Some Portland area high school students plan to walk out of class on Tuesday and rally in front of Portland City Hall to bring awareness to gun violence in schools.
The timing of Tuesday’s rally, organized by grassroots student group Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front (YLF), falls just days after a student brought a loaded gun to Parkrose High School, and was tackled by a Parkrose employee. But the protest had been scheduled since before the Parkrose incident—in fact, it was planned in reaction to the May 7 school shooting in Highlands Ranch, Colorado that left eight students injured and one dead.
Brady Carmichael, a Beaverton High School student and organizer with YLF, said that the planned rally is taking on a new urgency in the aftermath of Parkrose, though he didn’t know if students from Parkrose plan on attending. Carmichael said the news of Parkrose was affecting students all over the Portland area.
“We’re scared, and not exactly knowing what to do,” he told the Mercury.
It’s not clear how many protesters will show up at City Hall tomorrow afternoon—the rally is scheduled to start at 1 pm—though it’s confirmed that students from both Beaverton and Lincoln high schools are planning to participate.
The goal of the protest is two-fold: YLF students want to honor recent gun violence victims, like the Highlands Ranch student—and encourage local lawmakers to take action to mitigate gun violence in schools, like providing more subsidized youth mental health services.
“Our schools have very little mental health services besides school counselors,” Carmichael said, “and it’s just not enough.”
The Oregon State Legislature recently passed a school funding bill that’s promised to up funding for school counselors and other student mental health resources in public school districts. In a dark, O. Henry-esque twist, state Democrats had to sacrifice modest gun control reform in order to win Republicans’ cooperation on the bill.
Another gun control bill—this one penned by Oregon students with the specific intention of preventing school shootings—also died in the Oregon Legislature this year. The impetus for that bill came from last year’s March for Our Lives, when millions of people rallied for gun control nationwide in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
Carmichael had a simple message to fellow high school students in the area.
“Organize your walkout right now,” he said. “It’s not too late.”
