Summary
Thousands of students at schools across the country walked out of class today, took a knee inside their school building or linked arms in class hallways to memorialize those who have died in gun violence and to demand more action from US lawmakers.
The following summary marks the end of our coverage of today’s National Walk Out, but we’ll be back with a fresh live blog in a couple weeks for the next nationwide gun violence protest: the March For Our Lives on 24 March.
Highlights from today’s action:
- At the Parkland, FL site of the attack that inspired today’s protests, Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school students walked out of class. Principal Ty Thompson commended his students for their strength over the last few weeks and praised them for their #Never Again campaign for gun reform. “We are going to make change. It’s already started,” he told the crowd of 3,000.
- More than 100 students walked out of class and took a knee at Booker T Washington high school in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King was a student. “Dr King carries a legacy even in death, so I feel as if it’s an obligation to carry on what he wanted and what he was trying to fight for and that’s why this day is very important,” said Markail Brooks, a student.
- Politicians faced protesters in the US capital, where lawmakers debated stricter gun violence measures. Student protestors at the capitol building rejected some of the proposals being discussed in the wake of Parkland, including Donald Trump’s plan to arm teachers.
- Just across the river from the White House, two 11-year-olds had organized a walkout at their Alexandria, Virginia school. “I hope adults in general will realize, if they haven’t already, that this is a really big issue, and that innocent people have lost their lives,” said Naomi Wadler.
- And in California and Las Vegas, hundreds of students gathered to push for stricter gun laws. “This is the only country in the world where these mass shootings happen regularly,” said Quinn Bosselman, a student in Huntington Beach, CA.
And here’s our main story on today’s walkout:
Updated
House passes school safety bill in near-unanimous vote
As students staged walkout across the country on the one month anniversary of the deaths of 17 people at a high school Florida, lawmakers in Washington took a modest step aimed at preventing violence in classrooms — but did not address demands for stricter gun control.
The House voted on Wednesday to pass legislation, known as the STOP School Violence Act, which would authorize grants for campus safety improvements, including training for local law enforcement and faculty and the development of an anonymous reporting system to identify early warning signs of potential threats.
The bill, drafted by Representative John Rutherford, a Republican from Florida, passed the chamber 407 to 10. The Senate is considering a similar measure, introduced by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch.
Updated
More scenes from demonstrations on the west coast, including high schools in Las Vegas, where the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history occurred last summer.
The principal of Desert Oasis High School in Las Vegas said he was proud of students who left class.
Couldn’t be prouder. Respectfully gathered as a group, spoke eloquently and then quiet and quickly went back to class. Love this Diamondback community!#EnoughIsEnough #OneDO#proudprincipal pic.twitter.com/aI71bbhAaC
— DOHS_ORourke (@DOHS_ORourke) March 14, 2018
There was also a large crowd of demonstrators at Las Vegas’s Silverado high school:
17 names, 17 minutes // Silverado High School Wall Out 3.14 pic.twitter.com/Q7qo3VFFxd
— just peachy (@cateiguess) March 14, 2018
And down in southern California, the staff of the popular daytime television program, the Ellen Show, offered their support to students participating in today’s protests:
We support you. #NationalWalkoutDay pic.twitter.com/dVr4wrOMSG
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 14, 2018
In Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy, liberal suburb of Washington DC, more than 60 students walked out of George Mason Elementary School. Two 11-year-olds, Naomi Wadler and Carter Anderson, had organized the protest.
“Just the sensation that we are going to make a difference makes me feel proud,” Henry Gibbs, 10, said early Wednesday morning, before participating in the walkout.
The students, led by the youngest who were about six and seven years old, formed a line in the front of the school. They stayed quiet as they held up signs with the names of Parkland victims, as well as Courtlin Arrington, a 17-year-old shot to death at school in Birmingham, Alabama.
Dozens of parents stood on the sidewalk taking photographs of the protesting students, but no one spoke. Some students visibly shivered as they held up their signs. The only sound was birds tweeting and the cardboard of the protest signs snapping in the wind.
Students have stood up again. Complete silence. Their faces are so serious. One of them was shaking with the cold and still holding up her sign. pic.twitter.com/AXWvEcIet3
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) March 14, 2018
After a few minutes, the line of students collapsed to the ground.
Doris Maultsby said when she watched her two children, 10 and 7, fall to the ground, she thought of all the other parents who lost their children to senseless gun violence.
“Their composure, they’re ten and 11 year olds, was beyond anything I would expect or want them to have to be experiencing at this age,” said Sherry Reilly, who had two sons participate in the walkout. “But it is their reality, and we cannot insulate them from it.”
