Parkland survivors visit Ariz. for protests

Student organizers with the March for Our Lives movement announced Thursday morning that survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting will come to Arizona to participate in student walkouts and die-ins today.

Students in more than 2,000 schools across the country are planning to walk out of class at 10 a.m. local time today, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in

Colorado, as part of the National School Walkout.

Parkland shooting survivors and activists Delaney Tarr, Alfonso Calderon and Charlie Mirsky are scheduled to be among the hundreds, possibly thousands, of students walking out of Arizona schools.

In the days after the shooting, Calderon gave a passionate speech on CNN declaring that “we will not be silenced.” Tarr spoke to hundreds of thousands of people at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., last month.

The survivors also will attend a “diein” protest at the Arizona Capitol, where students will lie on the ground to simulate deaths from school shootings.

The walkouts and die-ins will be the latest in a series of student-led protests since the mass shooting that killed three adults and 14 students — some just 14 years old — on Valentine’s Day at the Florida high school in Parkland.

In Arizona, March for Our Lives student organizers led a march for guncontrol laws, outside the state Capitol last month, that drew at least 15,000 people. They also staged a raucous sitin in the lobby of Gov. Doug Ducey’s office.