It’s 2018 and America’s youth is showing the world how to use their voices in an impactful way. After the Parkland, FL shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, that killed 17 students and staff, students said enough is enough and decided to fight back.
March for Our Lives is a nationwide movement that was created by students that survived the shooting under the hashtag and name #neveragain. Students across the nation held their own versions of the march on March 24, to fight for stronger gun regulations to put an end to mass school shootings.
The largest march was in Washington D.C. with nearly 800,000 people in attendance, according to NBC news. Like the rest of the nation, Milwaukee had its own version with 12,000 people, according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
There wasn’t an age limit or race issue when it came to this march. Everyone came together for one reason: to keep the youth safe.
March participant and Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) student Alyssa Krieg said she just wants to feel safe.
“I don’t want to feel scared [and] I won’t be silenced,” said Krieg. “You can speak out and your thoughts will be valued.”
[/media-credit] Around the country, people are fighting for stronger gun regulations.
This was Krieg’s first march and she plans to continue participating in important matters because she understands the power of coming together, even if you’re considered a child.
The march started at the County Courthouse and ended at City Hall. There was music playing throughout the march unless a speaker was at the podium. Seventeen white bags with the names of the Parkland victims sat on the stairs of the county jail as the crowd chanted for change.
Speaker and Rufus King junior Tatiana Washington encouraged her peers to speak louder and for the adults to listen.
“What adults fail to realize, we are just getting started. Our age does not limit our power,” said Washington. “I am urging you to vote responsibly because we are scared for our lives.”
The entire march lasted around four hours with thousands of signs being lifted high in the air.
Matt Flynn, who is running for the office of Governor, said things won’t improve until legislature changes.
“As long as the Republicans are in power nothing’s going to change,” said Flynn.
There are three things that he says needs to happen before things get better: ban assault weapons, eliminate gun shows and better background checks.
Flynn isn’t the only person with power that agrees that change needs to happen when it comes to gun regulations.
Senior Vice President of the Milwaukee Bucks Alex Lasry says it’s time to stop listening to the adults and follow the youth.
“Look at what happens when we get all of the adults out the way and let the kids lead,” said Lasry. “What will the rest of us do now that we’ve been woken up?”
Some of the same students that participated in the march also attended another march four days later. Forty Wisconsin students marched 50 miles from Madison to Janesville, which is House Speak Paul Ryan’s hometown. The students called their movement 50 Miles More. It’s clear the youth are going straight to the people with power because that’s where change happens.
This isn’t the first-time youth have stood up for themselves, but this time, they won’t stop until change happens.
At Saturday’s March for Our Lives, survivors of last month’s Parkland, Fla., school shooting will join an expected half a million people to protest against gun violence and call for more restrictive gun laws. The student-led march will coincide with 800 coordinating events, including at least one in every U.S. state and on six continents.
This collection of photos, videos, and social media posts examines how the march is playing out in Washington and across the globe. It includes on-the-ground views of the action from the students, educators, and others in attendance, and reaction from those following along.
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Following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting, courageous and inspiring students around the country are demanding action, refusing to believe that we can do nothing to stem America’s gun violence epidemic. In stark contrast, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has responded with plans to chair a new task force on school safety that will, among other things, consider the wholly nonresponsive goal of repealing Obama-era discipline guidance.
The departments of Justice and Education, whose civil rights units we had the privilege to lead during the Obama administration, crafted the 2014 guidance documents that are now under attack. Intended to help schools serve students more effectively, the guidance explains long-standing federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in school discipline and concretely outlines how schools can satisfy this law while maintaining classroom peace. The guidance makes clear to school administrators and communities what the law is and how to apply it to treat all students fairly. In addition, the guidance provides practical resources to reduce disparities in exclusionary discipline and improve school climate, including a 50-state compendium of laws related to school discipline. A best practices document highlights alternatives to out-of-school disciplinary techniques that work to maintain classroom peace. The goal was simply to ensure that all children have a chance to learn and thrive.
The reality is, many American schools have a problem: separate and unequal discipline practices that discriminate on the basis of race. We know from careful investigations we oversaw at the departments of Justice and Education that children of color and those with disabilities often receive harsher disciplinary interventions than their white and nondisabled counterparts—for the same offenses. In one investigation, school staff could not identify nondiscriminatory reasons for racially different disciplinary treatment of students in more than a quarter of the files investigated…
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I believe that it is possible that, in the annals of time — should our republic survive this period in history — America will be revealed to be the hollow, shallow shell of what the experiment was meant to be. The kids from Parkland, Florida are proving that it was and should always be the government of the people, by the people, for the people, and not the people with the most money.