At least one parent in the school’s district did not support the protests.
Julie Gunlock, a conservative parent at George Mason, said she kept her three elementary school kids at home today, concerned about the disruption to the school’s learning environment, and that the protest might make her son feel “pressured” or “intimated.”
“I didn’t want him to be put in an uncomfortable situation,” she said, noting that he had not felt any pressure from other students in the weeks leading up to the protest.
Instead, she said she taught her kids at home about the Second Amendment, and also about gun safety.
Gunlock, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative think tank, said she thought that many parents and students nationwide may have seen the National Walkout simply as a memorial to the Parkland students, rather than an explicit endorsement of passing “harsher gun restrictions.”
“I’m all for walking out to memorialize the 17 victims,” she said. “If that were the mission, the true mission, for the national walkout, I wouldn’t have objected to my kids being approached by that.”
Updated
Guardian data editor Mona Chalabi has the data behind gun violence in the US.
Chalabi writes:
When people think of gun violence, they might think of large-scale mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas on Sunday, in which 59 people were killed. But of the approximately 33,000 gun violence deaths that take place each year, only about 500 (or 1.5%) come from mass shootings. Two-thirds of gun violence deaths are from suicide.
We’ve got another reader submission from Anna Curran, a 16-year-old student at Columbia high school in Maplewood, New Jersey. There’s a sizable bunch gathered at the school, where students went up one by one to make statements about gun violence and to demand action from lawmakers.
While we’re looking at California, it’s worth noting that the school district to receive the most money from the National Rifle Association between 2010 and 2016 is in an unexpected place – the suburbs of Sacramento.
Of all the 50 US states, California has the strictest gun laws. Those laws were made in the state’s capital, Sacramento, leading the city to become a euphemism for gun control. For instance, NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield said last year that North Korea should bomb Sacramento instead of Guam (he then apologized).
According to data published last week by the Sacramento Bee and Associated Press, about $300,000 was awarded in grants to a school in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville for ammunition and gear for its tap-shooting teams. That’s more money than any other school in the country received in that period, according to the AP.
Another $200,000 went to schools in the same region, Placer County, one of the few majority Republican counties in the liberal state.
These grants come from the NRA Foundation, which is separate from the group’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. The NRA Foundation has awarded nearly $335 million in grant funding in support of shooting sports, according to its website.
This comes as companies distance themselves from the powerful gun lobby.
It’s nearly 11:30am on the west coast, where National Walk Out day protests continue to unfold.
At Fresno high school in central California, there was a large turnout:
In powerful demonstration, rows of Fresno High students sit or lie down as the names of the 17 Florida victims are read allowed following a single beat of a drum. #NationalWalkoutDay California #Enough walkout pic.twitter.com/OEAjx89qbK
— Mackenzie Mays (@MackenzieMays) March 14, 2018
California state lawmakers walked out of the capitol building in support of the young demonstrators, many of whom had gathered on the lawn outside.
CA Assembly Democrats, staff members and young people walk out of the Capitol and stand in silence in solidarity with national school walk-out. pic.twitter.com/Ftz5hpOO6e
— Taryn Luna (@TarynLuna) March 14, 2018
Holding signs of the names of those killed at parkland pic.twitter.com/OPUJp5oioG
— Anita Chabria (@chabriaa) March 14, 2018
California senator Kamala Harris also shared a message of support on Twitter.
Martin Luther King was only 26 when he helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) March 14, 2018
John Lewis was 21 when he went down to Mississippi as one of the original Freedom Riders.
Diane Nash was 22 when she started leading sit-ins in Nashville.
Our youth have always been our future.
California: “Enough is enough!”
At Ocean View High School in ultra-conservative Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles, about a hundred students out of 1,600 congregated on the grass in front a sign advertising the school team, the Seahawks, with banners declaring “Never forget” and “Protect kids, not guns”.
With police officers and school district officials watching closely, 17 of the protesters took turns lying down on the grass in memory of the 17 dead in Parkland, Florida. The 17 wore white t-shirts, each with a hand-drawn black letter. Together they read: “NEVER AGAIN – STAND UP.”
Students burst into sporadic chants of “Enough is enough!” Passing cars at the busy intersection of Warner Avenue and Gothard Street honked approvingly, and the students responded with cheers.
At 10:17am, organizer Quinn Bosselman called for a minute’s silence and read the names of the dead from Parkland through a megaphone. He then urged everyone to return to class quickly so they would be marked only tardy, not absent.
