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When Ashley Castillo was in seventh grade at Virgil Center College, she walked out along with her classmates, calling for stronger gun management legal guidelines after 17 college students and workers have been killed at a Parkland, Fla., highschool. Now a highschool junior, she’s doing it once more — this time, 19 elementary college college students and two lecturers have been shot to demise Tuesday in Texas.
“It’s devastating. It’s heart-wrenching,” Ashley mentioned earlier than main the walkout at Hollywood Excessive College on Thursday. “We’re caught with the accountability of planning these occasions and having to advocate for ourselves … ideas and prayers aren’t getting us anyplace after years and years.”
All through the Los Angeles area and throughout the nation, college students and lecturers walked out of their school rooms as a part of an organized protest after the college capturing in Uvalde, Texas, the place an 18-year-old gunman opened fireplace inside a classroom at Robb Elementary College. College students Demand Motion, an initiative that’s a part of the Everytown for Gun Security group, organized greater than 200 walkouts Thursday throughout the nation.
The scholar group was launched after the 2018 capturing in Parkland, Fla., and advocates for gun-safety insurance policies. On social media, movies and pictures captured college students taking part in such states as Rhode Island, New York, Missouri and California.
In Los Angeles, college students staged walkouts from Los Feliz to Woodland Hills.
Ashley, who based the College students Demand Motion membership at her college, mentioned she believed it was essential to walkout immediately to honor the scholars killed in Texas and the individuals whose lives have been reduce quick by gun violence, together with the individuals killed Might 14 at a grocery retailer in Buffalo, N.Y.
On Thursday, Ashley, with the assist of her college administration, gave a speech throughout which she spoke concerning the capturing in Texas and named the victims. The varsity had a second of silence and advised the college the walkout could be held at 11:30 a.m.
When the time got here, she was joined within the campus quad by tons of of different college students, some who held indicators. She advised her classmates that they’ll name elected officers and register to vote. And once more, she listed the names of the victims in Uvalde in addition to these in Buffalo.
“Shield kids not weapons,” one scholar’s signal learn. “Repair this earlier than I textual content my mother from beneath a desk,” one other learn.
In Woodland Hills, college students at El Camino Actual Constitution Excessive College started their walkout at 9 a.m. Videos posted online present dozens of scholars chanting “sufficient is sufficient” as they marched on the campus. In different cities, college students held indicators and chanted. One scholar held up a bit of paper that learn: “How loud do the screams need to be earlier than you pay attention” and “I ought to fear about my SATs not my life.”
At John Marshall Excessive College in Los Feliz, college students walked off campus and held up indicators close to an intersection.
In 2018, college students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College led a large march after the capturing at their college to demand motion on weapons. The hassle sparked a wave of scholar activism and stricter gun management legal guidelines.
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