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Candace Opstvedt
Students calling for gun law reforms protested at the state capital on March 14. They will be doing so again on March 24 in what is expected to be a gathering in the tens of thousands. And you’re invited.
Turning anguish into action Youth movement prepares for March for Our Lives Denver
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n the one-month anniversary of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, almost 1 million students from kindergarten to 12th grade participated in more than 3,000 walkout events across the country. They gathered on football fields, capitol building steps and in the streets, joining hands and holding protest signs. They stood in silence for 17 minutes — one for each person killed at the Florida high school — before turning their attention to legislators and leaders to demand gun law reform. It was a sign of the strength and resolve of a youth movement that has risen from the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. “I saw the shooting on the news and my first reaction wasn’t one of shock and horror. There was some of that, but it was more so, ‘Oh, another one,’” says Jaden Rosard, 17, from Boulder. “And that made me realize that no one is going to stand up and so we needed to. We being the young people.” Inspired by the high schoolers from Florida who immediately began organizing after tragedy struck their school, Rosard connected with other young people from around the state to form Never Again Colorado. In a little over a month, the group has put together an organizational structure, held board elections and organized the March for Our Lives on Saturday, March 24 at Civic Center Park in Denver. It is one of more than 800 sibling marches planned in every state across the country and around the world, in conjunction with the main event in Washington D.C. Rosard says more than 1,000 young people voted over a 48-hour period to elect the 15 Never Again Colorado board members out of 60 candidates; the youngest member is 12, the oldest 24. There’s a board member from all seven Colorado congressional districts
by Angela K. Evans (Rosard represents CD-2) as well as other positions such as the directors of high school and college outreach and the director of policy affairs, who is helping draft gun control legislation the group plans to release soon. But for now, the focus is the march. The event will start at 2 p.m. with about an hour of speeches before the group — which is estimated to be tens of thousands if not more — will walk around the capitol building. The students are backed by Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun control advocacy organization, started and (mostly) funded by former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The organization is offering logistical support for the event, but the youth are the ones leading the charge. “It’s a youth movement and that’s partially because we’ve lost faith in the older generation,” Rosard says. “We realized that we needed to be the change we want to see and no one else is going to do it for us.” Hearing the slogan “Never Again” was a little like deja vu for Coni Sanders, whose dad, Dave Sanders, rescued hundreds of students by herding them out of the cafeteria at Columbine High School in 1999. He was later killed by the shooters. “God, we said that too,” she says. “These slogans are great but we’ve got to put some weight behind them.” Almost two decades after her father was killed, Sanders says she’s desperate to see any changes that will move the needle, and she’s joining the youth movement as one of the scheduled speakers in Denver on Joel Dyer
Students participating in a walkout from Fairview High School in Boulder on March 14 to call for changes to gun laws and to honor those murdered in Parkland, Florida.
MORE INFO: March for our Lives. 1:30 p.m. (program starts at 2), Saturday March 24. Civic Center Park, Colfax Avenue and Bannock Street, Denver. RSVP at goo.gl/SZEKUs
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March 24. She acknowledges things do feel different this time, however, as this growing youth movement seems to be capturing everyone’s attention. “A lot of us feel like we’ve been at the bottom of a well just screaming because our loved ones are dead and it seems like nobody cares and society just moves on,” Sanders says. “I really feel that over the last 20 years, we have built a foundation for these kids to stand tall on and scream to the hilltop, and people are now willing to hear it. I’ve never been so hopeful and I’m just sorry it took 17 more lives for people to pull their heads out of the sand and be willing to take a stand.” Sanders now runs a mental health private practice that serves approximately 150 people who have commited violent crimes, in addition to traveling around the country advocating for gun law reform. “Working with youth is definitely something that gives me so much hope,” says Sara Grossman, 32, from Denver, and another scheduled speaker. “It makes me feel like right now is really a reckoning for the NRA and for folks who continually vote down gun regulation.” Grossman became personally invested in the gun control debate after her best friend from college, Christopher Andrew Leinonen (Drew), was gunned down at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016. “I’ve found that pushing my anguish into action has definitely been the most helpful way of moving myself through this grief,” Grossman says. Following Leinonen’s funeral, Grossman “spent about a month with my feelings,” then decided to trade in her tech job for advocacy work. Now, she’s the communications director at the Matthew Shepard Foundation in Denver, and she’s also involved in the Dru Project, an LGBTQIA advocacy organization founded in memory of Leinonen. She’s an Everytown survivor fellow, as well, which is how she connected with the Never Again students in Colorado. She’s inspired by what she calls “chutzpah” coming out of the student activists in Parkland and Boulder Weekly