“This is the only country in the world where these mass shootings happen regularly,” Bosselman said. “We’ve seen Las Vegas and Orlando and each time you just think, here we go again. But Parkland is different. These kids are keeping it in the news and we want to give them every support.”
Even the more liberal students said they were uninterested in scoring political points by staking out their anti-gun positions and arguing futilely with more conservative peers and family members who believed strongly in their Second Amendment rights. Ada Mary Saldana, a senior, said she’d argued with her conservative 30-year-old brother-in-law but was glad they had some common ground.
“We both think the government should be stricter about background checks for gun purchases,” she said. “We disagree on a lot. I don’t think teachers should be armed and he does, but we both understand each other and we both want solutions.”
Four uniformed officers and two squad cars were on hand to make sure the students did not stray off school property or cause trouble. School district officials were also on hand but expressed delight at how smoothly the protest went.
“They even picked up the trash and left the place clean than they found it,” said Dan Bryan, director of student services for the Huntington Beach United High School District. “Got to love those Seahawks.”
Updated
Hundreds of students from the Washington DC-area skipped class on Wednesday to participate in a national day of protest against gun violence. The new generation of activists – many in their teens, but some even younger – gathered on the west lawn of the US Capitol to demand Congress pass significant gun control.
They carried wry signs, a selection of which included: “Bro, change our f*cking gun laws” and “My uterus is more regulated than your gun”. Other placards captured the urgency of the situation on school campuses: “Am I next?” and “How many more must die?” Many wore pins with a semiautomatic rifle crossed out.
At 11:15, Democratic lawmakers, including the minority leaders, emerged from the Capitol in a staged walk-out to show solidarity with the students.
“With this walkout today and your ongoing challenge to all of us, to the conscience of America, you are creating a drumbeat across America, a drumbeat that will echo until we get the job done,” House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi said to loud applause.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and has been a leading voice in the gun control movement since 26 children and faculty were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school, told the crowd that on Tuesday his 6-year-old son cowered in the bathroom with classmates during a active shooter drill.
“That should never happen in the United States of America, no one should have to go through that,” he said.
Speaker after speaker – and there were many on this windy morning in Washington – praised the students activism, which they said was moving the debate despite difficult odds.
“There is no great social change movement in this country that has not been led by the youth of America,” Murphy told them, advising them that the movement will encounter setbacks. But, he said, “the ones that saw adversity and pushed through are the ones that we ready about in our history books.”
Students rejected some of the proposals being discussed in the wake of Parkland, including Donald Trump’s plan to arm teachers.
“We will not sit in classrooms with armed teachers,” said Matthew Post, a student at Sherwood High School in Maryland. “We refuse to learn in fear. We reject turning our schools into prisons. We will accept nothing less than comprehensive gun control. and if it’s what it takes, we will shame our national policymakers into protecting us.”
The press conference was invariably interrupted when Senator Bernie Sanders arrived on the lawn. Students who noticed the shock of white hair, complemented by a white puffer jacket, started shrieking and chanting “Bernie”. Their cries set of a stampede in the direction of the Vermont Senator, who was trying to make his way to the press conference to address the crowd.
Kids are literally running from the press conference to see @SenSanders pic.twitter.com/Fk6lLB7K3V
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) March 14, 2018
When he finally reached the podium, Sanders grabbed a bullhorn – because at this point the speakers were not functioning properly – and addressed the crowd.
“We are very proud of what you are doing,” Sanders said above wild cheers and applause. “You the young people of this country are leading the nation and the Congress is going to follow what you are doing.”
As he exited the event, at least a hundreds students follow him back toward the Capitol. And, outside the classroom, there was little anyone could do to regain the students’ attention.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The US is, of course, not the only country to experience mass shootings but political reaction to such violence has been muted compared to other countries.
Here, our correspondents in four other countries looked at the steps taken there to regulate gun ownership.
It’s not just students protesting today, medical workers are also taking a stand against gun violence.
In Boston, employees at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital are showing their support for gun violence prevention.
“Physicians have a really strong voice here,” Dr Lachelle Weeks, an internal medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told the Boston Herald. “We’re at the front lines when patients are injured by a gun, we take care of loved ones and usher them through the stages of grieving. ... So our voice is really strong in echoing that this is a public health crisis and something needs to be done about it.”
One night doctor at Mass General showed his support early:
As a nocturnist, I’m sorry I can’t be there for the photo in support of gun violence prevention @MassGeneralNews today. So, showing my orange support from @MassGeneralEM tonight. pic.twitter.com/EMkXZpIXF1
— Jonathan E. Slutzman (@SlutzmanMD) March 14, 2018
Photograph: Cristobal Herrera/EPA
At the Academy for Young Writers high school in Brooklyn, NY, students used the walkout to also draw attention to discrimination against people of color, women, and other groups.
