Students rally against violence
Many in Santa Fe schools will walk out of class today, though some say they are commemorating students who died and don’t want to make a political statement
Students at Monte del Sol Charter School will spend 17 minutes Wednesday holding hands in a silent vigil for students and school staff slain in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Students at the Academy for Technology and the Classics will walk silently through a labyrinth on campus, carrying signs bearing the victims’ names and ages.
And at Ortiz Middle School, 17 students wearing black T-shirts will gather on the athletic field to honor the dead.
Hundreds of students at schools across Santa Fe plan to participate in a nationwide walkout Wednesday to commemorate those killed in Parkland and other recent school shootings, to protest gun violence and to call for stricter gun laws. Called the #Enough Walkout, the event has been organized by Empower, the youth branch of the Women’s March.
Organizers also are calling on students and adults to take part in a national march to protest gun violence March 24. An event is scheduled that day in Santa Fe.
The youth movement has been inspired by survivors of the Parkland massacre who led the charge in pressuring lawmakers to take action to help end gun violence in schools.
Santa Fe students have appeared at school board meetings to voice their fears about gun violence and have held demonstrations on campus. The school board recently voted to allow staff and students to take part in Wednesday’s
events without facing consequences — as long they spend only a few minutes demonstrating and do not leave campus. Participation in the walkouts is not mandatory, officials said.
Expected to draw thousands of students and school employees across the nation, the walkout is set to begin at 10 a.m. local time Wednesday and last 17 minutes — in honor of the 17 students and staff killed in Parkland — though, some schools are veering from the plan. Ortiz students, for instance, will demonstrate at 2 p.m.
And not all schools are focusing on politics.
Max Manzanares, a senior at ATC, said the student council decided to pay tribute to the shooting victims by engaging in a silent procession devoid of a political agenda.
“This is solely for us to come together as a school and honor the lives of other high school students and teachers who were taken away from us,” he said.
Ortiz students also are putting the day’s focus on honoring the dead. “We thought it would be more powerful if we were dressed in black,” said eighthgrader Edwin Aranda. “Seventeen students in black — that’s 17 losses. Our goal is to show how these deaths impact family members and friends.”
Manzanares said the youth movement has been “particularly galvanizing, because the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students have been so tenacious in their pursuits and unwilling to back down to make their voices heard.”
The Florida students have met with President Donald Trump, who initially pledged support for their cause by asking for tougher background checks for those seeking to buy semi-automatic weapons and said he backed raising the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic weapon to 21 from 18.
Trump since has backed down on the second pledge, leading some critics to say he is kowtowing to the wishes of the National Rifle Association, which opposes any move to limit gun purchases.
Trump also has called for arming teachers, an action many students and educators have rejected. In a survey released Tuesday, members of the National Education Association expressed an overwhelming lack of support for that idea.
Other schools in the Santa Fe district planning demonstrations Wednesday are the south-side César Chávez Elementary School, where students will write messages of peace in chalk; Milagro Middle School, where students plan to walk the track in silence for 17 minutes; and Santa Fe High School — the site of several recent shooting threats.
Santa Fe High students plan to meet on the campus plaza around 10 a.m. and release balloons in memory of the students from both Florida and Aztec, where a gunman took the lives of two students in a December 2017 shooting.
Santa Fe Indian School students plan to take part in the nationwide event by holding student speeches and presentations.
The private Santa Fe Waldorf School and St. Michael’s High School are also planning walkouts.
Some local private schools, including Santa Fe Preparatory and Desert Academy, are closed this week for spring break and have no plans to demonstrate.