How to Help the Students Taking on the Gun Lobby
Source: Avaaz, The World in Action
The students call BS.
In the words of senior Emma González at Saturday's rally in the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School:
"The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice, and our parents, to call BS ... Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say that tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say that no laws could have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS!"
Our previous post links to ways to honor the victims by making donations, connecting with gun control groups, and advocating for policy change.
This post focuses on ways to support and follow the students who, as Emma González said, "are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks."
How to follow the lead of the students planning to stop this once and for all
Read and listen to the powerful words of more Douglas Stoneman students, including David Hogg (on CNN), Sid Fischer (in a Reddit AMA titled "I'm Sid Fischer, a student who was in the third room shot into by a murderer in the recent school shooting, AMA"), Cameron Kasky (on NPR), and Sarah Chadwick (who brought it directly to Trump on Twitter).
Get inspired by Buzzfeed's report, Here’s What It’s Like At The Headquarters Of The Teens Working To Stop Mass Shootings.
Follow the hashtags #NeverAgain, #MarchForOurLives, #StudentsDemandAction, and #StonemanStrong on Twitter.
On March 14: Join a nationwide student walkout organized by the Youth EMPOWER group of the Women's March (for 17 minutes beginning at 10am across every time zone).
On March 24: Join the March for Our Lives organized by Douglas Stoneman students, in Washington DC and wherever you live. You can donate to support the march here.
On April 20: Join another student-organized National High School Walkout on the anniversary of the Columbine high school shooting.
Also: get trained. In preparation for all these student walkouts, ACLU's People Power is hosting a Know Your Rights training call on March 1 at 8pm ET. Register here.
See our prior post for lots of ways to support gun control groups and victims of the shooting. In addition to the Stoneman Douglas Victims' Fund, you can now donate to support the recovery of Anthony Borges, the 15 year old student who was shot 5 times while saving 20 of his classmates.
Update: Two Stoneman Douglas students have also just launched Parents Promise to Kids, a project to get parents to pledge that they will vote for politicians who support gun control.
Update: Companies like Delta, United, Enterprise, and MetLife have recently cut ties with the NRA. See this Huffington Post list of companies that still have a financial relationship with the NRA.
