‘THE TIME IS UP’: Local students join national walkout chorus

On March 14, nearly 250 students at the Hood River Valley High School participated in a walkout to not only remember those 17 students and staff who lost their lives in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., but advocate for stricter gun-control laws.

Eva Jones, a sophomore at HRVHS who recently travelled to Washington, D.C., shared her experience as a student working to prevent gun violence.

Sophia Larsen-Teskie read off the names of the 17 lives that were taken in Parkland.

Once the names were read off Wednesday, students in attendance shared one minute of silence to remember those who were murdered — with many students locking arms and holding hands.

After the moment of silence, it was anything but silent at the high school.

“Stop the silence!”

“End gun violence!”

“Stop the silence!”

“End gun violence!”

This was one of many chants that the student body shouted out in hopes that a certain someone would hear.

“When I spoke to our Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, they were extremely ecstatic to help us in this fight,” said Jones. “There’s one problem, one of our representatives in our district is missing in action. Do not allow him to get away with this any longer!

“The time is up,” Jones said. “Now we have to take action into our own hands.”

And for these high schoolers that starts with being knowledgeable about the situation.

During the walkout, Grace Whitmore (senior), Montserrat Garrido (junior), Sofie Larsen-Teskie (junior), Ruby Patterson (senior) and Jones spoke to the crowd of students about the facts and statistics about these malicious shootings, at one point handing out a map of the United States to the students that was covered in black dots, each dot representing a mass shooting since the Sandy Hook shooting on Dec. 14, 2014.

Beyond the facts and statistics, the girls weren’t shy about letting the truth be told about the actions being taken from the “older, white male legislators,” in our state.

“When Greg Walden votes against common sense gun-control, he’s saying that he’s willing to let another one of these shooting happen, maybe here,” said Patterson. “When our state Representative Jeff Helfrich votes against prohibiting people with restraining orders against them, from buying a gun, he’s telling us that we don’t have a right to feel safe. When our representatives get up and defend the Second Amendment at all costs, they’re telling us that someone’s right to own an AR-15 is more important than our right to safely get an education, more important than our right to feel safe in our environment, more important than our right to participate in our society and more important than our right to be alive.”

And if Walden and company didn’t hear these girls’ message, they’ll hear it from the hundreds of students who wrote letters to Walden that will be sent to his office in Washington, D.C.

These letters were ways for students, who are unable to vote, to have a voice.

And if students were eligible to vote, the student body set up an area with voter registration papers for students who are able to have their voice be heard that way.

Many students used these separate platforms to let their thoughts be heard, but for those who were uncomfortable with the two options, there was one other option: signing a t-shirt.

On Saturday, March 24, Garrido will be heading to Washington, D.C., to be a part of the “March For Our Lives,” event. At this event, the message will be “to demand that students’ lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today.”

On that day, Garrido will be wearing a t-shirt that was signed by many of her classmates who attended the walkout event, to show that every student is concerned with what’s going on regarding this issue.

“The t-shirt is so that I can take everyone with me to Washington, D.C.,” said Garrido. “I am the voice for people who are afraid to be heard.”

The walkout ended with students on the floor and their fellow classmates drawing outlines of them with chalk to represent every mass school shootings since 1990.

The reason for this is for people to see and feel the problem as they walk over these bodies as they head into the high school, as that feeling has been a reality in many schools across the country.

“At the end of the day, we’re just trying to get people to realize that they have a voice on this issue and we’re not going to forget that we have a voice or about this issue,” said Whitmore. “It’s a month later and after most school shootings, it’s kind of like, ‘We will move on,’ but that’s why we’re doing it now and we believe it’s these people here at the walkout that are the ones who can make a difference, it’s not really the older, white male legislators.”

“We’re done with watching all these people get killed day after day and being okay with it,” said Jones. “While constantly wondering if we’re going to be next, the best way to prepare for a shooting is to get these weapons out of our communities because that will be what puts an end to gun violence in America.”