Student protests against gun violence sweep U.S.
Thousands stage classroom walkouts, marches as movement to get lawmakers to act persists
Thousands of students, emboldened by a growing protest movement over gun violence, stood up in their classrooms Wednesday and walked out of their schools in a nationwide demonstration, one month after a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Florida.
The 17-minute protests at hundreds of schools were intended to pressure Congress to approve gun control legislation after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and come 10 days before major protests in Washington and elsewhere.
The first large wave of students left their classrooms at 10 a.m. ET. Across the country, others walked out at 10 a.m. in their local time zones.
The demonstrations were not limited to school property. In New York, students marched in the streets, while in Washington, signclutching students gath-
ered outside the White House and on Capitol Hill.
School administrators grappled with how to respond. Some districts welcomed or even tacitly encouraged walkouts, while others threatened disciplinary action against students who participated.
It is unlikely that officials in Washington will quickly heed the demands of the students. Although Florida last week raised the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21 and extended the waiting period to three days, President Donald Trump on Monday abandoned his pledge to seek national-level reforms that the National Rifle Association opposed.
Differing demonstrations
The demonstrations unfolded in different ways from city to city and school to school. In some places, demonstrators chanted and held signs. At other schools, students stood in silence. In Atlanta, some students took a knee.
Thousands of students around New York, many backed by permission slips from their parents, walked out of their schools and converged on central locations — Columbus Circle, Battery Park, Brooklyn Borough Hall, Lincoln Center.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, stretched out on the sidewalk as part of a “die-in” with students in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the former home of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
In Washington, thousands left their classrooms in the city and its suburbs and marched to the Capitol steps, their highpitched voices battling against the stiff wind: “Hey-hey, ho-ho, the NRA has got to go!” One sign said: “Fix This, Before I Text My Mom from Under A Desk.”
Members of Congress, overwhelmingly Democratic, emerged from the Capitol to meet them. Trailed by aides and cameras, some legislators highfived the children in the front rows, others took selfies, and nearly all soon learned that the young protesters had no idea who they were.
Except, of course, for “Bernie Sanders!” which the protesters screamed at the Vermont senator, as well at some other whitehaired, bespectacled legislators.
Asked by reporters about the walkouts, Raj Shah, Trump’s deputy press secretary, said the president “shares the students’ concerns about school safety” and cited his support for mental health and background-check improvements.
Congress took modest steps Wednesday to prevent violence in classrooms — even as lawmakers continued squabbling over broader action to curb gun rights.
The House passed the STOP School Violence Act of 2018, 407 to 10.
The bill reauthorizes a program created in 2001 through the Justice Department to prevent threats against schools. The legislation authorizes $50 million to intensify school security, pay for federal “threat assessment teams” to help school districts sort through reported threats, create an anonymous reporting system so that students and others can report threats and pay for training and technical assistance programs for law enforcement and school officials to help identify potentially violent behavior.
But the bill says nothing about firearms — a top demand of the student protesters.
Protests move west
At Santa Monica High School in Southern California, hundreds of students were guided by teachers to the football field. It felt like a cross between a political rally and pep rally, with dozens of students wearing orange T-shirts, the color of the gun-control movement, and #neveragain scrawled onto their arms in black eyeliner.
“It is our duty to win,” Roger Gawne, a freshman and one of the protest organizers yelled to the crowd.
Not all students were supportive. Just after the organizers read the names of the Parkland victims, another student went on stage, forcibly grabbed the microphone and shouted “Support the Second Amendment!” before he was called off by administrators.
Some of the day’s most poignant demonstrations happened at schools whose names are now synonymous with shootings.
Watched by a phalanx of reporters, camera operators and supporters, hundreds of students crowded onto the football field at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shortly after 10 a.m.
“We’re with you,” a woman shouted from the sidewalk. Others took up the chant.
The event was suffused with sadness, given that the school was the site of the Feb. 14 shooting that has galvanized the new movement for gun control restrictions.
Notes of condolence, fading flowers and stuffed toys, damp from recent rain, still lie on the grass outside the school and affixed to metal fences.