Students, including Co-Organizer, Sam Dornstein (far right), hold signs up to oncoming traffic during protest.

#walkoutwednesdays

Students across the state will walk out of class on March 14th at 10:00am, as a part of the national walkout organized by Women’s March Empower. They will proceed to sit in silence for 17 minutes and then will head to the State House. There, students from many schools across Massachusetts will be congregating. At the state house they will be lobbying to pass the Extreme Risk Protective Orders (ERPO) (H. 3610).  Join us in fighting for our lives.

The ERPO will allow household members or petitioners to report persons in possession of firearms of being an imminent danger to themself or others. This then allows the police to place a temporary weapons ban on the respondent awaiting a trial within 14 days. The trial determines whether or not the respondent will have a year long weapons ban placed on them.

This is not the first walkout that Massachusetts students have participated in. Under the name “Students Against Gun Violence,” students have been walking out for the past couple Wednesdays to advocate for gun reform on a local and national level. This movement started at Somerville High School, where upwards of 400 students walked out of school on February 28th. Last week, the movement spread beyond Somerville, with upwards of 2,000 Massachusetts students, from four different high schools walked out calling for more comprehensive gun control laws.

Mr. LaGambina, the headmaster at Somerville High School, addressed some of the students that walked out, after school on Friday, March 9th. The conversation was disheartening at best. Students were told that while the he would support the March 14th walkout, he will use any and all power he can to stop students from continuing their fight.

Students Against Gun Violence officially has student representatives from Somerville High School, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Arlington High School, and Medford High School, and is actively spreading the movement to more schools across the United States. All of these schools will be participating in one way or another in the March 14th protest. The students do not intend to end the protests until the ERPO bill is passed.

Student Organizer, Jonathan Matsko, 16, from Cambridge said in reference to the absences due to the protests, “While some say we should be in school right now, I say, so should the victims of the Parkland shooting, of Sandy Hook, and of every other school shooting.”

-Students Against Gun Violence