Students protest gun violence
Students at Pittsburg High School stage a die-in to remember the victims of gun violence as part of a Day of Action nationwide on Friday that coincided with the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shootings. The students held a 30-minute rally, with voter registration tables, chanting and speeches calling for increased gun control and a focus on school safety.
Enough. The word echoed across the quad of Pittsburg High School on Friday as students gathered at 10 a.m. to decry gun violence in schools and on the streets, one of countless sites across the country where young people paused to remember the 13 victims who died exactly 19 years earlier in the mass shooting at Columbine High School.
“Enough,” said the signs the students carried. And “Enough,” said those who stepped up to the microphone, repeating the hash-tagged battle cry of a generation of young people spurred to action following the Valentine’s Day slayings of 17 teachers and students in Parkland, Fla.
The Day of Action was the latest in a string of youth-led demonstrations calling for increased gun control and a focus on school safety, a national movement launched by the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting in February.
The protests, which included a national student walkout on March 14 and the March for Our Lives on March 24, have challenged
politicians to take up the gun debate, to consider a ban on assault weapons and an increase in the age required to buy a gun, from 18 to 21.
“We don’t want to live in fear we’re going to get shot up before we graduate,” said Roxana Ramos, 18, one of the organizers of the Pittsburg High rally.
Teenagers across the country marched to city halls or chanted in school courtyards Friday, in many cases with the support of school administrators and teachers.
“Educators are united in saying ‘No More’ to the gun violence that has senselessly injured or taken the lives of too many students and too many school staff members, some of whom have bravely sacrificed themselves to shield their students from harm,” said Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association, prior to attending a walkout at a Richmond elementary school. “Words and condolences from policy makers are not enough. It’s time for common-sense gun laws.”
At Pittsburg High, students held a 30-minute rally, with voter registration tables, speeches, chanting and a fiveminute moment of silence as a few dozen teens participated in a die-in, lying on the ground in remembrance of their fallen peers.
Civics and economics teacher Stacy Poppinga watched the rally in the shade of a voter registration tent, where dozens of teens were filling out forms and vowing to vote in the first election they could.
Poppinga recalled that at the start of the school year many students believed they didn’t have a voice, that their vote wouldn’t matter. She’s seen that perspective shift as students watched the Florida teens draw the attention of elected officials from city council chambers to state legislatures and all the way up to the White House.
“This is really important to them, that they feel they matter and are not forgotten,” she said.
Senior Alex Torres, 18, said he had many sleepless nights in the wake of the Parkland shooting, with sleep eluding him until 5 a.m. as he thought about the Florida victims and the potential victims at his own school.
“I was thinking about their lives, about how much they mean to us, but not to the system,” he said.
On Friday, he stepped up to the microphone to read a poem written in the wake of those long nights and out of those dark thoughts.
It was called, “A Poem to Assault Rifles.”
“While the defenseless minors of America are put to pressure, the only number going up is our body counts,” he read as he neared the end of the poem. “And the number after that: bullets made. And the number after that: caskets made.”
After reading the poem, Alex surveyed the 3,000 students in his school quad and the hours of planning to gather them there. After the Parkland shooting, he felt he had to do something. Enough was enough. “It had to stop there,” Alex said.
“We don’t want to live in fear we’re going to get shot up before we graduate.” Roxana Ramos, Pittsburgh High student