The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Hundreds take to the streets for local ‘March for Our Lives’ event
Community members in Avon Lake joined hundreds of thousands of people around the world March 24 to speak out against violence as part of the March for Our Lives.
The Avon Lake event, which is a sibling march to those in cities like Washington D.C., New York and Chicago, was organized by both students and adults.
Community members were invited to take to the streets and make their voices heard in opposition to violence in schools. With peaceful signs in hand, participants walked around the western parking lot of Avon Lake High School, 175 Avon Belden Road, before returning to the lot for speeches by students.
Kristen Gould, 17, of Avon Lake, is a senior at the high school and the student organizer for the event.
She said the goal of their march was for the community to unify behind the message of keeping school children safe.
“(We’re trying to) begin a conversation about what we can do to prevent school shootings in years to come,” Gould said.
Kristen LePrevost is the adult organizer. She said she got the idea for the Avon Lake version of the event after the Feb. 14 shootings of 14 high school students and three adults at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
She said she posted in a parents of Avon Lake Facebook group to see if anyone was interested in holding the event and within a few weeks had the event put
together.
While the national march focuses mainly on gun control, LePrevost said the local event would be more inclusive.
“The national march is extremely anti-gun, but we really wanted to be inclusive in that we do believe there’s many different issues that cause school violence,” she said. “We decided to make it more of a community information event where we invited 12 organizations on a variety of issues such as gun control, mental illness, addiction, we have some churches here.”
Gould was born after the Columbine High School massacre of 1999 and the lockdown drills, which simulate and attempt to prepare students for an active shooter incident, have been a constant presence during her years in school.
“To simulate something like that in such great detail, and especially for kids that are younger I think
that could be actually very anxiety provoking, scary,” she said. “You have to think about that and have to put that idea into young kids’ minds that it’s such a possibility that we have to go to such great lengths to try and prepare ourselves for it.”
According to Gould, it has been frustrating that politicians, on both sides of the aisle, don’t seem interested in actually doing anything about the issue.
“It makes me feel like the separation between the two parties in our country are so concerned with being on one side or another that we can’t come together to think about how to keep weapons out of schools,” she said. “We’re in a gridlock on how to protect students and putting more weapons into the school is just doing the opposite.”
It is this frustration and helplessness that LePrevost is trying to combat.
“They don’t believe there’s anything they can do here in Avon Lake that changes it,” she said. “You have to be in DC, you have to be a big politician and we’re very disheartened to
hear that.
“It kind of felt like we have to train the new generation to be activists,” she continued.
Avon Lake Mayor Greg Zilka attended and voiced his support for the students not only in Avon Lake but around the world.
He said the fear instilled in students by the lockdown drills is similar to what he felt during duck and cover drills when he was in school.
“When I was young, we ducked under desks to protect against a nuclear attack,” Zilka said. “Think of how absurd that was, but that was very traumatic for me as a person. When I was a kid, every time we heard the old, pre-jet planes fly over, which made a lot of noise I became very anxious.
“I’m sure there are children around the country who feel anxious about going to school and feel less safe, which is very unfortunate. School should be a safe place, but they can’t be citadels and prisons to protect people. That doesn’t create a very nurturing environment at all.”