National School Walkout today at 10:00 a.m.

by

Today at 10:00 a.m., students across Arizona will walkout of their classrooms for a 17 minute vigil in remembrance of the 17 victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Philip Boas of The Republic writes, Why every adult should support students’ March 14 walkout:

If you believe young people shouldn’t be walking out of their classrooms on Wednesday to protest gun violence in America, if you believe this is a waste of precious classroom time and only encourages chaos and defiance …

… you are wrong.

The kids are right.

These young people are citizens of this country, and every citizen has the right to commit acts of civil disobedience in the face of great wrongs.

We’ve failed for decades to solve this

There is great wrong in this country right now. Adults are committing a soaring sin of omission. They have been failing for decades to solve the problem of rampage shootings, and in particular, school rampage shootings that first yanked us awake 18 years ago when two deranged teens carried rifles and bombs into Columbine High School and never walked out again after killing 12 students and a teacher.

Columbine came and went with little change.

And then came more campus shootings.

2007: Virginia Tech, 33 dead.

2012: Newtown, Conn., 28 dead.

2015: Roseburg, Oregon, 10 dead.

2018: Parkland, Fla., 17 dead.

Turns out, those shootings meant something

Perhaps the biggest mistake we adults made was concluding they all amounted to nothing – no important controls on gun access and usage, no meaningful restraints on the mentally ill and only marginal improvements in school security.

No matter how bad the carnage, no matter that 20 small children were slaughtered in their classroom at Sandy Hook, no matter that an eccentric retiree could train his makeshift machine gun on a Las Vegas concert crowd and kill 58, the American public remained unmoved. Or so we thought.

In the media we decided Sandy Hook and Las Vegas and Virginia Tech came and went without meaning.

Teens wouldn’t let us move on

But we were wrong. All of this has been cumulative.

And the proof is the children of Parkland, Fla. – those students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who two days after a crazed teenager killed 17 of their own, gathered at a park and decided their school wouldn’t become just another stat on America’s bloody gun register.

In two days they were already seeing the old familiar patterns. Interest was dying.

“I was getting worried, like this is over, people do not care,” said 17-year-old David Hogg to the Wall Street Journal.

“I started live-streaming so people could see, to reignite the interest.”

And a national youth movement was born.

How you can show your support

In the way that young people are adept at social media, Hogg used Twitter’s Periscope app to broadcast himself and his fellow students to a country that had seemed to lost faith in its ability to solve its tough problems.

Since then the Parkland kids have been saturating national television, staging and inspiring protests across the nation. The youth arm of the Women’s March drew from their fire and organized a national school walkout on Wednesday.

People who want to show their solidarity with the students can wear orange or walk out of their workplaces for 17 minutes in memory of the 17 who died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Other national demonstrations will include the March 24 procession on Washington, D.C. and the April 20 remembrance of the slaughter at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Why schools shouldn’t quash protests

Many schools are supportive of Wednesday’s walkout, giving kids permission to demonstrate for 17 minutes and providing them security. But others have threatened their kids with suspension and other penalties if they participate.

They’re making a mistake.

This problem directly impacts American school children. Many of them may be naïve about the ins and outs of the gun problem and all the nuance of the Second Amendment, but they are right about one large thing:

The adults in this country created our gun culture with its 300 million-plus weapons. And they’ve left it with so few restrictions that a fevered teenager named Nikolas Cruz could easily purchase a semiautomatic assault rifle and kill 17 students and faculty.

Not only should the kids protest.

We should all burn orange – with the same righteous anger – about this problem.

Maybe schools today should be teaching Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and by Mohandas Gandhi. Make it a teachable moment in the First Amendment right of free speech, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Students and teachers participating in today’s walkout should feel free to send Blog for Arizona photos of your walkout. We may be able to post your photos in a later post.

22 thoughts on “National School Walkout today at 10:00 a.m.”

