Elite NYC High School Kids Ditch Class, Protest at Trump Tower in Heavy Rain

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Most of the city's high school kids may not have been old enough to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential elections, but you can bet they've picked sides. And one large group of them, at least, made their choice known Tuesday — chanting anti-Trump slogans through the streets of Midtown in the pouring rain.

Hundreds of high schoolers from more than a dozen city campuses, many of them private and prestigious — including The Dalton School, the Beacon School, LaGuardia High School and Poly Prep — walked out of class Tuesday morning and marched through the rain to protest President-elect Donald Trump and his proposed policy.

According to Gothamist, who sent a reporter to tag along, the student demonstration was somewhat impromptu, and grew in numbers up until the last second as students messaged each other via social media.

"I'm here for all the people of my generation," Grace Isaacman, a junior at Dalton, told Gothamist. "I knew this country was racist, sexist and homophobic, but I think this has been a wakeup call for a lot of people."

Much like their adult counterparts in the days prior, student protesters chanted slogans like "We reject the President-Elect," "Black Lives Matter," "No Trump, no KKK, no racist U.S.A." and "Education, not deportation" as they marched the 50 blocks from Trump Tower to Washington Square Park, according to the journalists in attendance.

The New York Post, on the other hand — a pro-Trump publication — was not amused by the junior political stunt. Many parents and teachers at the elite high-school campuses involved had no idea their students were going to play hooky on a weekday in the name of "disparaging The Donald," the Post reported, and "Department of Education authorities said Tuesday that no city students were officially allowed to leave campus and that those who did could be subject to punishment."

Lead photo by Bin Im Garten/Wikimedia Commons