That Friday’s walkouts were organized by a student with little connection to gun violence shows how post-Parkland activism has morphed into a thriving national student movement. But as the movement expands, it’s also becoming clear just how hard it is to find a unified student voice. A student’s personal background—including race, class, and past connections to gun violence—shapes his or her relationship with the movement, and youth are navigating the difficult task of finding common ground. A movement that first framed itself as a call to action from young people to adults is now just as much a dialogue among different factions of the country’s youth.
When the post-Parkland movement first sprung up, some observers questioned whether the tremendous attention it garnered was attributable in part to the students’ relative affluence. Friday’s walkouts are another case of large-scale activism organized by students from privileged schools: Fewer than 4 percent of students at Murdock’s Ridgefield High receive free or reduced-price meals. Youth organizers have certainly endeavored to make their protest inclusive, demonstrating their solidarity with communities that suffer from daily gun violence in part by encouraging walkout participants to wear orange, a color that has come to symbolize gun reform after teenagers used it to memorialize a 15-year-old shot and killed in Chicago in 2015. For their part, students in Chicago planned a citywide school walkout in conjunction with Murdock’s campaign. But despite their efforts to involve schools in neighborhoods with varying income levels and racial makeups, organizers—who attend Walter Payton College Prep, a selective-enrollment magnet school, and the private Francis W. Parker School—struggled to bring the walkout to fruition at most of the city's schools. [...]
It’s also worth noting that students at Columbine High School are not participating. The school has commemorated the day annually by having students engage in community-service work rather than attend classes—an approach that its principal promoted this year as an alternative to walkouts. Some Columbine students expressed disappointment that the Connecticut organizers chose the anniversary of the 1999 massacre for their national protest. “This is the worst day for our community,” said Kaylee Tyner, a junior who believes in the protest’s cause and helped organize Columbine’s participation in the March 14 student walkouts. “It was like using our anniversary to push this political agenda … It could’ve been on the 19th or something,” she said. A student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland told The New York Times that MSD administrators are urging students not to walk out out of respect for the Columbine students.
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