The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

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Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:40 PM

Thousands Of Students Walk Out Of Classrooms Nationwide Wednesday To Protest Gun Violence, Call For Gun Control

From Maine to Hawaii, students left school to demonstrate against gun violence in what could be the biggest display yet of the student activism that has emerged in response to last month's massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In nearly 3,000 reported protests nationwide, students from the elementary to college level took up the call in a variety of ways. Some took part in roadside rallies to honor shooting victims and protest violence. Others held demonstrations in school gyms or on football fields. In Massachusetts and Georgia and Ohio, students went to the statehouse to lobby for new gun regulations.

The coordinated walkouts were loosely organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women's March, which brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to Washington, D.C., last year. The group urged students to leave class at 10 a.m. local time for 17 minutes -- one minute for each victim in the Florida shooting -- and suggested demands for lawmakers, including an assault weapons ban and mandatory background checks for all gun sales.

"Our elected officials must do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to this violence," the group said on its website.

Students spoke out about why they chose to leave class.

Amanya Paige, 16, a junior at Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County, told the Washington Post that many schools in her district are participating in on-campus walkouts “to pay our respects and to show that the student voice matters and we won’t stand for the lack of gun control when it comes to school safety. This is where we spend the majority of our time and pray that we are safe every day.”

“Seventeen people are dead and I am no longer willing to listen to politicians who deem my life less valuable than a piece of metal," Maya Homan, of Palo Alto, Calif., told the New York Times.

In Parkland, a walkout at Stoneman Douglas is expected to remain within the school’s perimeter, in part for safety reasons, Ashley Schulman, a 17-year-old senior, told the Wall Street Journal.

But each community was urged to shape its own protests, and while parents and teachers in many districts worked together to organize age-appropriate activities, school administrators had mixed reactions. Some have applauded students for taking a stand, while others threatened discipline.

Districts in Sayreville, New Jersey, and Maryland's Harford County drew criticism this week when they said students could face punishment for leaving class. In Pensacola, Florida, Superintendent Malcolm Thomas ordered students to hold an in-school assembly instead, telling them they could discuss voting and mental health issues, but not guns, and saying that political banners would not be allowed.