Investigative grassroots program Defending Education uncovered a 36-page protest “toolkit” designed to mobilize schoolchildren and teach them how to organize and execute left-wing protests. Alliance for Education Justice (AEJ) developed the leftist guide, which anonymous tipsters sent to Defending Education earlier this month to expose political activists targeting children in public schools.
The toolkit aims to turn children into leftist warriors more focused on protesting for “social justice” issues than on their education. As Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Defending Education Paul Runko told The Federalist, “[The left] is putting children on the front lines. It’s absolutely gross.”
The toolkit contains bundles of colorful graphics for K-12 children on how to “mak[e] injustice impossible to ignore” while “shifting who holds power in a moment” in the classroom. AEJ’s document opens with this unsettling statement:
Across the country, young people are already angry, restless, and taking action in response to conditions that affect their safety, dignity, and futures. … This toolkit exists because students are already moving. Our role is not to create unrest, but to help young people organize their energy safely, strategically, and toward the people and institutions responsible for the harm.
The toolkit goes on to promote walkouts that “intentionally break school rules” to “interrupt business as usual and demand accountability.” It states that the goal of a walkout is to force school officials into a “decision dilemma: meet the demands and make changes, or respond in ways that expose the injustice being defended.” The toolkit recommends wearing clothing that obscures the face or tattoos at walkouts and utilizing the encrypted messaging app Signal to keep plans secret. Parts of the booklet go beyond encouraging protests to explaining how to organize them. About 20 pages are dedicated to teaching young provocateurs how to create organized groups with appointed roles. Some sections go over setting up a police liaison team, while others teach how to stay out of legal trouble.
The booklet does not define what a protest-worthy issue is, but the pages are covered with children holding leftist slogan signs. One says “Pol-ICE free schools.” Another says, “Where’s the outrage for Renee Good, Alexi Pretti, Keith Porter, and others that were killed by ICE?” Deeper in the booklet, a young man holds a picture of President Trump’s face melting with the words“Defund Walls” printed over his head.
The creator of the toolkit, the AEJ, is a nonprofit “collaborative of 30 youth-led education activist groups” working to “grow the left-progressive movement,” according to InfluenceWatch. One thousand high school students are reportedly a part of the AEJ, and, according to Runko, the AEJ actively drove or participated in the police-free schools movement, the social justice event National Day of Action, and the March for Our Lives anti-gun protests.
The AEJ leverages social media to attract young activists and then uses them to organize school-wide protests. Runko believes that most children do not care about the issues they protest, but they will take an opportunity to skip class.”If the school [has] no consequences for [a] walkout, why not leave class? What’s the consequences? None. That’s how [protests] bolster their numbers,” he said.
The number of school protests has drastically risen over recent years. In 2024, 24 school walkouts occurred. That number increased in 2025 to 59 and exploded to 401 in 2026.
Though the number of school walkouts is on the rise, they are nonetheless violations of attendance law. Under Des Moines v. Tinker, the Supreme Court indicated that school districts should prohibit or stop walkouts if they disrupt the learning environment, Runko said. While some schools claim they are protecting children’s rights by refusing to interfere, the truth is “these walkouts are in fact violating that school ruling, and school districts are just brushing it off,” Runko noted.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was one of AEJ’s initial funders, and the AEJ also receives monetary support from a conglomerate of leftist organizations, such as the Marguerite Casey Foundation, New Venture Fund, and Tides Foundation. Notably, Tides Foundation received $17.2 million from leftist billionaire George Soros through his Open Society Foundations between 2009 and 2022. AEJ seeks to create “police-free” schools as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Runko suspects a disturbing motive behind the AEJ and other organizers of school protests: “political revolution.”
Many of the socialist organizations behind left-wing student activism state they desire some kind of revolution. The opening to a political training guidebook by the Sunrise Movement says, “We’re not going to get there overnight, and we’re not here to get back to the status quo. We’re here to win a political revolution.” The Young Democratic Socialists of America say on their website that “[America’s] capitalist system can only be overthrown by workers organizing collectively to take political power from the rich and build a new society.”
Runko thinks leftist organizations are manipulating and targeting the youth because their movements lost power to the right under Trump. “The left far very much wants their political power back. They’re going to amp these [protests] up,” he said.
If children are ever to be safe from leftist indoctrination, Runko believes that education must begin in the home. “[Parents] must talk to their kids about what they’re learning [and] encourage them to seek out the truth,” he said. He also recommends that parents opt their children out of compromised curricula and get involved with local school board committees and meetings, and “then start to tell a better story to sway people to a pro-Western civilization mindset.”
The Federalist reached out to the AEJ for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
