Nationwideschool walkout set to remember Columbine shooting
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Shots ripped through the nation’s consciousness at Columbine High School 19 years ago today — before most of this year’s high school graduates were even born.
Now the self-named “mass shooting generation” plans to walk out of school to commemorate that dark day, and to protest about how little has changed. Two students murdered 13 victims before killing themselves.
Across the nation and the state, 2,400 events are planned, including dozens in South Florida, many of them concentrated around the current epicenter of shock and horror wrought by a semi-automatic weapon: Parkland.
The walkout was conceived Feb. 14, hours after bullets shattered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, leaving 17 dead and 17 more hurt, said Lane Murdock, a 16-year-old sophomore at Ridgefield High School in Connecticut.
“I’ve been so inspired by the MSD students, they are the leaders and the heroes of our generation,” said Murdock, who’s been getting some help from Change.org and Indivisible, a grass-roots resistance organization. “We’re not going to hope and wish anymore. We’re going to demand.”
Ryan Deitsch, 18, a Stoneman Douglas High senior, who is among the #NeverAgain student activists at the Parkland school, said he’s glad to see demonstrations for sensible gun laws continue — independent of his group’s organizing.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 19 years,” he said, explaining how he’s going to be part of the day’s events.
In Connecticut, Murdock said that before all Parkland’s dead were accounted for, she put out her petition for people to join her walkout. And the idea quickly went viral, she said.
Murdock said her age group has no problem staying focused, refusing to become numb to gun violence.
“What’s going to be different this time is we have a young generation who know how to use the internet,” Murdock said. “We have the tools to talk about it and they can’t stop us.”
Based on the number who have signed up through a website, Murdock is estimating this event could draw nearly 2 million participants.
Ariel Feldman, 17, a 12thgrader at Calvary Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale, is hoping for a modest 150 to show up at Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale at 9 a.m. and take part in a march to Fort Lauderdale City Hall, where there will be a two-hour event with speakers and rallying.
She got some family friends to donate a bus to bring those without a car. Feldman, who lives in Tamarac, has experienced the terror of a shooting alert.
“I spent two hours in lockdown,” she said. “Police were everywhere. We were just hiding in a dark classroom.”
At Stoneman Douglas, Feldman had attended plays and summer camps.
“There doesn’t need to be any more senseless death,” she said.
Officially, both public school systems in Broward and Miami-Dade counties say they are willing to give students the space to walk out to mark the day — as long as they stay on campus. It’s a matter of safety, said John Schuster, spokesman for Miami-Dade schools.