'Protect Kids, Not Guns': California Students Participate In National School Walkout
SACRAMENTO (CBS13/AP) – The latest on National Walkout Day:
10:30 a.m.
Students in Sacramento joined in on the National School Walkout on Wednesday morning.
At McClatchy High School, students set up empty desks in front of campus, each one in memory of the people killed in the Parkland, Florida school shooting.
Students at McClatchy High participating in #NationalWalkoutDay: pic.twitter.com/5r1uvVE5nj
— CBS Sacramento CBS13 (@CBSSacramento) March 14, 2018
The teens then stood in silence after walking out at 10 a.m. They stayed silent for 17 minutes.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, himself a McClatchy graduate, also spoke at the walkout. He urged students to pressure politicians to take action.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and other city officials joined students who walked out of class at Hiram Johnson High School.
"Young people are our best hope when it comes to changing the public policy across the country," Steinberg said.
10:10 a.m.
California students have joined the national walkouts to protest gun violence in schools.
Students began leaving classrooms at 10 a.m. Wednesday from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area.
The protests follow the shooting rampage that killed 17 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14.
At one Los Angeles-area school students gathered on a sports field and held signs saying "Never Again."
8:25 a.m.
Thousands of students will walk out of school Wednesday morning to protest gun violence.
At exactly 10 a.m. in each time zone, students from across the U.S. and the world will walk out of their classrooms for 17 minutes.
That's one minute for each victim of the school massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg is expected to be at Hiram Johnson High School, along with other city and school officials.
The nationwide movement takes place exactly one month since the shooting.
More students from more than 3,000 schools expected to participate.
The students in Parkland started the movement to urge lawmakers to pass tighter gun laws.
"I wanted people to know that Stoneman Douglas will be the last school this happens to, we wanted to make a change, we want to be the generation that changes everything," said Stoneman Douglas High student Julia Brighton.
Another event – the "March for Our Lives" rally for school safety – is expected to draw thousands of participants to Washington D.C. on March 24.
That demonstration will be followed by another round of school walkouts on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.