“It’s something terrible that happened to those students,” Nathaniel Swanson said of the pupils in Parkland, Florida. “I really empathize with them.”
“Our protest brings together many things and I do empathize with those in Parkland in Florida, but this is Brooklyn, East New York, and we have our own separate struggles and I wanted to advocate for that as well.”
Nathaniel, 16, said East New York, which was one of the most violent neighborhoods in New York City in the 1980s and early 1990s, faces a range of problems, despite seeing something of a resurgence in recent years.
“We have policing [issues]. Not nearly as bad as in other places but we do have our issues. Discrimination in housing, workforce, gentrification is really getting bad in Brooklyn, gun violence, these are the things that happen in our community.”
Dyquan Waters, 14, said students “wanted to widen the horizon to make it more important than just gun control.”
Many of the students also held signs referencing women rights, black lives matter, the dream act, and LGBTQ rights.
“These were other topics that other students feel very strong about,” Dyquan said.
It’s just after 10am on the West Coast of the US, where Andrew Gumbel is monitoring protests in Orange County. Here’s his preview of the demonstrations in Huntington Beach:
Ronald Reagan once quipped that suburban Orange County, south of Los Angeles, is where Republicans go to die.
Now, though, it is one of the fastest-changing political landscapes in the US, as young people move away from their parents’ conservatism and a swelling immigrant population brings unprecedented diversity in all things, including politics.
Today, that younger generation is expected to turn out in force for the school walkout.
At Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach, that walkout is not intended to make a partisan political statement, but the politics are hard to avoid in a district where the ultraconservative Republican incumbent, Dana Rohrabacher, looks increasingly vulnerable in November’s mid-term elections.
“What we want,” said Ethan Vella, an Ocean View senior who is organizing today’s protest, “is a safe space to talk about solutions in as nonpartisan a way as possible. We want legislators to take action to improve safety, not ust at our school but at all schools.”
Vella, an unabashed left-wing activist who previously organized a walkout in defense of undocumented immigrant, said his school shared a lot of characteristics with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida.
Both are in affluent suburbs characterized by lawns and mini-malls. And both have a student population that includes many well-off white students and many poorer students from a variety of ethnic and national backgrounds.
Rohrabacher, who enjoys an A rating from the National Rifle Association, represents one of four Orange County congressional districts that the Democrats hope to capture in November.
To the astonishment of many political observers, the county went blue for the first time in the 2016 presidential election, favoring Hillary Clinton over Trump by five percentage points. The expectation is that the blue wave will only grow.
“We don’t necessarily share the same values as our parents,” Vella said. “We believe in more equality and more rights for people. It’s a different mindset.”
Guardian reader and photographer, Rick Leskowitz, has sent photos of students who braved snow in western Massachusetts to join the protests.
These students at Mohawk Trail Regional high school in Buckland, Massachusetts appear to be in good spirits despite the snow.
If you are a reader with photos from protests where you live, please send to amanda.holpuch@theguardian.com and I will try to fit them in the live blog.
Q&A with 11-year-old march organizers in Alexandria, Virginia
More than five years ago, 20 first graders were murdered in their classrooms at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Today, children as young as the Sandy Hook victims are participating in walkouts protesting continued government inaction on preventing gun violence.
In Alexandria, Virginia, Naomi Wadler and Carter Anderson, both 11, spoke with Guardian US about organizing a walkout at their elementary school. More than 60 students walked out, some of them as young as in first or second grade, and stood in front of their school for 18 minutes, holding signs commemorating the victims of the Parkland, Florida shooting, and then falling silently to the ground.
How did you two end up organizing this walkout?
CARTER: After Parkland, me and my friend Matt, we went to the petition at the White House. Then Naomi came over and asked me the next day at school if I wanted to have a walkout with her, and I said yes.
NAOMI: After Parkland, I don’t remember where I heard it, it was kind of everywhere, that were a bunch of schools were going to do walkouts. And so I looked into it a little more, the meaning of the walkout, when they were going to do it, how long they were going to do it for. And I thought, hey, I want my school to do a walkout.
What message are you trying to send?
CARTER: That we want school safety. So many people die, because our schools can’t be safe.
What’s been the most challenging part of organizing the walkout?
NAOMI: In the beginning, our principal wasn’t completely supportive but by the second or third day of doing this, that week, he was completely supportive.
