Students walk out of Indiana’s Zionsville High School March 14 to protest gun violence, one month after a shooting killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Another walkout is planned for Friday at schools nationwide.
On Friday, the anniversary of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, students across the U.S. will leave their classrooms and walk out their school doors to protest gun violence as part of the national movement that started in Parkland, Florida, after a high school shooting there.
There are four local walkouts scheduled in Bloomington on the national event’s website, Act.Indivisible.Org: one each at Bloomington High Schools North and South, a “Bloomington Student Walkout” calling protesters to the Monroe County Courthouse; and the Indiana University National School Walkout.
The Bloomington events join more than 50 registered walkouts in Indiana, including walkouts for Brown County Junior High School and Bedford North Lawrence High School in neighboring counties.
Tamara Brown, a North senior who has been helping to plan the local walkouts as part of a group called Bloomington Students Against Assault Weapons, hopes several hundred students from the Monroe County Community School Corp. will be leaving school at 10 a.m. Friday to congregate at the county courthouse.
Some are coordinating with members of local community organizations, such as Moms Demand Action Against Gun Violence, to organize rides from school to the courthouse with their parents’ permission. Others intend to walk the distance between their schools and downtown Bloomington.