One week after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, students around the country are speaking up by staging school walkouts in hopes that one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history won’t be just another “thoughts and prayers” tragedy ignored by politicians. They're speaking to politicians and making sure that real change is on the horizon.
In Florida's state capital of Tallahassee, Parkland teens spent the day occupying the halls of the capitol building chanting "Never again" and "Shame on you!" They were poised, begging politicians to take action.
“When did politics and money from the NRA become more important than our lives?” one survivor asked at the podium. “To everyone at the NRA and everyone affiliated with the NRA: We are not afraid of you. We will not be silenced by anything you have to say.”
"I'm prepared to not worry about anything else besides this,” another student said. “Because change might not come today, it might not come tomorrow, but it's going to happen, and it's going to happen before my lifetime, because I will fight every single day to see sensible gun laws in this country.”
CNN reported that students from towns near Parkland, Florida, marched to the Parkland campus on Wednesday. On Tuesday, roughly 1,000 students at West Boca Raton High, 12 miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, refused to go back to school and ran to Stoneman Douglas after a 17-minute moment of silence for the 17 people murdered on Valentine's Day.
Protests are catching fire outside of Florida too.
In Washington, student protestors were seen passing through a train station and making their way to the capitol.
Presumably some of the students seen passing through Union Station were those from Montgomery Blair High School, where students walked out of class and began walking down U.S. Route 29, according to a reporter at WJLA-TV.
Students in Kentucky also protested, according to WCPO.
These protests and walkouts follow an unhopeful move made by some lawmakers. In Florida Tuesday, House Republicans voted down a motion that would have taken up a ban on assault weapons — like the one used by Nikolas Cruz that left 17 dead.
Shares