Nineteen years after the massacre at Columbine shocked the entire nation, five years and four months after Sandy Hook made the American president cry on television, and two months after Parkland shocked us again, students at over 2,500 schools across the U.S. united for a second National School Walkout, calling, once again, for the grownups to do something to stop gun violence in this country.
Unfortunately, before most of the country’s peaceful protests began, another school shooting happened, this time in Ocala, Florida. Thankfully, nobody died, and the shooter is in custody.
But this is what it looks like when school shootings are the norm—students and teachers now know exactly how to best barricade a classroom door. For anyone who left high school before the early aughts, this seems foreign and shocking, but just about every K-12 student in America today was born after Columbine.
This is the new normal, the only normal, that today’s youth has ever known. It’s been their normal since kindergarten. And American children (and their educators and parents) are tired of feeling unsafe in their schools.
These students protested with specific goals and demands for change.
No school is the same, and the protests reflected that diversity.
Some schools created on-campus programming for walkout participants.
Some students left campus in order to consolidate their power in one visible place.
In Manhattan and St. Louis, among other cities, students took it one step further, and staged a die-in.
In Washington, D.C., a moment of silence at the White House was followed by a two-mile march to the Capitol.
In Detroit, even a helicopter cam couldn’t capture the extent of the protests.
Some protests were smaller.
Predictably, the NRA chose to play the fearmongering fool, and blaming Barack Obama for Parkland in a mind-bending, nonsensical rant that blames the former president for not preventing the Stoneman Douglas massacre, while also insisting that nothing must change today.
The ticker is full of bonus nonsense, for those inclined to watch.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, student protestors are focused on what’s really important.
Young people are fighting in droves for their lives. As thousands turn 18 every single day, they gain the right to vote for the lives. With less than 200 days to the midterms, it’s crucial that seasoned voters do everything in their power to get these excited ballot rookies to the polls come November, so that together, we can vote out the politicians the NRA has long owned.