Stunned by the deadliest high school shooting in US history, students across the country on Sunday mobilized to organize rallies and a national walkout in support of stronger gun laws, challenging politicians they say have failed to protect them.
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a former student is accused of murdering 17 people on Wednesday using an assault-style rifle, joined others on social media to plan the events, including a Washington march.
“I felt like it was our time to take a stand,” said Lane Murdock, 15, of Connecticut. “We’re the ones in these schools, we’re the ones who are having shooters come into our classrooms and our spaces.”
Photo: Reuters
Murdock, who lives 32km from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were shot to death five years ago, on Sunday drew more than 50,000 signatures on an online petition calling on students to walk out of their high schools on April 20.
Instead of going to classes, she urged her fellow students to stage protests on the 19th anniversary of an earlier mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas are planning a “March for Our Lives” in Washington on March 24 to call attention to school safety and ask lawmakers to enact gun control.
Photo: Reuters
They also plan to rally for gun control, mental health issues and school safety on Wednesday in Tallahassee, the state capital. The students were expected to meet with a lawmaker who is seeking to ban the sale of assault-style weapons like the AR-15 allegedly used in the school shooting.
Organizers behind the Women’s March have called for a 17-minute, nationwide walkout by teachers and students on March 14.
The demands for change by many still too young to vote has inflamed the country’s long simmering debate between advocates for gun control and gun ownership.
Students from the Florida school have lashed out at political leaders, including US President Donald Trump, for inaction on the issue.
Many criticized Trump for insensitivity after he said in a weekend Twitter post that the FBI might have been too distracted with a Russia probe to follow leads that could have prevented the massacre.
“You can’t blame the bureaucracy for this when it’s you, Mr President, who’s overall responsible,” David Hogg, an 18-year-old Douglas senior, said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
Trump spent the weekend at his estate in south Florida, only an hour’s drive from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The White House said Trump planned to host “a listening session” with high-school students and teachers on Wednesday, but did not specify which students or school would be involved.
Democratic leaders vowed to redouble efforts to fight the nation’s powerful gun lobby to reduce violence from firearms.
“We’re the adults. We’re the leaders in this country who are supposed to keep our children safe - and again and again, our country has let them down,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said on Twitter.
The suspect in the Parkland shooting, Nikolas Cruz, 19, faces multiple murder charges in the deaths of 14 students and three staff members, and the wounding of more than a dozen others in a rampage that eclipsed Columbine as the country’s worst mass shooting at a high school.
Additional reporting by AP
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique