested.
“So we decided to turn it into a walkout,” Seaton recalled. “Then we started an Instagram for it. And then it became a whole organization.”
Days before that walkout on Jan. 26, some City High students had attended a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Iowa City Community School District, asking the board to include more information about Israel and Palestine in the district’s high school curriculum, including information on the current war, and a discussion of bias related to the conflict and how it affects students.
“As students, we’re advocating for our school to pay more attention to what is going on,” Seaton, who wasn’t part of the group who went to the board meeting, said.
So far, there haven’t been any noticeable changes to the curriculum.
“That’s the sort of thing that’s going to take a long time,” Seaton said. “But on a smaller scale, we have been able to bring a lot of awareness to students in our school. As time has gone on, we’ve seen more and more support for things that we’re doing. Both in trying to educate people, and in getting people involved. Community support has really been amazing.”
Before the strike at the City High on Friday, the school district sent out a statement that was generally supportive of the student’s right to protest, that explained any student who participated might be charged with an unexcused absence.
Seaton said City High’s administration had been supportive of their protest.
“We sent an email to the administration at the beginning of this week, making them aware that we were going to be here,” she said. “They fully support our right to free speech and our right to protest peacefully out here.”
Even though the school year is drawing to a close, Seaton said City Students for Palestine plans to remain active.
“It’s really hard to just sit back and watch,” she said. “That’s part of the reason we’re out here doing things.”
“We strongly believe that it is not right to bomb children. And it’s hard seeing the number of deaths increase every day.”
Since the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) began their operations in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war between Israel and Hamas, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed. People have died not just from direct military action, but also from lack of medical care, as hospitals and clinics have been destroyed and humanitarian aid restricted, and from starvation.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain said, “There is famine — full-blown famine in the north [of Gaza], and it’s moving its way south.”
“We want people to start doing something about this,” Seaton said. “Trying to make a difference in the world. That’s what all this is about.”