  2. Bernie Sanders Verified account
    @SenSanders
    3h3 hours ago

    Thank you to the young people throughout this country who are walking out today and who have the courage to do what the United States Congress is not doing: lead us forward to stop the slaughter that we have seen from coast to coast due to gun violence. #NationalWalkoutDay

    Video:
    https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/973939027236794368

    • That’s hard to look at. I see that someone commented that 7,000 is roughly the same number of American’s killed in Iraq/Afghanistan, and this is equal to waging war on our children.

      Except that children don’t sign up to go to war.

      But ‘mah guns!

  4. Big News!

    “House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Republican, told reporters that the chamber would pass the legislation, which would authorize $50 million a year to help schools and law enforcement agencies prevent violent attacks, on Wednesday.”

    That’s 5o million dollars! Or, if you do the math, about $370 for each of the 135,000 US schools.

    It’s a publicity stunt, a little piece of dog turd to show the folks back home that you “did something” about gun violence while still preserving Real ‘Merican’s right to slaughter children.

  5. Meanwhile, Trump’s latest tweet. Not a word about the students. So out of touch, lives in an alternate universe.

    Donald J. Trump Verified account
    @realDonaldTrump
    3h3 hours ago

    We cannot keep a blind eye to the rampant unfair trade practices against our Country!

    • No word about the students because the NRA pumped 30 million dollars of mostly Russian money into Trump’s campaign, and they own the cowardly GOP, and Trump needs to the cowardly GOP to implement his vision for America, which seems to include slaughtering children while they’re at school.

      Also absent from President David Dennison’s feed is any mention of Russia carrying out a chemical attack on British soil, even though Teresa May has discussed this with him and Britain is our closes ally.

      The President of Trump University is fine with the blood of children being splashed on the walls of their school and our allies being attacked by his boss Putin because he’s a Cadet Bone Spurs, coward, who works for Russia.

      • I guess the children are merely
        collateral damage in his noble mission to Make America White Again. Not everyone gets to live.

        • Amerikkka.

          The video from across the country of tens of thousands of school kids walking outside for 17 minutes is inspiring.

          Some are on football fields in formation of hearts, peace signs.

          On 11/09/2016 I was worried about America. These kids are going to make things a little better.

  6. NBC News Verified account
    @NBCNews
    2h2 hours ago

    Student speaks in front of the U.S. Capitol on #NationalWalkoutDay: “Their right to own an assault rifle does not outweigh our right to live. The adults have failed us. This is in our hands now, and if any elected official gets in our way, we will vote them out.”

    https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/973949286357590018

  7. Preach!

    Rev. Dr. Barber
    ‏@RevDrBarber
    28m28 minutes ago

    Enough! As students #walkout, let’s all walk w/ them to challenge Congress to stand up to NRA & outlaw assualt weapons. And let’s resolve to walk into voting booths & change the politicians who won’t represent us.

  8. John Lewis Verified account
    @repjohnlewis

    Sometimes you have to get in trouble–good trouble, necessary trouble–to make a way out of no way.

    7:29 AM – 14 Mar 2018

    • Yeah, I was thinking about this. This “let’s arm the teachers” discussion is essentially just the NRA once again redirecting the discussion away from “common sense” gun control legislation. After Sandy Hook, it was that “good guy with a gun” talking point and, sadly, it was effective in redirecting the discussion, at least in the media.

      Now, of course, they really want to do it, but just wait for the first kid to get shot and killed by a teacher.

      I’m not a fan of Clint Eastwood films, but I watched “American Sniper” a couple of days ago. I have to say, it really does give one some appreciation for the level of training and skill required to take out someone engaged in an act of violence.

      For those who weren’t there during the Parkland massacre, the armchair police, it seems perfectly reasonable that a cop or an armed teacher could take out a shooter firing an automatic weapon. Just find him and shoot his ass. Trump, of course, would have rushed in and taken the shooter down with his bare hands.

      These kids who are marching are forcing a different conversation and we have to pray that they have the focus and determination to stay in this for the long haul. Or we end up with the NRA prevailing once again and we move on to the next shooting. After all, they own Trump and they are heavily invested in the GOP.

Comments are closed.