by Jennifer Tipton
March 14th marked the one-month anniversary since seventeen lives were senselessly taken by a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14th.
Declared “National Walkout Day”, students from 2,800 schools across the U.S. showed solidarity for the victims in Florida by leaving their classrooms at 10am on the morning of March 14th. Many of these demonstrations lasted seventeen minutes to represent each one of the lives lost in the recent tragedy.
In Parkland, at the very scene of the shooting, students gathered on the football field and chanted, “we want change!”, rejecting requests from administrators to return to their classrooms. They then joined students from a nearby middle school to solemnly walk two miles to the memorials that had been set up to commemorate the victims.
Here in Ventura, students at Ventura High School took part as well, marching and carrying signs that read, “Students Take Action!”, “Enough! Keep Us Safe!” and my favorite, “Fear Has No Place in Our Schools!”. As they marched, the students chanted, “end the violence! no more silence!” and in one of the videos taken, you can hear a student say, “this is way more organized than I thought it would be!”.
With the video being captured by a drone, the students at Cabrillo Middle School sent out a message of love by standing together on their field and forming a heart.
Later in the day on March 14th, many other Venturans (men, women and children alike) stood on the corner of Telephone Rd. and Victoria Ave. at the Government Center making their statement about gun violence … “enough” seemed to be the word of the day.
