In Polk County, Florida, one student activist who is taking on the issue of gun control is Kala Tedder; she is a senior at George Jenkins High School. She’s also dual enrolled at Polk State College and is running for the Polk County School Board.
Tedder has contacted elected officials about the need for stricter gun control.
She’s also helping to organize a student walk-out on March 14. The Facebook event page says, “The students of George Jenkins High School, in honor of the victims of the Parkland tragedy, will be walking out of class on March 14th, 10am, for 17 minutes. We will be meeting in the courtyard. The hosts of the event will be creating signs with the names of each victim. The signs will include the tag #NeverAgain. ”
Listen:
Several thousand gun control advocates descended on Florida’s Capitol Wednesday, including about one hundred students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 students were killed on Valentine’s Day.
Here in Tampa, activists announced today that Blake High School students plan a walk-out on Friday to protest lawmakers’ inaction on gun violence. A press release says “As the school day comes to an end at 3 PM, students will march off campus and over to Curtis Hixon Park in Downtown Tampa.”
Students at high schools across the U.S. are staging walkouts to protest gun violence in the wake of the Parkland school shooting.
A student from Leto High School wrote this to WMNF News on Wednesday:
“Hi my name is Kayla N and I am a 15 year old that attends Leto High School. I had participated in the walkout and protest that happened at my school today. I wanted to bring to your attention that our assistant principal had told students over the intercom before and after our protest that what we were doing would not bring change for the things we wanted. Many students at Leto felt very disrespected since we were standing up for what we believed in and were told that it would not work. I am using my guardians facebook account since I do not have one and I am being encouraged to stand up against gun violence. I just wanted to bring to your attention that we felt very intimidated at school to practice our first amendment rights.“
information from the Associated Press was used in this report
