Gilpin students participate in Enough! National School Walkout Day
by Patty Unruh
Students from Gilpin County School, along with thousands of other young people across America, walked out of their classrooms last Wednesday, March 14, at 10 a.m. The walkout was scheduled for 17 minutes, to remember the 17 students and teachers who were killed and 17 more injured in a mass shooting on February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Students were also pushing for gun reform laws.
The Enough! National Walkout was called for by the Women’s March organization.
About 60 Gilpin students, mostly from the middle school, circled up peacefully on the football field. Some carried signs. They were joined by a couple of faculty members and parents. As a chilly wind gusted, student leaders read the names of the victims, spoke of their talents, dreams, and plans and what some of them had done to help others before they were killed. The group then stood in silence for 17 minutes. The only sound was a shooting victim being named at the start of each minute. Several youth placed candles on the ground with the names and photos of each of the dead.
At the close of Gilpin’s walkout, its organizer, eighth-grader Esmee Halsted, adjured her classmates, “When we leave, this is not over. I want everyone to put as much effort as possible into making sure this never happens again!”
Students quietly returned inside afterwards.
Halsted had heard about the national event from a friend of hers. She wanted to get involved and at first sent out a message over the school’s email. Then she learned that was not allowed, so she made some pamphlets and handed those out among her classmates. She was assisted by students Archer O’Brien, Brier Randall, Kristen Hardman, John Paul DiMauro, and Trystin Swan.
Halsted said, “I was extremely saddened and don’t want this to happen again. We hope that our school can make a change. I hope gun control laws will be passed in Congress and locally – Colorado in general and Black Hawk and Central City.”
Gilpin school administrators neither supported nor opposed the walkout, but they did instruct the students to get back to class promptly after it was over. Most high school students did not attend, some saying that they did not want to interrupt learning time and that they felt individual acts of kindness would be more effective.
Halsted reported that she and other students believe that Gilpin County School is a safe place. She didn’t feel that Gilpin “necessarily needs more security, but we were doing the walkout to support the entire country. There are more police here at Gilpin now, and we are in lockout all the time. You have to buzz to get in.”
She plans to follow up the walkout by telephoning Colorado’s representatives in the U.S. Senate and Legislature and encouraging her fellow students to do so as well.
State and National Walkouts
The Women’s March youth branch, Empower, issued its announcement about the walkout, aiming to put pressure on elected officials to institute new gun laws.
“Congress must take meaningful action to keep us safe and pass federal gun reform legislation that addresses the public health crisis of gun violence,” the announcement read. “We want Congress to pay attention and take note: many of us will vote this November and many others will join in 2020, and staff have the right to teach and students to learn in an environment free from the worry of being gunned down in their classrooms or on their way home from school.”
In Denver, students from several schools marched to the state Capitol. Other schools held sessions about gun control, mental health, and inclusiveness. Boulder’s Fairview High School had 2,500 in attendance; some Florida students who had survived the shooting attended and spoke at the Fairview rally. Jefferson County schools held another rally that evening.
Students in the Washington, D.C. area were silent for 17 minutes on National Walkout Day, then turned their backs on the White House.
Not all of the walkouts were peaceful. According to Fox News, about 60 students from a Chicago high school used their time during the protest to trash a Walmart. Students from Simeon Career Academy allegedly knocked over product displays, broke packages, stole small items, vandalized cars and school buses in the parking lot, threw Gatorade bottles and smoke bombs at shoppers, and may have fired gun shots. Police are trying to identify about 40-60 students involved.
A student at Southwest High School in Minneapolis was assaulted by about eight classmates while he waved a flag in support of President Trump during the walkout. Fox News reported that the mob forcefully took the flag from the student and damaged a camera he was carrying. The student sustained minor injuries.
Other protests are coming. March for Our Lives is planned for Denver’s Civic Center Park on Saturday, March 24. Other marches are planned around the nation that day, including one in Washington, D.C. The mission and focus of this event is to “demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues,” according to marchforourlives.com. Another round of walkouts is scheduled for April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.
