Thousands walk out of American schools in biggest student protest for 40 years
TENS of thousands of school pupils across the United States spilled out of their classrooms yesterday and demanded tighter gun controls in one of the biggest student protests since the Vietnam era.
The National School Walkout was organised one month after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb 14, in which 17 people, many of them students, were killed.
Young people at nearly 3,000 separate schools and youth groups took part in the coast-to-coast demonstrations as they called for measures including a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks for gun buyers.
The walkouts were staged at 10am in the different US time zones, meaning the entire event lasted for several hours. Many demonstrations included a 17-minute silence, signifying one minute for each victim in Florida.
Lewis Mizen, a Parkland survivor originally from Coventry in the UK, said the support had been “phenomenal”. The 17-year-old, who moved to the US three years ago, added: “We’re all standing up together as the next generation. We want to get things happening in Washington and in state capitols.
“This is going to be our life mission, something we are going to continue to fight for until the day we die. We’re not going to stop until every child in America can go to school safely.”
David Farber, a history professor at the University of Kansas, said it was the “biggest youth-oriented and youth-organised protest movement” since the “early Seventies at least”.
He added: “Young people are that social media generation and it’s easy to mobilise them in a way that it probably hadn’t been even 10 years ago.”
In Washington, 2,000 pupils from local schools gathered outside the White House and sat on the ground with their backs turned while a nearby church bell tolled.
They carried signs saying “I should be worrying about my grades, not my life” and “Protect kids not guns”.
Pupils then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the US Capitol, passing the Trump International Hotel where they chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go!” As the protests took place the National Rifle Association said in a tweet: “I’ll control my own guns, thank you.”
Democrat politicians, including Chuck Schumer, the party’s Senate leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the House leader, walked out of Congress to address the students. Mr Schumer led the crowd in a chant of “We’re going to win.” Senator Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic presidential hopeful, also walked out and addressed them.
Charlotte Lindblom, 17, said: “We have to keep going and be persistent. The politicians have to realise that we can vote pretty soon and we can kick them out of office.”
Pupils also crammed into a packed hearing of the US Senate judiciary committee where the father of one of the Florida victims addressed senators.
At New York City’s Fiorello H Laguardia High School pupils poured into the streets of Manhattan and chanted “Enough is enough.”
In Florida thousands of pupils at the Parkland school filed on to their football field, applauded by their families.
At Columbine High School in Colorado, where two pupils killed 13 people in 1999, young people also gathered.
MTV and other youth TV networks went silent for 17 minutes in support.