I think me and Carter can understand, because nobody expects a bunch of ten and eleven year olds to stand up and start walking out of the school building
CARTER: Also, in the class there’s been some parents that felt that we’re not old enough to know about it. Like, they think that just because were fifth graders we don’t know anything about what’s happening.
When do you remember starting to think about school shootings?
NAOMI: I have grown up in an area where shooting aren’t the regular, but they don’t happen un-often. I started thinking about it probably this time. I’ve always thought about shootings in general, but then this is when I really started thinking about school shootings.
Have you organized something together before?
CARTER: No, we’re just friends. I’m her neighbor.
You held student meetings over two Saturdays to prepare for this. What did you talk about at those meetings?
NAOMI: We went over the expectations: that this was not recess time. You’re not doing this just because you want to get out of school. How we expect to be silent, how we’re not gonna chant, because we want learning in school to go on as normal. How if anybody chooses not to participate, not to give them a hard time. Because I go by, you don’t have to agree with people but you have to respect them.
Is there big disagreement at your school about school shootings or gun violence?
CARTER: Most think that we should do this walkout, but there’s some people that don’t love the idea.
NAOMI: Some kids say their parents won’t allow them to do it. Their parents don’t agree with it.
What’s the plan for the protest today? You’re going to walk out silently?
NAOMI: We’ve discussed having 18 people lie down. We changed our 17 minutes to 18 minutes for the school shooting in Alabama, where Courtlin Arrington was killed. So we’ve added 18.
Why was it important to include her?
NAOMI: I think, well specifically me, I don’t know what Carter thinks, that specifically African-American women, when they are shot and killed, or when they are killed in general, their names aren’t remembered. So I thought it would be important to add an extra one minute.
CARTER: Everyone thought it would be a good idea to do. It’s the second school shooting [after Parkland]. She was studying to be a nurse. She could have saved people’s lives.
What have you heard from teachers about the walkout?
NAOMI: Teachers, we’ve heard, have been told not to encourage or discourage us. So they’re kind of neutral.
What kind of reaction do you hope to have from the rest of the United States and from adults watching these walkouts?
NAOMI: I hope adults in general will realize, if they haven’t already, that this is a really big issue, and that innocent people have lost their lives, and that we should keep working harder and harder to make gun reform, to make school safety, a huge priority.
What is it like organizing an event like this? What are you feeling, watching all the kids preparing for this?
CARTER: Nervous. Because some people, there’s always a small chance that somebody might act out during the walkout. But we’re trying to express our feelings.
NAOMI: We’ve tried our best to make it clear if you’re going to be loud, I would advise you to go back to your classrooms, this is not what this is about.
Have you two done political activism before?
CARTER: I’ve gone to the Women’s March.
NAOMI: I’m pretty sure that I haven’t done something like this before.
As students across the US walk off campus, link arms in the hallway and take a knee at school to protest gun violence, the story of one armed teacher who accidentally shot a student yesterday is circulating.
The California teacher, a reserve police officer, accidentally discharged his weapon during a lesson about public safety and injured a male student, according to police.
The weapon was pointed at the ceiling and debris fell and hit the student, not a bullet.
“It’s the craziest thing,” the student’s father, Fermin Gonzales, told local TV news. “It could have been very bad.”
A high school in Sayreville, New Jersey, said it would suspend students who participated in the walkout. Instead, the school allowed students to gather in an auditorium on campus.
One student, Rosa Rodriguez, walked out anyway, according to 1010 Wins radio.
“If you were gonna come outside in the first place, you should have still came outside. Just because you didn’t want to have these consequences and stuff, just stay inside, you should have came outside and proven them wrong,” Rodriguez told the radio station.
Under threat of suspension just one student walked out of Sayreville HS this morning #1010wins. Administrators warned students not to walk out pic.twitter.com/AEEFiThf7O
— glenn schuck (@glennschuck) March 14, 2018
Brooklyn: “We walk out for the black community”
Hundreds of students walked out of the Academy for Young Writers high school in Spring Creek, Brooklyn, at 10am ET.
The students, who are predominantly black, have expanded the protest beyond just the issue of school shootings to include racial inequality and the problem of black and brown people losing their lives at a disproportionate rate to white people.
The pupils walked out for 18 minutes, to honor both the Parkland victims and 18 people of color who had lost their lives, sometimes at the hands of police. The names of Tamir Rice, Eric Harris and Philando Castile, black men and – in Rice’s case a child – who were shot and killed by law enforcement.
Zayinab Jagun, 17, was carrying a sign which condemned school shootings and also said: “We walk out for the black community.”
