American students stage walkout, say they’re ‘done with being shot’
Tens of thousands of young people from Maine to California walked out of school to demand action on gun violence Wednesday in one of the biggest student protests since the Vietnam War era.
Braving snow in New England and threats of school discipline in places like Georgia and Ohio, they carried signs with messages like “Am I Next?” chanted slogans against the National Rifle Association and bowed their heads in memory of the 17 people killed in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Fifteen-year-old Chloe Appel of Gaithersburg, Md., held a sign that said, “Fix this before I text my mom from under a desk.”
“We’re sick of it,” said Maxwell Nardi, a senior at Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico, Va., just outside Richmond. “We’re going to keep fighting and we’re not going to stop until Congress finally makes resolute changes.”
Supporters say the protests represent a realization of power and influence by young people raised on social media who have come of age in an era of never-ending wars, highly publicized mass shootings and virulent national politics.
As the protests were being staged, the National Rifle Association sent out a defiant tweet that included a picture of an assault-style rifle and a comment saying: “I’ll control my own guns, thank you.”
Around the nation, students left class at 10 a.m. local time for at least 17 minutes — one minute for each of the dead in Florida. At some schools, students didn’t go outside, but lined the hallways, gathered in gyms and auditoriums or wore orange, the colour used by the movement against gun violence, or maroon, the school colour at Stoneman Douglas.
Over and over, students declared too many young people have died and they are tired of going to school afraid of getting killed.
“People are done with being shot,” said Iris Foss-Ober, 18, a senior at Washburn High School in Minneapolis.
Some schools applauded students for taking a stand or at least tolerated the walkouts, while others threatened punishment.
Protesters called for such measures as tighter background checks on gun purchases and a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the Florida bloodbath.
“We’re tired of sitting around and listening to politicians tell us what they are going to do without ever actually doing anything. And we’re also just kind of tired of adults not making it happen — adults saying what they are going to do and then just entirely blowing us off,” said Dominic Barry, 16, a junior at Minnetonka High School in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. “We’re the next generation for all these issues and we want people to know that we’re not going to sit around and let other people not take action on these issues.”
“We want our Congress to know that some of us will be old enough to vote in the midterm elections and the rest of us are going to be able to vote in 2020 or 2022 and they’re going to lose their job if they don’t do what we want to keep us safe,” said Fatima Younis, a student at Frederick Community College in Maryland, who organized a walkout.
Walkouts interrupted the day at schools from the elementary level through college and at some that have witnessed their own mass shootings. About 250 students gathered on a soccer field at Colorado’s Columbine High School, while students who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in 2012 walked out of Newtown High School in Connecticut.
In Washington, more than 2,000 high school-age protesters observed the 17 minutes of silence by sitting on the ground with their backs turned to the White House. President Donald Trump was in Los Angeles at the time.
Congress has shown little inclination to tighten gun laws and Trump backed away from his initial support for raising the minimum age for buying an assault rifle to 21.