One month after 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students across the country held walkouts to protest gun violence, showing again the power and reach of the movement they’ve started. More than 3,000 walkouts were planned, the Associated Press reports. A large group stood in front of the White House, backs turned, for 17 minutes of silence:
The protests reached into school after school. The New York Times reports that, in some areas:
… students openly defied school districts that had warned them not to participate. In Cobb County, Ga., near Atlanta, where the school district had threatened discipline, more than 100 students at Walton High School marched from their school moments before the clock hit 10 a.m. The students, some bearing signs and others just stoic expressions, walked past the portable classrooms abutting the student parking lot and filed onto the football field. A small group of parents huddled together in a subdivision, supporting the students.
Some of the protests had an explicit mission to carry the students’ action beyond the walkout:
The country’s moral leadership on guns lies with teenagers.