“The black community has been faced with lots of violence all the time,” Jagun said. Spring Creek is close to East New York, a neighborhood which has a troubled history with crime.
“Every time I watch Brooklyn 12 news [a local television news program] I see someone’s son, daughter, mother or father getting shot down in the black community. “
“So I think having a new take on gun reform would be able to stop that as well.”
Jaelah Jackson, 15, was among those who gave speeches during the walkout.
“I know a couple of people and they had mixed feelings towards the walkout because they felt if it was a black student being gunnned down or black students being shot or shot at it wouldn’t have got so much coverage,” Jaelah said.
“They felt like minorities and African-Americans are diminished. They aren’t really represented and their cases aren’t presented as equally.”
Sasha Koren, editor of the Guardian’s Mobile Innovation Lab, sends this dispatch from the Upper West Side in Manhattan.
On a sunny street corner next to a busy subway station on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in mid morning, just after the commuting rush, students from the West Side Collaborative Middle School, accompanied by Paul Kehoe, their social studies teacher, stood in a loose group holding bright signs with slogans like “Enough!” and “End it!”, their chants led by three girls who identified themselves and Skyler, Jade and Jenn.
“It’s up to us,” said Jenn, when asked why they had walked out. “If politicians won’t do anything we have to do it. We should be able to go to school and feel safe.”
New York City has reported falling crime rates in recent years, with the 24th precinct, in which the school sits, reporting no shootings in 2017, a 71% drop since 1990. Still, these students took the prospect of gun violence in their community as a real risk.
”It’s a problem everywhere,” said Skyler. “If one child gets hurt, everyone gets hurt.”
Updated
Atlanta: students take a knee
The Booker T Washington high school in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King was a student, saw more than 100 students participate in Wednesday’s walkout.
“Dr King carries a legacy even in death, so I feel as if it’s an obligation to carry on what he wanted and what he was trying to fight for and that’s why this day is very important,” said Markail Brooks, a student.
Students were only permitted to walk out of their classes into the hallway and silently take a knee, so no action took place outside the campus.
In an announcement around 9:30am, school officials explained that kneeling in the hallway was the approved form of participation and warned that “anything outside of that is not approved and you will receive swift and severe consequences”.
The school went on lockdown “to promote safety and security” until the protests ended.
For students at other schools who were not permitted to engage in any form of protest, Washington students had a message:
“Fight. Fight, fight – our words matter,” said India White. “We’re the students of this school. We have a word because we attend this school, this is our home.”
The “take a knee” gesture was a unique twist on the national walkout, but not a surprising one given the resonance the gesture has taken on in the black community. The high school is 99% black, according to department of education data.
Former 49ers American football player Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem of games in 2016 to protest racism and police violence.
Student government leaders told reporters that the knee was to “show respect” for students who have died by gun violence.
Students at predominantly black schools often face a different gun landscape than those at mostly white schools.
— Jamiles Lartey (@JamilesLartey) March 14, 2018
At BTS students pass through metal detectors and have bag searches when they come in.
Three armed resource officers were overseeing throughout the protests. pic.twitter.com/0d4w1NPjAw
Demonstrators gathered outside the White House and US Capitol in Washington DC to demand measures to prevent gun violence.
Democratic lawmakers walked out in support of the student protesters and met with those crowded outside in the near-freezing weather.
Hundreds of students on the west side of the Capitol where Democrats are about to walk out of the Capitol. They’re chanting “No more silence. Stop gun violence.” And “what do we want? Gun control. When do we want it? NOW.” pic.twitter.com/BxXwoXjNId
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) March 14, 2018
Democratic lawmakers are cheered as they walk out of the US Capitol. Crowd chants “We want change.” Some lawmakers chant the message back. pic.twitter.com/SAC4hLQmYJ
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) March 14, 2018
The Resistance Now
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Chicago students: “Hey hey, ho ho, gun violence has got to go”
Students have been demonstrating against gun violence in Chicago, where it is nearly 10.30am.
Chicago Public School principals aren’t supposed to be involved in protests, but some school have changed class schedules today to accommodate the walkouts.
About 80,000 students at 200 Catholic schools plan to assemble in prayer, staging discussions and making signs promoting peace that they’ll hang around schools and parish properties, according to the Archdiocese of Chicago.
At Theodore Roosevelt College and Career Academy, dozens of energetic students chanted “Good kids, mad city / we’re under attack / what are we going to do / fight, fight back”; “Sí se puede” [yes we can] and “Hey hey, ho ho, gun violence has got to go.”
They then held a moment of silence, asking students to think about loved ones they lost to gun violence. The moment ended when community members arrived to support the students’ demonstration.
