‘Enough is enough’: Aurora, US students stage walkouts against guns

AURORA | Students across Aurora, the metro area and the entire country marched out of their schools to demand action from political leaders to enact stronger gun control laws. The national walkout Wednesday is one of the biggest student protests since the Vietnam War era.

“Older people just think we’re too young to feel distressed and the impact this atmosphere has on us. Spiritually we’re exhausted because we’re always out of the conversation. We’re looked down upon because of our age and how much experience we have in life,” said Bennie Mahonda, a 17-year-old junior at Overland High School in Aurora, which had about 300 students gather near one the athletic fields as part of the protest. “I just hope that nationwide people look at teenagers and see they actually have a voice and they’re actually speaking truth.”

Abbe Smith, spokeswoman for Cherry Creek School District, said about 8,000 students in the district participated in the walkouts. Students who returned to class were not marked as absent for the day.

“Cherry Creek Schools had thousands of students who engaged in a peaceful demonstration against school violence and remained out of class for approximately 17 minutes in honor of the 17 victims of Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida,” Smith said. “While the Cherry Creek School District does not endorse or host walkouts, we respect the right of students to exercise their First Amendment rights and we recognized early that students were planning to participate in walkouts.”

Aurora Public Schools had said on Monday students who didn’t have parents call to excuse them form class would be marked as absent. A request for a comment Wednesday about whether students who participated were marked as absent throughout the district wasn’t returned by APS.

At APS’ Rangeview High School, about 250 students walked out at 10 a.m., holding signs calling for action on gun control, said  Izzy Honey, an 18-year-old senior at Rangeview High School.

“It doesn’t feel like politicians listen to what we want. So seeing the positivity around this and organizing like this, it gives kids a lot of hope that we can actually make a change, that we have that voice and we can make change happen,” Honey said.

Honey said she and her classmates weren’t marked as absent by teachers and the administration of the school was supportive of students taking part in the walkout.

Braving snow in New England and threats of school discipline in places like Georgia and Ohio, they carried signs with messages like “Am I Next?,” chanted slogans against the National Rifle Association and bowed their heads in memory of the 17 dead in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Around the nation, students left class at 10 a.m. local time for at least 17 minutes — one minute for each of the dead in Florida. At some schools, students didn’t go outside but lined the hallways, gathered in gyms and auditoriums or wore orange, the color used by the movement against gun violence, or maroon, the school color at Stoneman Douglas.

“We’re sick of it,” said Maxwell Nardi, a senior at Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico, Virginia, just outside Richmond. “We’re going to keep fighting, and we’re not going to stop until Congress finally makes resolute changes.”

Over and over, students declared that too many young people have died and that they are tired of going to school afraid of getting killed.

“Enough is enough. People are done with being shot,” said Iris Foss-Ober, 18, a senior at Washburn High School in Minneapolis.

Some schools applauded students for taking a stand or at least tolerated the walkouts, while others threatened punishment.

Protesters called for such measures as tighter background checks on gun purchases and a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the Florida bloodbath.

As the protests unfolded, the NRA responded by posting a photo on Twitter of a black rifle emblazoned with an American flag. The caption: “I’ll control my own guns, thank you.”

Walkouts interrupted the day at schools from the elementary level through college, and at some that have witnessed their own mass shootings. About 250 students gathered on a soccer field at Colorado’s Columbine High School, while students who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in 2012 walked out of Newtown High School in Connecticut.

In joining the protests, the students followed the example set by many of the survivors of the Florida shooting, who have become gun-control activists, leading rallies, lobbying legislators and giving TV interviews. Their efforts helped spur passage last week of a Florida law curbing access to assault rifles by young people.

In Washington, more than 2,000 high-school age protesters observed the 17 minutes of silence by sitting on the ground with their backs turned to the White House as a church bell tolled. President Donald Trump was in Los Angeles at the time.

The protesters carried signs with messages such as “Our Blood/Your Hands” and “Never Again” and chanted slogans against the NRA.

In New York City, they chanted, “Enough is enough!” In Salt Lake City, the signs read, “Protect kids not guns,” ”Fear has no place in school” and “Am I next?”

Stoneman Douglas High senior David Hogg, who has emerged as one of the leading student activists, livestreamed the walkout at the tragedy-stricken school on his YouTube channel.

He said the students could not be expected to remain in class when there was work to do to prevent gun violence.

“Every one of these individuals could have died that day. I could have died that day,” he said.

At Aztec High School in a rural, gun-friendly part of New Mexico, students aimed to avoid politics and opted for a ceremony honoring students killed in shootings — including two who died in a December attack at Aztec.

“Our kids sit on both ends of the spectrum, and we have a diverse community when it comes to gun rights and gun control,” Principal Warman Hall said.

About 10 students left Ohio’s West Liberty-Salem High School — which witnessed a shooting last year — despite a warning they could face detention or more serious discipline.

Police in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta patrolled Kell High, where students were threatened with unspecified consequences if they participated. Three students walked out anyway.

The coordinated protests were organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women’s March, which brought thousands to Washington last year.

Congress has shown little inclination to tighten gun laws, and Trump backed away from his initial support for raising the minimum age for buying an assault rifle to 21.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had no immediate public comment on the walkout.

Historians said the demonstrations were shaping up to be one of the largest youth protests in decades.

“It seems like it’s going to be the biggest youth-oriented and youth-organized protest movements going back decades, to the early ’70s at least,” said David Farber a history professor at the University of Kansas who has studied social change movements.

“Young people are that social media generation, and it’s easy to mobilize them in a way that it probably hadn’t been even 10 years ago.”

The walkouts drew support from companies such as media conglomerate Viacom, which paused programming on MTV, BET and its other networks for 17 minutes during the walkouts.

Other protests planned in coming weeks include the March for Our Lives rally, which organizers say is expected to draw hundreds of thousands to the nation’s capital on March 24.

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By COLLIN BINKLEY , Associated Press. Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Maria Danilova in Washington; Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Drew in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Mike Householder in Detroit; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston; Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis; and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.