Students to march for gun control
Saturday rally starts at Capitol, ends at Plaza with speeches; spring break could lower turnout
Students at Capital High School are getting pretty good at hunkering down in locked rooms. Since Feb. 14, when a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 students and staffers, administrators at Santa Fe’s south-side high school have held three lockdown drills to prepare for a possible active shooter, according to senior Anna Martinez.
Martinez says the anxiety is palpable. And she’s had enough of it.
On Saturday, Martinez, classmates and teens from 12 other Northern New Mexico high schools will march from the Roundhouse to the Plaza, where they’ll rally for gun control, safer schools and an end to the rash of school shootings that has infuriated the nation.
“It’s very frustrating to think that school is this place of worry rather than this place to be inspired and be passionate,” said Martinez, who will be one of 16 student speakers at the event.
Santa Fe marchers will unite in chorus with students from around the world during a demonstration, March For Our Lives, that will take place in Washington, D.C., and more than 800 other cities, mostly in the United States.
The youth-led marches come after a nationwide school walkout earlier this month that was inspired by Parkland survivors who have been pushing for tougher gun laws. The walkout drew students from some 3,000 schools in the U.S., including several in Santa Fe. Events that day were held to honor the Parkland victims and serve as a call for legislation to help fight gun violence.
Saturday’s event also comes in the wake of yet another school shooting. Police in Maryland say a teenage boy opened fire Tuesday morning at Great Mills High School, critically wounding one student and injuring another. The shooter died in the incident. Officials said it was unclear if the shooter was killed by an armed school resource officer or died by suicide.
In Santa Fe, a handful of lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, both New Mexico Democrats, will attend the march. Udall and newly elected Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber are scheduled to speak.
Also, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, another New Mexico Democrat, is set to meet Friday with New Mexico students who are planning to participate in Saturday’s march in the
nation’s capital.
Four Pojoaque Valley High School students plan to carry a banner signed by 1,000 supporters from back home. The students already had plans to travel to Washington as part of a class project to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Organizers in Santa Fe aren’t sure how many students will march from the Roundhouse, especially considering it’s the second Saturday of spring break for most schools in the area. But if the sign-up sheet at Pojoaque Valley is any indication, it could be crowded.
Mariposa Gonzales, a senior who organized participation at Pojoaque Valley, said about 40 students plan to attend.
Another student activist, Acacia Burnham, a senior at the New Mexico School for the Arts, said participants still are deciding what policy changes they will urge lawmakers to work toward. For her, gun control is key.
“It’s all well and good to [march] for moral reasons or as a form of emotional protest
against the fact that people our age keep getting killed,” she said. “But for me, I’m marching because I don’t want my little brother to grow up in a world where he’s in danger of getting shot because the gun control laws are so lax.”
Burnham prefers stricter regulations to arming teachers, the strategy backed by many conservatives, including President Donald Trump.
Still, the odds of any major gun control legislation — or even minor measures — are slim with a Republican-controlled Congress.
Udall and Heinrich previously supported what is known as “concealed carry reciprocity” — NRA-backed legislation that would make it easier to take a concealed carry permit from one state to another.
But both have come out against the bill in recent months.
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Udall said he believes student advocacy is “encouraging” and impactful, but “until we take action here in Congress, we’ll never make the progress we need to slow this epidemic.”
Students, spurred to action by the Parkland massacre and invigorated by the outcry of its students, aren’t keen to wait.
“Our generation are the only ones who are really going to be able to impact the kind of change we want to see,” Burnham said. “At the end of the day, adults are not doing anything about this issue.”
The New Mexican’s Andrew Oxford contributed to this report.
Contact Sarah Halasz Graham at 505-995-3862 or sgraham@ sfnewmexican.com.