Good Kids Mad City is a new collective of Baltimore and Chicago youth demanding just for victims of gun violence. They have coordinated protests in both cities.
#GoodKidsMadCity pic.twitter.com/halWVPHVOr
— Solomon Drama (@solomon_drama) March 14, 2018
Updated
In the Baltimore Sun today, schools in the Washington DC and Maryland area signed onto a letter urging Donald Trump and Congress to enact stricter gun control measures
One of the schools to sign on to the letter, St Andrew’s Episcopal School, is where the president’s 11-year-old son, Barron, takes classes.
“As school leaders, we call upon everyone who cares about the education and the welfare of children to urge our government to act,” the letter said.
“We need our teachers to be able to teach. We need our students to be able to learn. And we need everyone in every school around the country to feel safe.”
Updated
Parkland walkout
Richard Luscombe, who has been covering the school shooting in Florida and its aftermath, reports from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school:
At 10am, about 3,000 students poured into the school’s football field, where exactly one month ago many were running for their lives.
Principal Ty Thompson commended his students for their strength over the last few weeks and praised them for their #Never Again campaign for gun reform.
“We are going to make change. It’s already started,” he told them.
There was silence as the song Shine played.
“There were lots of emotions, many people were crying, we were thinking of the 17 we lost,” said Florence Yared, a junior.
Banners of support from all over the world partly obscured the freshman building where most of the victims died, and according to Yared gave the survivors a lift as they walked out of their classes.
Yared said the mood of the students this morning was reflective. “It’s weird to think about because in our heads we have this idea what school is, and it’s not now that same thing for anyone,” she said.
But, she said, that feeling contributed to determination she and her classmates felt about walking out and calling for changes to gun laws nationally. Last week, the Florida governor, Rick Scott, signed into a law a bill that armed some teachers and provided extra money for school security and mental health, while raising the age to buy firearms in Florida to 21.
“It’s a start but we need more,” Yared said.
“There some things I don’t like about the bill, but there are other things that are good, like raising the age, a three-day waiting period, that’s a step in the right direction.”
Updated
Demonstrators, ranging from small children to university students to teachers and parents, have shown their support for the protests in different ways. Some have walked out of class, while others link arms in the school hallway. At Cooper City High School in Florida, empty desks were arranged to memorialize the Parkland victims.
14 desks and 3 podiums stand empty at Cooper City High School in remembrance of the 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. pic.twitter.com/OdnyKvStYG
— Frank Guzman (@fguzmanon7) March 14, 2018
Our amazing BHS students stand with linked arms for a 17 min period of solidarity out of respect for Stoneman Douglas High School! What a stupendous show of support and truly beautiful behavior - impressive! #BPatriotProud #ENOUGH #MSDStrong pic.twitter.com/fsWsMX7LG4
— Mrs. Rodriguez (@AdminTRodriguez) March 14, 2018
@bsudailynews pic.twitter.com/ziWw15vsdY
— Gabbi Mitchell (@Gabbi_Mitchell) March 14, 2018
Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters
Updated
Lawmakers debate gun violence prevention
The first round of protests have wrapped up, with students making their way back to class. The next wave will begin in about 30 minutes, when it’s 10am CT.
Meanwhile, Lauren Gambino reports on the latest actions taking place in the nation’s capital:
One month after the school massacre in Parkland, the Senate joins the debate around gun violence raging across the country.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a three-panel hearing on Wednesday morning to discuss what went wrong and what might have prevented the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School.
Florida senators Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Bill Nelson, a Democrat, as well as Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina died in the shooting, and Katherine Posada, a teacher at the high school, will testify during today’s hearing. Additionally, federal officials will also take questions from the panel.
In the audience, several members of the antiwar activist group Code Pink wore the color and carried signs that read “NRA out of schools” and “Teachers + Guns = Chaos”.
At Senate hearing re guns and schools we are here with our messages pic.twitter.com/V3l0j7Mnr0
— CODEPINK (@codepink) March 14, 2018
Updated
Reporters and students across the eastern part of the US are sharing scenes from school walkouts. At most of these schools, a moment of silence is being held for 17 minutes, one minute for each of the victims of the Parkland shooting.
