Focus on peace in wake of violence

East students walk out in solidarity protest

By Pam Schiff
Posted 3/21/18

Carrying signs that read “More diplomas less guns,” “#ENOUGH,” “We Matter,” “Our School’s Dress Code is Stricter than Gun Law,” “Thoughts and Prayers are NOT Enough,” “NRA …

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Focus on peace in wake of violence

East students walk out in solidarity protest

Posted

Carrying signs that read “More diplomas less guns,” “#ENOUGH,” “We Matter,” “Our School’s Dress Code is Stricter than Gun Law,” “Thoughts and Prayers are NOT Enough,” “NRA their blood is on your hands,” “Our Safety, Our Voice, Our Generation It Matters,” almost 1,500 students from Cranston East joined with thousands of other schools and students across the country on Wednesday, March 14 in a walkout protest.

The demonstration took place exactly one month to the day of the tragic shooting in Florida at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 14 students and three faculty members dead.

The students poured out the front doors for at least 10 minutes, and walked around the school campus and perimeter for 17 minutes – one minute to honor each fallen victim.

Cranston East student leaders took on the responsibility of organizing the entire event.

“Other than making sure everyone who participated was safe, and those who chose not to walk out were also safe, I had no part in planning this event,” said East Principal Sean Kelly. “I wanted the students’ voices to be heard. This was their time, and I was impressed with their organization and how they carried themselves as students from Cranston East.”

Four student leaders of the school organized the walk. Senior Nathaniel Hardy is a captain of the Boys Varsity Soccer team, a captain of the Math Team, and the Vice President of the National Honor Society. Darien Di Naro is the senior class vice president and Front Ensemble Captain of the Marching Band and Indoor Percussion group. Shevanna Yee is the Senior Class President and Emma Boucher is the Junior Class President.

Boucher was clear in her reasons for getting involved.

“I got involved in organizing in the week following the shooting in Parkland,” she said. “I was so inspired by the student activists in Florida, and I knew I wanted to support them as well as demand action in our own community. My friend Shevanna Yee and I knew we had a platform as student leaders and met with members of the faculty and administration at East to plan our next steps. The administration and district has been incredibly supportive of our efforts surrounding activism and the walkout. They are not wrong when they call it a memorial walk, because it is both a remembrance of the lives lost to gun violence as well as a protest of the lack of action taken by politicians around the issue.”

Boucher is hoping the message and passion the students are expressing do not fall on deaf ears.

“I hope this walkout sends a message to our elected officials, including Mayor Fung, who is located directly next to East and has yet to voice his stance on gun control, that students are politically engaged,” she said. “We are the next block of voters and leaders, and we will vote them out of office if they do not support our efforts to enact meaningful gun control legislation. It will be incredibly empowering to stand with students across the country as we protest the inaction of our leaders.”

This march and surrounding events have secured Boucher’s interest in politics.

“I have been interested and involved in politics for ten years and am planning on majoring in political science in college,” she said. “Therefore, this walkout is only the beginning of my political career.”

Hardy had his own reasons for getting involved and organizing.

“A lot of the reason that we organized this event was in reaction to the students from Parkland Florida,” the senior student said. “We were horrified with what happened in Parkland on February 14th, and I think we all realized that our school was no different from their school. This could happen to us as well, and we didn’t want to be silent about it. I was born seven months after the Columbine shooting, and all of the current high school students across the country have been born after Columbine, so this is a problem that we’ve had the grapple with our whole lives.”

The students not only arranged the walk out, but they attended City Council meetings as well.

“The organizers of this walkout were also in attendance at the city council’s meeting addressing school safety in February and we were astonished by how little was mentioned regarding how the students feel and our opinions, so we decided that we had to do something about it and get our voices heard. School safety affects no one more than us and so we couldn’t sit quietly by as our safety was at stake,” he said.

Hardy wanted to make sure that the message of the walk out was clear to all.

“The walkout has been called a memorial and a protest, and I don’t see why it can’t be both,” Hardy said. “I think it’s important to reflect and pay respect to those who have been killed in school shootings, but at the same time, ‘thoughts and prayers’ aren’t enough. If we truly want to honor those who were victims of gun violence in schools, the best way to do that is to seek change, so we can prevent it from happening again.”

He also wanted to let lawmakers and legislators know that as future voters their voices are important.

“We’re hoping that this demonstration showed how much this issue matters to all of us,” he said. “We are not disinterested teenagers, but engaged and concerned members of our society, and our voices matter. I think politicians often forget that even though we can’t vote yet, there are over 100,000 high school students in Rhode Island, and we have opinions and that we will be entering the electorate soon. Our opinions matter and should not be overlooked just because we can’t yet vote.”

Immediately after the walkout, they held a voter registration drive on short notice, in which over 70 students registered or pre-registered to vote, and they plan on holding more registration drives in the near future.

The organizers also plan on getting involved in city politics.

“We have contacted members of the city council to try to become involved with the subcommittee meeting on school safety which will be meeting soon to try to address this issue,” Hardy said. “We don’t want this to end with a bunch of students walking out of school for 17 minutes, but we want to turn this into serious reform for our community to help keep the students, a group without a voice in today’s politics, safe from those who want to do us harm.”

After the walk out, students are still talking about what they can do to affect change in a positive way.

“I was so proud of the Cranston East community; organizing the walkout would have meant nothing if students had not participated. Participating in the walkout left me feeling inspired, empowered, and hopeful,” said Boucher. “Students are the driving force behind this movement, and in being part of a national demonstration. We proved that we are willing to take the necessary steps to influence leaders. I heard the students around me saying similar things. This is an issue that affects all of us, and students understand that. We are scared, but our fear has also given us a determination to pass meaningful gun legislation that our politicians are lacking.”

Superintendent Jeannine Nota was pleased with the way the walk out was done, writing this in an email:

“The students were very thoughtful about their messages and how they wanted these events to be conducted,” Nota said. “They were the leaders and decided how the protest would be done today. They took part in a revered American institution one of taking part in peaceful protest. I think they did an amazing job conveying their messages in a peaceful way, and I am proud of their respect for each other and the students from Parkland, Florida.”

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  • Wuggly

    This is not a firearms issue, this is a violence issue. Violence is not committed by firearms, knives, bats or any other inanimate object. It's committed by people. I wonder if the teachers have informed the students that the school used to have a rifle team. i wonder if the teachers even know. So the real question is what has changed to cause people to be more violent?

    Saturday, March 24, 2018 Report this