Never Again MSD
Never Again MSD (Marjory Stoneman Douglas) was formed by about 20 student survivors in the aftermath of the Florida shooting. The group started on social media, using the hashtag #NeverAgain and has collected thousands of followers. The group has staged protests demanding that legislative action be taken to prevent future school shootings.
Group supporters marched on the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee on February 20 and watched as the Florida House voted against a bill to ban assault weapons, such as AR-15 style rifles and high-capacity magazines. More than 3,000 people attended a rally at the Capitol the next day.
The group has criticized the government and President Trump for offering “thoughts and prayers” after the shooting.
Never Again MSD and other groups have also denounced U.S. lawmakers who have received political contributions from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and have played a part in corporations’ revocation of NRA sponsorships, including the First National Bank of Omaha, Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, Budget, MetLife, Symantec software, home security firm SimpliSafe, and airlines Delta and United.
Both houses of the Florida legislature voted this month for various gun control measures to increase funding for school security and to raise the required age to buy a gun from 18 to 21.
Never Again MSD is organizing the March for Our Lives event on the 24th.
Women’s March
National School Walkout Day was called for by the Women’s March organization. According to the website womensmarch.com, its mission is “to harness the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change. Women’s March is committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance.”
The organization’s goals are to “create a society in which women – including Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, disabled women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer, and trans women – are free and able to care for their families, however they are formed, in … environments free from structural impediments; to open access to safe, legal, and affordable abortions; to uplift, expand and protect the rights of our gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans or gender non-conforming brothers, sisters and siblings; and to ensure immigrant and refugee rights regardless of status or country of origin. We believe migration is a human right and that no human being is illegal.”
Their more than 500 partners include Planned Parenthood, Feminist Majority Foundation, Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, American Atheists, ACLU, Spread Love Trump Hate, National Education Association, Got a Girl Crush, and Muslim Community Network.
Co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March, Linda Sarsour, is an American political activist and former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York.
Gun Legislation
According to a recent article in castlerocknewspress.net, three gun-related proposals were struck down in the Colorado legislature the week after the Florida shooting. One was sponsored by state House Minority Leader Patrick Neville (R-Castle Rock), a former Columbine High School student who survived the 1999 shootings.
The article also said that a bill to allow the permitted concealed carrying of handguns on the grounds of public elementary, middle, junior high or high schools in Colorado was struck down in committee on February 21, according to a news release from the state House Democrats, who are in the majority. Generally, people 21 and older can get permits for concealed carry in Colorado.
The bill would have made concealed carry legal in schools by default, but it would have allowed school districts to override that or make other school-specific policies regarding carrying guns.
During last week’s school walkout, students from several schools, including Nederland, went to the Capitol and gave input to lawmakers about gun policy and what the response to mass shootings should be.
Another bill stopped in the House on February 21 would have repealed the magazine-limit law passed in 2013, eliminating the limit of 15-round capacity for gun magazines and allowing the sale or transfer of high-capacity magazines, the Castle Rock News Press article said.
A third bill stopped in the House would have extended the right to use deadly force against an intruder under certain conditions to include owners, managers, and employees of a business.
Still to come is a bill to ban possession, buying, and selling of “bump stocks,” or “multi-burst trigger activators.” The Las Vegas shooter in October who killed 58 and injured more than 500 used a bump stock during his attack.
After the Florida shooting, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA) Erich Pratt stated: “The fact is this tragedy happened in a gun free zone, where sadly over 98 percent of the public mass shootings occur. GOA calls on Congress to immediately pass the “Safe Students Act,” legislation introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act, which enables evil doers by leaving teachers, school administrators, and parents unable to protect students. In fact, 81 percent of police officers support arming teachers to stop school shootings. At the very least, every school should have several armed school resource officers who are trained to meet these kinds of threats.”
Role of Drugs
The dailycoin.org cited a Miami Herald report that Nikolas Cruz, the Florida shooter, “was reportedly taking health medications. Psychiatric drugs are the common thread in nearly all school shootings,” noted the Daily Coin. “The website PsychDrugShooters.com details over 100 school shootings carried out by individuals who were taking psychiatric medications … The mind-altering effects of psychiatric medication … emerges in nearly every school shooting in recent memory.”