In Connecticut:
Estimating over 100 FHS students marching. #FarmingtonCT pic.twitter.com/OA9YfUcqii
— Jordan Otero Sisson (@JordanOteroHC) March 14, 2018
And West Virginia:
For the next 17 minutes, students will be remembering those killed in the Florida school shooting. #NationalWalkoutDay pic.twitter.com/631pvYmmaR
— Allison Scott (@AllisonScottTV) March 14, 2018
And Florida:
#NationalWalkoutDay all the way from Sarasota High ❤️ pic.twitter.com/LZg9j1e4TI
— CHICABANDZ👹 (@chicabandz) March 14, 2018
Walkouts have begun at schools across the East Coast of the US.
Students at Booker T Washington High School in Atlanta talking a knee as part of the #NationalWalkoutDay protests. pic.twitter.com/bZpU8kQNjl
— Jamiles Lartey (@JamilesLartey) March 14, 2018
Total silence outside this elementary school, with more than 60 students protesting and dozens of parents watching. Only sound is posters flapping in the wind. pic.twitter.com/4RaG3osZue
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) March 14, 2018
Demonstrators have also gathered outside the White House.
Mr. President, look out your window to see what #democracy looks like. This is for the #MSD 17 #GunReformNow #NeverAgain #EnoughIsEnough pic.twitter.com/FHppDYb0Vg
— Rep. Ted Deutch (@RepTedDeutch) March 14, 2018
David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school student, is sharing live video from the high school’s walkout. There are helicopters overhead the school’s protest, which Hogg said reminded him of the day of the shooting.
I'll b live at this link soon https://t.co/ZanbFVnhth
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 14, 2018
The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe is also on the scene at MSD, where a large crowd has amassed on the campus football field.
Students begin #WalkoutWednesday at Stoneman Douglas High School pic.twitter.com/GFKRC6rFVz
— Richard Luscombe (@richlusc) March 14, 2018
Teenage students who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, and demanded action to curb gun violence in the US, have been sending messages of support to today’s protestors on Twitter.
Good Luck, Stay Safe, and Kick B*tt to all those walking out of school today ! 💞💞 https://t.co/FGRdXTkrbD
— Emma González (@Emma4Change) March 14, 2018
To all the students facing repercussion for walking out, your are on the right side of history. You are standing up for what you believe in, you are standing up for those who can’t anymore. We have a voice, we are demanding to be heard. Do not let anyone frighten you out of this. https://t.co/qBq6RBKxv1
— Jose Iglesias // MSD (@Joseforchange) March 13, 2018
The first step to changing the world is believing that you can. #walkoutandwalkup
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 14, 2018
To the students around the world who are taking leadership positions for themselves and are demanding action without being thrust right into it—
— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) March 14, 2018
Thank you. Your leadership is inspiring. The world will follow us in the right direction. #MarchForOurLives #NeverAgain
Updated
This live blog will be collecting information from protests across the country, including dispatches sent by the Guardian’s reporters.
In Virgina, Lois Beckett is already with students preparing for today’s protest.
The walkout at Naomi and Carter’s school will last 18 minutes, with an extra minute added for Courtlin Arrington, who was shot at a school in Alabama. When African-American women are killed “their names aren’t remember, so I thought it was important to add,” Naomi said. pic.twitter.com/xbrejOkYIx
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) March 14, 2018
We’ll also be hearing from:
Richard Luscombe in Parkland, Florida, where the shooting last month occurred.
Jamiles Lartey in Atlanta, where he’ll join student demonstrators at Martin Luther King’s former high school.
Lauren Gambino in Washington DC, where students are protesting and lawmakers are debating school security.
Adam Gabbatt in New York City, home to strict gun control measures and several rallies in support of the walkout.
Andrew Gumbel in Huntington Beach, California, a more politically conservative area in the liberal state.
How did this protest come together and who is behind it?
The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy has the answers to those questions and more in this protest Q&A:
After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida last month, students refused to accept the usual rote statements by politicians, and reinvigorated a nationwide movement to reduce gun violence.
Today, a month after the shooting, students across the country will step out of class for 17 minutes – one minute for each victim of the Parkland shooting. It represents a memorial for the lives lost to gun violence and a demand for more action from lawmakers.
Guardian reporters will be sending dispatches to our live blog from protests across the country, including Parkland, Florida, where the massacre took place; the school in Atlanta formerly attended by Martin Luther King; and a school across the river from the White House.
Demonstrations will take place at 10am local time, starting on the east coast and ending in Hawaii, six hours later.
Those participating have several demands. Among them, they want to:
• Ban assault weapons
• Require universal background checks before gun sales
• Reduce militarization of law enforcement
And for any readers thinking of protesting, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a one-page guide to student’s protest rights. Universities have said they won’t penalize college applications belonging to students who protest.
Stay tuned here for reports from the protests and context on the battle to reduce gun violence in the US throughout the day.
