One Million Students Protest to Demand Gun Control
An estimated one million high school students (and some younger) across the country walked out of their schools on this day in a nationwide protest to demand meaningful gun control.
The day of the protests was chosen to mark the one month anniversary of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14th. The protests were timed to begin at 10 am local time, and to last for 17 minutes. The 17 minutes was designed to commemorate the 17 people shot and killed that day at Stoneman Douglas High School.
The protest is believed to be the largest protest solely of high school students in American history. Protests occurred at schools in New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and a total of an estimated 3,000 schools, including schools in Duluth, Minnesota, Elon, North Carolina, and innumerable other small cities and towns. Students at public, private, and parochial schools participated.
Particularly notable, about half of the 2,500 students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, left school, where officials suspended classes for 17 minutes. Central High School was the scene of one of the most iconic events in the history of the civil rights movement, when President Eisenhower had to mobilize federal troops to ensure the entry of nine African American students –the “Little Rock 9”– in the face of a howling mob of racists who tried to block their enrollment in the school. The school had been ordered desegregated by a federal judge, pursuant to the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring racially segregated school unconstitutional.
To follow up on the student protests on this day, additional protests were scheduled for May 24th and April 20th, 2018.
Visit the March for Our Lives web site.
Learn about the students’ gun control campaign.
And about the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.