On January 20th, 2026, one hundred and fifty Milton High School students congregated in the front foyer and proceeded to walk around the outside of the school. They marched against the occupation of United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) in U.S. cities, but this protest, as well as many others, was sparked by the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, according to organizers Cecilia Campbell-Stewart and Sadie Schweitzer. MHS was not the only school with participants in this protest, people were protesting all over greater Boston and the country.

  Campbell-Stewart and Schwietzer, two sophomores, heard about it from social media and decided to take action. 

First, Sadie saw the flyer on Instagram, advertising a walkout, and she thought this was something MHS could be a part of, so she asked her friend Cecilia for help. “So my friend Sadie saw this notice on Instagram that there was this mass walkout planned for the Boston area and like across the country to protest ice,” Campbell-Stewart said, “And she texted me and she was like ‘hey I think I want to do this does anyone want to help, that would be really great’ and I was like, bet.” 

So together they started to spread the idea by word of mouth, texting friends, those friends texting other friends and so forth.  They learned about the walkout on Friday, and by Sunday they heard that about fifty people were planning on participating. 

Before long they realized this was quickly materializing, and so they decided to email Principal Karen Cahill about it, informing her of their plans: “We’ve realized there's this national walkout thing going on, so we've organized one and we think there's about fifty kids who are going to do it.”   On Monday morning, Cahill called them to her office where she agreed to let them walk around the outside of the school between the long block and last period, as long as they were peaceful and kept it under thirty minutes. 

Later that day, about one hundred fifty people were gathered in the front foyer, all there with one goal: to make it known that they weren't going to stand for the actions executed by ICE in Minneapolis or anywhere else in the United States. Sophomore Cory Wong, a participant of the walkout, said, “Yeah, it got around really quick, it seems like a lot of people want to do something to stand up” 

The walkout at Milton High School was part of a larger pattern of protests happening across the United States that day. From major cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles to small towns like Milton, students participated in demonstrations over the same issue. While this walkout was local, students were part of a much broader national movement.