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Most, if not all, of the approximately 250 students at Richmond Community High School on Brookland Park Boulevard participated in the National School Walkout on Wednesday, March 14, 2018. (Photo by Raquel Rocha-Turner)
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Students at Richmond Community High School honor those killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14. (Photo by Raquel Rocha-Turner)
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Most, if not all, of Richmond Community High School's 250 students participated in the National School Walkout on March 14, 2018. (Photo by Raquel Rocha-Turner)
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The mood became somber as the names of the shooting victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were read. (Photo by Raquel Rocha-Turner)
It is March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. Our principal has just announced on the school speakers that we are free to walk out of our classrooms and onto the school steps. The hallway is filled with excitement as people push through crowds to find friends and pull out phones to get a good video. It’s almost impossible to get through. As we step out, our first thoughts are not on the magnitude of this movement, or on the importance of free speech and right to protest in a free democracy. They're on how exciting the news cameras are and on how happy we are to leave class for just 18 minutes and on how maybe we should have brought warmer coats because the wind is howling against all of our protest signs.
Raquel Rocha-Turner, 16, is a junior at Richmond Community High School.
Tonight the news will be filled with images of our somber faces and speeches. To anyone watching, it’ll seem as if we are a group of organized protesters eager to make our political statements heard. We can’t see that from where we’re standing. All we can see are the tops of heads. All we can hear is the wind picking up the voices of students reading the names of victims, and the sound of students sniffling. We see a few tears. We hear trucks passing and honking in solidarity. Now it feels serious.
There’s something about being in the middle of a crowd unable to move up or down that makes you think about where you’re standing. Where are we standing? We are standing on the Richmond Community High School steps, but we are also standing in the middle of a crossroads. Many of us have been to several protests over the past few years, trying our hardest to get the country moving in the right direction. We have tried to make people understand the value of our lives. We have tried to create some type of security for ourselves. We have tried to regain our trust in the people we have been told our whole lives were there to protect us. We have tried to ease our frustration when things seem to go the exact opposite of the way we intended them to. We have marched in different cities at different times for different reasons. Things get better sometimes, but often it feels as if they get us nowhere.
Today it feels like ... something. It feels cold. It feels windy. It feels sad. It feels like what we’re saying should be obvious by now. Maybe it even feels a little exciting. But I think most importantly, it feels like a question was answered for every student standing on the steps of Richmond Community High School.
Why do we march?
“Because if [we] were in the students at the school shooting's shoes, [we] would want change, too." —Renee Miles, junior
"For [our] safety and [our] peers' safety at [our] school." —Emmaline Clark, sophomore
"So that this never happens again and innocent lives aren't lost anymore." —Ariana Shahidi, senior
"Because the 17 victims should be picking out colleges, not coffins." —Danielle DeSilva, junior
We march because we don't want to feel scared when the fire alarm rings.
We march because we don't want to look around at each other and wonder which friends we might have to say goodbye to.
We march because we're 14, 15, 16 years old and we don't want to be scared anymore. We don’t want to feel like our lives are in our hands. We want to feel like 14, 15, 16.
It's March 14, 2018, at 10:20 a.m. The doors to the school are opened, and we are free to go back inside. Our minds switch back to lunch and our algebra class and what the absolute minimum amount of homework we need to do tonight is. We feel like teenagers again. We did our part. Our voices were heard. Maybe our grandma will call us later and tell us she saw us on her TV. But the conversation continues past March 14, 2018, at 10:20 a.m., and it's bigger than us now.
