For a fifth day, students from across Denver on Tuesday walked out of their schools to protest the deaths of men at the hands of police.
The students, the majority of them from GALS Denver, a sixth- through ninth-grade charter school at the Del Pueblo campus, waved signs and chanted “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” and “I can’t breathe!”
They marched from their school to the state Capitol, accompanied by school district security, police and paramedics.
“It doesn’t matter what age,” said Zamiko Jacobus, a ninth-grader who organized the march. “If you have something to say, you deserve to express it.”
Students have been marching in solidarity with protesters across the country who are angered by recent grand jury decisions declining to indict police officers for confrontations that resulted in the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock on Monday appealed to student protesters to end repeated school walkouts and work with police to improve race relations.
“I am proud of the way you’ve stepped out to have your voices heard,” Hancock said, adding that it was time for students to go back to class.
“It never was fair that people are telling us to stop,” Jacobus said.
Liz Wolfson, founder of GALS, said the school didn’t learn of the protest until Tuesday morning then contacted authorities and parents to let them know about the march.
“They did this on their own volition,” Wolfson said.
She added that staff members who joined in on the protest, including one who at the Capitol called for a moment of silence in Brown’s honor, will be docked a personal day.
The students caused brief delays for motorists south of downtown.
About 150 students from the Denver School of Science and Technology, a combined middle school and high school, also walked out of classes headed for the Stapleton Community Center on Tuesday. Roughly three dozen students from Kipp High also walked out and made their way to the Capitol with signs.
Police said approximately 100 students at George Washington High participated in a protest on school grounds.
Later, about 30 students from STRIVE Preparatory School marched near West Alameda Avenue and Federal Boulevard, according to Denver police.
Police officers monitored several of the marches on video monitors at the department’s command center.
On Monday, several hundred students from South High walked several miles from their campus to the Capitol, snarling traffic along the way.
