Tag: florida school shooting

Gabrielle Begun

We Are HereSan Francisco, CAPhotos by Lauri LevenfeldStory by Gabrielle Begun

I’m no politician. I don’t usually follow the news. But today, during our student/teacher led assembly, where we were supposed to discuss something that had happened a week ago, I got up along with 400 students and walked outside to have 17 minutes of silence for those who lost their lives in the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, followed by an emotional, empowering, and important student-led demonstration.

The day that the shooting happened, I didn’t have school, so I stumbled upon it while on Instagram. It was a disturbing video of teenagers running for their lives with their hands up in the air with the headline “School Shooting in Florida”. You want to know the first thing I felt? Absolutely nothing. It was at that moment that I realized that I had become so normalized with mass shootings and death in the U.S that I kept scrolling, and that scared me so much.

I felt nothing until one of my friends posted the video on her Instagram, and I suddenly woke up. I woke up to the videos of high schoolers crying in interviews because their friend had just been mercilessly murdered. I woke up to the screams and yells of kids my age, making it clear that it was far too late, and that something had to be done about guns…

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