Chants echo at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon as students march after walking out of school in coordination with nationwide protests to stop funding United States (U.S.) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Jan. 30. They crowd the sidewalks as they move toward Sportsmen’s Lodge, weaving past passersby and shoppers while holding poster boards over their heads. Scrawled in thick marker, one reads “Melt ICE,” another, “Immigrants Built This Country.” Her voice hoarse and legs tired, Hudson Phillips ’27 stands among these students, deeply aware of the tension between hope for change and doubt about whether it will come. Phillips said despite initially being unsure about the impact of the protest, she valued the civic engagement she saw and was pleasantly surprised by the experience.
“I was hesitant to go,” Phillips said. “I didn’t think that it would be that effective or enact real change. But overall, a lot of people were able to learn something about being civically engaged, and people around us were able to see that young people care about this issue. I ended up enjoying the protests much more than I thought I would.”
Three out of 10 people participate in protests or collective behavior related to social movements, according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 48% of students reported attending a protest within the last year, with 74% of those that attended saying the experience increased their sense of community, according to a Chronicle poll.
Following the death of Iranian Mahsa Amini in 2022, thousands of Iranian Americans marched in Los Angeles in solidarity with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that began in Iran, calling for justice for Amini and an end to the oppression of women, according to the Los Angeles Times. Mattin Tasbihgoo ’27, an Iranian American who attended these protests, said his participation increased his connection to his community and ethnic identity.
“At the protest, I felt invigorated,” Tasbihgoo said. “It’s a different feeling when you’re fighting for a cause deep in your heart that you know is right, with everyone else supporting that cause with you. I reconnected with my community through that tragic event and tapped into who I felt I really was as an Iranian American.”
Tasbihgoo’s experience reflects broader patterns in why people choose to protest. The primary motivations to protest are a strong sense of injustice, the belief that change is possible and identification with a community that shares their values, according to a study done by the University of Amsterdam.
Upper School Head of Visual Arts Gustavo Godoy, who marched on Jan. 30 in downtown Los Angeles to protest ICE, said the issue of immigration has always been important to him and worth taking action for because of his family’s personal connection to it.
“I come from an immigrant family, so a lot of the politics matter [to me],” Godoy said. “They affect people in my family or like my family. We are at the center of what’s going on politically right now in a lot of ways. [Immigration] has been a big issue for me since I was a kid. When I was in college, I was protesting against similar policies that were coming into play in California.”
Upper School Physics Teacher Yanni Vourgourakis said he has never felt the need to attend a protest because he feels the political system works in his favor and does not discriminate against him.
“I’ve never gone to a protest,” Vourgourakis said. “I’ve just never felt compelled enough to go to one. If there was something that was very personally threatening to me, I probably would. If I felt that the group I was in is being discriminated against, I imagine, at some point, I would have to stand up for that. [But] the political system largely works for me.”
Although some individuals choose not to protest, others see value in the broader impact of demonstrations. A protest can have a variety of goals, including to influence public opinion, connect with others and draw attention to an issue. Protests have an overarching purpose of demanding change, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Phillips said the purpose of a protest is to increase visibility for an issue and show general support for it.
“In general, a protest [aims] to raise awareness about an issue or to show how many people care about an issue,” Phillips said. “One of the more impactful parts of going to the ICE walkout was seeing people drive by and honk in support and see that hundreds of high school students do really care about this issue. [Protests] keep issues in the front of people’s minds and show them that there’s a coalition they might want to join.”
Birdie Reynolds ’28, the great-granddaughter of President Jimmy Carter and a member of a politically active family, said protests provide the initial support for political change, to be followed by funding for representatives that believe in those causes.
“[Change] has to start with a protest because that is the voice of the people,” Reynolds said. “But the funding is almost equally as important, because in the political world we live in, it is so necessary to get representatives who represent your beliefs, and that’s done through funding for their campaigns. A lot of successful political movements start with grassroots movements.”
Despite these benefits, many people question whether a protest is truly effective or simply a symbolic display of activism. Godoy said this criticism misunderstands the central goal of protest, which is to put on a performance.
“After the [ICE walkout], kids were saying, ‘It was really performative’,” Godoy said. “And yeah, but that’s what a protest is at its core. It is a performative act. So when you say that, it feels like you actually don’t know what protest is trying to accomplish.”
However, Phillips said some participation in protests can be insincere and lacking true engagement.
“There were performative aspects to the ICE walkout,” Phillips said. “Some of it felt like people were doing it because it was a trendy thing to do [or] to get selfies to post on Instagram to seem like a good person. There were times that I was annoyed and I was like, ‘How many of these people are really taking the time to educate themselves and do as much as they can for this issue that they’re professing to care about?’”
Tasbihgoo said the performative nature of these events is a tactical necessity to garner attention rather than a flaw.
“At the end of the day, protests are performative because they have to be,” Tasbihgoo said. “You have to put on a spectacle in a way [and] create disruption. When the anti-ICE protests first broke out in L.A., they shut down freeways. That really spread the word.”
Most successful social movements tend to have mobilized at least 3.5% of the general population, according to a study done by Harvard Kennedy School. Despite 10,700 protests recorded in 2025 alone in the U.S., no protest in the country’s history has ever drawn the roughly 12 million people necessary to hit that 3.5% threshold, according to The Guardian and the Center for American Progress. Tasbihgoo said he felt discouraged and disheartened after the Woman, Life, Freedom protest he attended didn’t lead to tangible change.
“After I went to the protest a few years back, nothing changed,” Tasbihgoo said. “I was demotivated. I kind of lost hope that anything would happen again. It feels my contribution and voice fell flat in a way. The reality of the situation is there’s almost nothing that can truly be done.”
Vourgourakis said although protests will never change someone’s opinion, they can be effective in forcing a response from politicians.
“You either agree with someone or you don’t,” Vourgourakis said. “It is all very emotional. [But] people expressing what they want can definitely cause politicians to respond and realize that there’s some kind of push for a certain agenda they need to contend with if they want to stay in office.”
Godoy said any amount of attention and awareness a protest can garner is worthwhile, regardless of its scale.
“I don’t think [protest] is pointless,” Godoy said. “Whether it’s two people standing on a street corner or 100,000 people marching in Washington D.C., having your voice heard might just get one more person interested and to pay attention to your issue. But somebody has to say something first.”
