STUDENTS WALK OUT
Palm Beach Lakes and Spanish River students hold school ‘walk-ins.’ 1,000 from Boca schools march to City Hall, loudly protest for gun reforms. About 200 leave classes at Boynton High, carry posters, hear speeches.
BOCA RATON — A wave of student activism that began in Broward County, where a high school shooting massacre last week left 17 dead, spread Wednesday to surrounding schools and across the nation, including thousands of students who took part in school walkouts throughout Palm Beach County.
The epicenter was in Boca Raton, where more than 1,000 students as young as 11 years old marched from public and private schools to City Hall, wielding signs, shouting chants and pressing for gun reform.
Angered by the Republican-led Florida House of Representatives’ decision Tuesday to refuse to discuss a ban on assault weapons, Nicole Auchinleck, a 17-yearold at Boca Raton High School, said she coordinated the massive rally using the social media app Snapchat.
“They’re underestimating us,” Auchinleck said of lawmakers, parents and school officials. “This is the new generation.”
Banning AR-15 semi-assault rifles, like the one used by 19-yearold Nikolas Cruz in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting, is a cause taken up by survivors of the high school shooting, who marched in the Florida Capitol on Wednesday while comrades rallied in cities throughout the nation.
The Douglas High survivors coined the movement #NeverAgain on social media, which fueled student protests in West Palm Beach, Lake Worth, Palm Springs and Loxahatchee Groves, among other areas of Palm Beach County.
Similar displays took place in Broward, Martin and Miami-Dade counties. And students rallied
in North Carolina, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and beyond, according to media reports.
Many Boca Raton students went to great lengths to march to City Hall, some of them walking more than 10 miles in South Florida’s mid-afternoon heat. In one instance, students at Omni Middle School — between the ages of 11 and 14 — jumped a perimeter fence at the school, west of Boca Raton, just before noon and darted across streets to evade police and make their way to the protest.
“Everyone says, ‘Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers,’ but nothing has cha n ge d,” said Jasmi ne Medina, a 13-year-old at Omni Middle, who said her uncle, Andrew Diaz, is a baseball coach at Douglas High and survived the shooting.
“The amount of trauma that’s happened with guns ... ” Medina said, pausing. “We decided to take up a cause.”
City Hall consumed with chants and signs
The students who gathered in Boca Raton — from Boca Raton High School, Olympic Heights High, Boca Raton Middle, Boca Raton Christian, Omni Middle and West Boca Raton High — acknowledged their ages with pride when they called on policymakers to strengthen gun laws.
“We’re not old enough to vote,” one student shouted, standing atop an unmarked police car at the protest. “But we will be!”
The courtyard at Boca Raton City Hall was consumed with the sound of chants, “Stop the silence! ... End gun violence!” “We want change!” and “Don’t forget!”
Boca Raton High School Principal Suzanne King said the protest was not a school-sanctioned event, but she and several administrators were on hand in matching blue and gold shirts, and one assistant principal brought a bullhorn.
“We’re here, the administrative team that I brought with me, to ensure student safety,” King said. “Make sure as we’re walking over, they’re staying on the sidewalks. They’re precious to us and we want to make sure they’re safe.”
School District Chief Academic Officer Keith Oswald and some school district police officers were also on hand and the district provided some buses for students from Olympic Heights High School, about 7½ miles away.
Despite the buses, Olympic Heights junior Natalia Giraldo said she and others walked about two hours from the school to get to the rally.
“Our lives matter more than your guns ... you wanting to have a gun,” said Giraldo, who held a “School Zone or War Zone” sign.
Supporting Stoneman students’ message
The cries at schools throughout P alm Beach County were similar. At Palm Springs charter school G-Star, students also walked out Wednesday morning.
“We need to change the gun laws. People are dying,” said Ashanti Michel, 15.
Lauren Andres, another 15-year-old at G-Star said: “Just wait until we can vote.”
About 200 students from Boynton Beach High School walked out of class Wednesday carrying “tasteful posters” and shouting “passionate speeches,” Principal Guarn Sims said. “Today, we kind of anticipated it ... ,” Sims said. “I got on our intercom, saying I was tremendously proud of our students today.”
At Palm Beach Lakes High in West Palm Beach and Spanish River High in Boca Raton, the students staged what might be called a walk-in, to voice solidarity with victims of the shootings. Rather than pour into the streets at noon as students at both school had planned, they rallied within the boundaries of the schools.
At Palm Beach Lakes, students filed onto the football field and filled the bleachers by the hundreds. Senior Kevin Higgins, 18, said he knew several people with similar mindsets to the Parkland shooter. “The mental issue could be prevented, gun violence can definitely be controlled,” he said.
In a far more chaotic scene at Spanish River High, students said they respectfully waited until after a moment of silence to try to leave the campus, but were stopped by police and administration officials, some of whom pulled students off fences as they tried to scale them to join the march. The result of the mixed messages was frustration, said students, some of whom have close ties to Parkland.
Ashley Ketchum, 17, a Spanish River High School junior, has a friend from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school who is hospitalized for a gunshot wound. “They told me I was able to leave, and I was denied that,” Ketchum said.
After the demonstration ended, some students attended their next scheduled class. But others refused, instead staging a peaceful sit-in at the school’s courtyard.
The Boca Raton City Hall rally, the largest display by far in Palm Beach County, was not without its own anarchy.
Two counterprotesters wielding “pro-gun” signs and a Donald Trump “Make Amer- ica Great Again” flag showed up midprotest. Within minutes of waving the Trump flag, some students threw water bottles and shouted insults at the counterprotesters, who left moments after speaking with police. The turbulent scene was emotionally wrenching for Magdalena Palej, a junior at Boca Raton High, who broke into tears at the display. “It was disrespectful,” Palej said. “To come here and start problems when we’re trying to do something good ...”
Across the board, student protesters pressed for similar change: broaden background checks for weapons purchases, restrict access to assault rifles, enforce mental health screenings for gun owners and increase security at schools.
Justine Andal, a Boca High junior at the City Hall rally, said the students plan to “use social media, use our platform and use our voices until we’re heard.”
A fellow Boca High junior, Giorgi Fracassi, added: “We’re here to show that we’re not playing around. They’re underestimating us, but they won’t be for long.”