FLORIDA, U.S. - America witnessed one of the largest student rallies aimed at protesting increasing gun violence in the country, as students across several schools in different parts of the country staged planned walkouts.
The National School Walkout, titled #ENOUGH, was intended to pressure federal and state lawmakers to tighten laws on gun ownership and saw tens of thousands of students spilling out of classrooms.
Students chanted slogans like “No more silence” and “We want change” as part of the coast-to-coast protest over gun violence prompted by last month’s massacre at a Florida high school that claimed 17 lives.
Students participating in the rally demanded tightening of laws on gun ownership despite opposition from the powerful gun rights advocacy group, the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Some students dressed in orange, the color adopted by the gun control movement and the walkouts began at 10 a.m. local time in each time zone.
The walkouts were scheduled to last 17 minutes, a tribute to 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14. However, many rallies went on longer.
The Florida school shooting became the latest in a series of shootings that have plagued U.S. schools and colleges over the past two decades.
The coordinated walkouts were being organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women's March, which brought thousands to Washington, D.C., last year.
Organizers said before the walkouts started that students from Maine to Hawaii had planned at least 3,000 walkouts, in what they called the biggest demonstration yet of the student activism that has emerged following the massacre.
Some staged roadside rallies to honor shooting victims and protest violence, while others held demonstrations in school gyms and football fields.
Many school districts allowed the walkouts without any problems, while others said anyone who participated in the walkouts would face discipline.
However, several students defied the warnings and left school anyway.
According to a senior and the school superintendent, over two dozen at Lindenhurst High School on New York state’s Long Island were at first suspended for participating in the rally and then had their punishment reduced to detentions.
At New York City’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan.
One of the signs read, “Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” in what came as a jab at a response often uttered by lawmakers after mass shootings.
Meanwhile, in Parkland, thousands of students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field to the applause of families and supporters beyond the fences as law enforcement officers looked on.
The Principal, Ty Thompson called for the “biggest group hug,” and the students reportedly obliged around the 50-yard line.
Gathering on the sidewalks outside the school, students chanted, “We want change!”
One of them held a sign that said, “Can you hear the children screaming?”
However, merely 80 miles north of Parkland at Vero Beach High School, chants of “No More Silence, end gun violence,” were