But I think that America stopped being that place when we refused to acknowledge that this country was built on the backs of slave labor, and we decided that there would be no accountability for that. We stopped living up to that ideal when we began to delude ourselves that this nation had a manifest destiny to lead the world, but there would be no repercussions for slavery. That lie we told ourselves — that no accountability was and no repercussions were necessary — was the beginning of the downward slide to where we are now.
An estimated several hundred thousand protesters gathered in Washington DC and in cities across the United States on Saturday to push for additional gun control legislation. At the demonstration in the nation’s capitol, a dozen celebrities were in attendance and several — Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Demi Lovato — took the main stage to perform.
So ready to March today! Landed in DC w North & Kanye. We stand in solidarity with the survivors of gun violence & students who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws at #MarchForOurLives around the country @AMarch4OurLives@Everytown
I’ll always stand for open dialogue and action – it’s the only way to ensure bad history doesn’t repeat itself. When it comes to protecting our children, all bets are off and the responsibility lies with us adults and lawmakers to listen and do. Very strong day. #MarchForOurLivespic.twitter.com/4gJ0QKdMYw
At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, students walk daily past a quote painted high on an exterior wall: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
After 17 classmates and staff members died in Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Parkland, Fla., school, some Stoneman Douglas students took that quote to heart. Less than than 24 hours after they were huddled in darkened classroom closets waiting for police to escort them to safety, they planted the seeds of a national movement that takes center stage Saturday at the March for Our Lives, when half a million people are expected to gather in Washington, D.C., to call for more restrictive gun laws.
Student organizers around the country have planned more than 800 coordinating events to coincide with the Washington march, including at least one in every state and on six continents. They estimate the events collectively could draw a million people.
But it remains to be seen if all the enthusiasm, and the coinciding media coverage, will lead to real policy change, especially on the federal level. There’s still a powerful gun lobby, the youth activists have ambitious policy demands that lawmakers have failed to pass many times before.
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Education leaders face challenges every day. We examine them through the lens of opportunity and strive to be proactive in solving problems before they materialize. We lead to serve, to build capacity, and to nurture hopes, dreams, and our children’s futures. Yet, we live in a time where we wake each day to a barrage of formidable responsibilities that politics and divisive behaviors only amplify. Among those are frequent acts of school violence. Many of us agonized—and continue to do so—following the Parkland school shooting, the student walkouts, and the tenuous struggle between encouraging civic activism and protecting our students’ safety. These gnaw at the essence of my being.
Faced with these challenges, we create opportunities; we shift paradigms. Despite our best efforts to make the best decisions, we will never be right in everyone’s eyes. That is the school leader’s reality. Opinions surrounding the March 14th student walkout were varied. They represented a wide range of values and beliefs. But our school district runs on consensus, so it was important to me to make the decision about the walkout together with my district colleagues. We wanted to remain true to our priorities: school safety and the education of our students.
On March 5th, we sent home a letter to the parents and guardians of the 846 students in our district’s one high school, since these were primarily the students who would be walking out. We made it clear that if students chose to exit the building, they would face consequences as defined by our district’s code of conduct. And these would be the same consequences they would face for leaving the building on any other school day…
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School administrators across the country have a choice to make this week. Judging from pre-emptive censorship efforts in two districts, some of them are going to get it wrong.
To mark the one-month anniversary of the Feb. 14 deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., students nationwide plan to walk out of school for 17 minutes to demand their state and local representatives address gun violence. Students, who are among the organizers of the ENOUGH National School Walkout on March 14 and a separate day-long National School Walkout on April 20, are using social media to rally classmates. In a statement posted to Instagram and Facebook, student organizers—who hail from more than a dozen states—call their joint efforts “part of an escalating force in a longer fight.”
Yet, in at least two school districts, administrators are seeking to silence student voices with threats of discipline. In a now-deleted public Facebook post, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes of the Needville Independent School District, near Houston, warned against student participation in any type of protest during school hours. He threatened a three-day suspension for any participating student because, he wrote in the post, students “are here for an education and not a political protest…”
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At Saturday’s 
