Students and teachers across the US are staging school walkouts today to demand tighter gun control, beginning at 10 am EST on the east coast and continuing till tonight. Early social media posts reveal press kits handwritten by elementary schoolers and high-schoolers holding hands in peaceful demonstration around their schools, in a life-affirming children’s protest.
The demonstration follows a spontaneous nationwide walkout last month, which took place in solidarity with survivors of the Feb. 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. A counter movement online, organized under the hashtag #WalkUpNotOut, has argued that students should spend their energy befriending loners and potential school shooters, rather than marching for gun control.
But today, along with students sharing their voices on social media, many parents, teachers and bystanders have expressed pride in the young gun control activists through their own posts or in interviews with media.