The Florida YLF stands in full solidarity with anarchists and antifascists in Lyon and in full opposition to the dissolution of the Antifascist Group of Lyon and Surroundings (GALE). The French government has begun proceedings to ban GALE, as part of its bid to suppress leftist movements in tandem with the pro-independence uprising in Corsica.
Fight state repression wherever in the world it is present, from Portland to Moscow. Siamo tutti antifascisti!
The Florida Youth Liberation Front stands in full solidarity with our comrades in Corsica fighting against French colonialism. The killing of Yvan Colonna was a crime against humanity, but only a symptom of the larger problem being all the problems with his conviction.
Colonna was accused of assassinating a moderate French prefect of Corsica, Claude Érignac, who was even open to autonomy. Érignac’s successor was a hardline Republican who scoffed at any mention of self-determination for the Corsican people; thus it seems like a dubious choice of victim, and for this reason Colonna always maintained his innocence in the matter.
Corsica has been a French colony since 1768, with repeated rounds of pro-independence unrest. The riots in the aftermath of Colonna’s assassination have been the most recent example, forcing the government’s hand to the point that Macron is now offering autonomy to the island.
Freedom to all Corsican political prisoners! U statu francese tomba!
I was one of thousands of students at Cypress Bay High School who walked out against the Don’t Say Gay Bill on March 9th. In this reportback, I will be sharing my experience and takeaways from the demonstration.
In the days prior to the actual walkout, Cypress Bay’s GSA (Gender-Sexuality Alliance) had received permission from the school to go ahead with the walkout. This occurred in stark contrast to a walkout for COVID safety, the prospect of which a month and a half ago was immediately shut down via county directive. Though it is a good thing that security did not disrupt this student protest, it reflects the near-impossibility of spontaneous action in high schools excepting times of mass social unrest.
On the day of the actual walkout, of course, there was a general energy of anticipation. Most of the student body was aware of the walkout to occur, but many teachers likely holding right-wing beliefs had told their students ahead of time that they would defy a schoolwide directive to allow all who wished to attend to leave the classroom.
During 2nd period, during which the walkout actually happened, the school administration did not announce it over the PA as they had promised student organizers. Regardless, everyone began to leave their classrooms and head towards the courtyard.
Me and my friends made it outside and found a crowd far larger than we had anticipated. By then, probably at least 1,500. The news choppers were already there, ahead of time, with 3 already circling the school. WSVN, WPLG10, and CBS4, but for some reason there was a news station from Nashville live-streaming our walkout. There was a substantial amount of enthusiasm present for the demo at this point.
The crowd of around 2000 students had begun to lose enthusiasm as soon as the walkout halted in place. Numbers had shrunk drastically by the time that the walkout had officially ended, because many people had wanted escalations, as, regrettably, were later instigated by homophobic rednecks at Western High 2 days later.
There had been a general sentiment of excitement in the student body, as a lot of people thought it would escalate, as the first walkout since the 2008 and 2013 riots at the school that hadn’t been organized by the school itself, as the post-Parkland massacre walkout had been.
The 2008 and 2013 riots both began as food fights that escalated due to a general apathy for school as well as a disappreciation of how the school was being run. In 2008, the riots escalated with haste, with students engaging in running battles with school security and throwing down barricades across campus. Eventually, most students left campus as the confrontations winded down.
In 2013, though, many confrontations with security occurred, and the assistant principal was tackled, resulting in several detainments and a few dozen suspensions made. The crowd didn’t leave the school, but rather stayed in and made the most of the opportunity to skip class.
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 + 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.
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 supermajority-white school, many people began to switch over to their side.
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. To be clear, this was not the boy pictured below, who was defending his girlfriend from a 3-on-1 by Trump supporters.
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 reconsolidated 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.
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, in a solidly Democratic area.
