Students, Advocates Take Stand Against Gun Violence
/
By Janee Law
jlaw@longislandergroup.com
Students and advocates across Huntington are taking a stand against gun violence in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting last month.
Students plan walkout in honor of victims
Students across Long Island will be joining the #Enough National School Walkout movement on March 14, when they plan to leave class for 17 minutes to honor the 17 people killed in the Parkland, Florida shooting.
The initiative, which will come one month after the shooting, is being organized by the Women’s March Youth Empower.
Students in Town of Huntington high schools, including Half Hollow Hills, Huntington, Northport, and Commack, plan to be among students from 26 Long Island schools to participate in the walkout.
Lindsay Saginaw, a senior at Huntington High School, said she’s anticipating between 150-400 students to participate in the walkout.
“I think that it’s especially important for students to become involved in this movement because we’re directly impacted,” Saginaw, 17, said. “When legislators are not doing their job to keep us safe is when we need to take a stand and push for change. The main purpose of the Walkout is to stand in solidarity with the students of Parkland, Florida, while also advocating for legislative change to make sure that not another life is lost to gun violence due to this epidemic of mass shootings in America.”
‘March For Our Lives’ to hit Huntington park
More Town of Huntington and Long Island students are taking a stand on March 24 in the national March For Our Lives rally.
The March For Our Lives movement was started by the survivors of the Parkland shooting, which initiated a string of nationwide sister groups including one on Long Island.
Huntington residents Avalon Fenster and Sara Frawley co-founded the March For Our Lives Long Island organization, as a way to advocate for and stand in solidarity with other students in the nation.
Their mission is to evoke change within the public.
“We’re growing up in a lockdown drill generation and we need our laws to change as well to make sure that they’re protecting us,” Fenster said. “Politicians should make young people’s lives a priority, especially when we’re in times when anything can happen.”
Fenster, 16, a sophomore at Stony Brook School, continued, “On Long Island we have so many young people who are so involved in politics who are ready to make a change. I think it was important that all of that energy, fear and anger towards what happened in Parkland be put to good use. So we decided to start this because we wanted students to know that they had somewhere to go to speak out, to stand in solidarity and to do something.”
Fenster said that since the Parkland school shooting she’s been scared, filled with “fear that it could happen to me, fear that it could’ve been my friends or my family.
She continued, “But that fear later turned into determination to do something and to make sure that never happens.”
The leadership team of 14 teens represents Long Island schools, such as Stony Brook School, Huntington, Half Hollow Hills high schools East and West, Jericho, Harborfields and St. Anthony’s.
The leadership team will be facilitating the event and Fenster said she expects hundreds of people to show up. March For Our Lives Long Island rally will take place in Huntington on March 24.
“We’re also hoping that we can send a message to the public, especially politicians and candidates who are attending the event,” Fenster said. “We are ready to make a change and if those changes are not made by them, we will have the power to vote them out since we are the next generation of voters.”
The rally will take place at Heckscher Park baseball field in Huntington from 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
For more information on the march, visit the Instagram page @marchforourlives.li, or website Marchforourlivesli.com.
Suffolk leads school safety forum
Presiding Officer of the Suffolk Legislature DuWayne Gregory planned a School Safety Forum for Monday night to encourage a discussion about recent events relating to school safety.
The forum was planned to be held at the Suffolk County Legislature building in Hauppauge, for school administrators, staff, parents, students, and community members.
The school safety planned to discuss issues that impact school districts today and choices that need to be made, along with programs that are available and how to access the resources needed to protect students and staff.
