Florida shooting: US high school students stage mass walkout
NB: Well done, students! I wish you solidarity from the entire world! Its soon going to be the 50th anniversary of May 1968, another time students movements shook the world. Keep it up! DS
Students and school staff across the US are commemorating the Florida school shootings with a walkout, exactly one month after the killings. They are stopping lessons for 17 minutes in memory of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Pupils at the school, which was targeted by a former student, hugged each other on the football field.
Students and school staff across the US are commemorating the Florida school shootings with a walkout, exactly one month after the killings. They are stopping lessons for 17 minutes in memory of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Pupils at the school, which was targeted by a former student, hugged each other on the football field.
Protest organisers
accuse Congress of failing to tackle gun violence. The White House
revealed a plan this week to deter school shootings which does not include
President Donald Trump's repeated calls to raise the age for buying
semi-automatic rifles to 21. Instead, it moves
ahead with his controversial proposal to provide firearms training to school
employees.
How is the protest unfolding? The walkouts began at
10:00 (10:00 EST is 14:00 GMT) across America's time zones. Organisers of the
National School Walkout, who were also behind the Women's March in January 2017
against Mr Trump's inauguration, called on "students, teachers, school
administrators, parents and allies" to take part.
In Parkland, families
and supporters applauded as thousands of students slowly marched on to the
Stoneman Douglas school football field. School principal Ty
Thompson called on them to stage the "biggest group hug". A large crowd of
students from the Washington area gathered outside the White House holding
signs reading "Protect People Not Guns" and chanting "Never
again" and "Enough is enough". Some students also
gathered at Capitol Hill where they were addressed by the Senate and House
Democratic leaders, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
"We're all moved
by your eloquence and your fearless insistence on action to prevent gun
violence," Ms Pelosi told them. "Thank you for
bringing your urgency to this fight, to the doorstep of America, the doorstep
of the Capitol of the United States." Students in Cherry
Hill, New Jersey, stood in a heart formation to pay tribute to the Parkland
victims.
In New York, hundreds
of students from Fiorello H LaGuardia High School - many dressed in orange, the
colour of the gun-control movement - took to the streets of Manhattan. "Thoughts and
prayers are not enough," read one sign. New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo also joined protesters for a symbolic "die-in" - lying
down in a street in Lower Manhattan... read more: