Under yesterday's clear-blue-chilly-March-morning sky, at 10 a.m., almost every Evanston Township High School (ETHS) student left the school building.
They made their way, in a seemingly endless stream, across closed-to-traffic Church Street and onto Lazier field where they packed the bleachers.
The students, along with thousands of others across the country, were participating in National School Walkout Day, at the exact time of--and exactly one month since--the deadly mass shooting that killed 17 people, mostly students, at Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Freshmen through seniors poured onto the field, passing parents and community members who showed up to support them. They carried signs, chanted "NRA go away," spoke their truth to power, memorialized fellow high school students, and mobilized to demand change in the state and nation's gun laws.
Congratulations to ETHS Student Senate President Emma Austin Stein and the rest of the senate for organizing this event, to the speakers -- including Liana Wallace, Ari Badr, Max Layden, Genevieve Lindley, and Sophia Garcia--
whose voices rang out in anger and hope, and to all the students who believe that we can and must do better to protect their lives.
To watch footage from the K-5 Evanston Walkout, organized by Karla Thomas: https://youtu.be/d-YQaXc_LeE
