ICE Used So Much Tear Gas, a Public School Fled Its Campus

As Rolling Stone reported, in June, the fence of the school’s play area displayed a laminated message. Its reported content, which matches a statement Cottonwood posted to Facebook, denounced the “harm being inflicted on our neighbors, ecosystem, students and school” and called on ICE to cease using weapons such as tear gas, “‘green’ gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets reported near our campus.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve experienced this, Cartwright told Rolling Stone. The school, after all, weathered protests against police brutality in Portland in 2020. (Per KGW, the school emerged from that summer relatively unscathed.)

Historically, the Cottonwood School has operated “harmoniously with the protesters,” Cartwright explained to Rolling Stone. “Our issue is the chemical weapons being used against them that were impacting our space.… We can’t have children picking up a plastic tear-gas ball that’s going to pop.”