美国国家公共电台 NPR Parkland Students Bring Campaign To Town Halls

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

As part of their campaign against gun violence, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have been pushing members of Congress to hold town halls. Last night, some of the Parkland students brought their Never Again movement to a South Florida community that has a history of gun violence. NPR's Greg Allen was there.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE 1: Miami Gardens is a community where drive-by shootings and stray bullets have claimed many lives. At last night's meeting, when someone asked how many had lost loved ones to gun violence, at least a dozen people raised their hands. The area's represented in Congress by Democrat 2 Frederica Wilson. She applauded the work of the Parkland students and recalled words she heard as a young student herself at Fisk University in the 1960s from Martin Luther King.

FREDERICA WILSON: First of all, he had this rousing speech. And then he said, children, you keep on marching. Don't you get weary.

ALLEN: Wilson organized the town hall to begin a discussion about how to bring the movement to Miami Gardens and other areas plagued by gun violence daily. Miami Gardens is just 30 miles south of Parkland but a much different community, less suburban 3, predominantly African-American but where parents share the same concern - how to make sure their children come home safely. One of those speaking and listening was Jared Moskowitz, a state representative from Parkland and a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He shared with the audience his experience the day of the shooting - the families waiting for hours to hear the news they already suspected, that their loved ones were among the 14 victims.

JARED MOSKOWITZ: But it is not lost on me that in Miami-Dade County, 300 kids over the last 11 years - which is 17 Parklands - have lost their lives to gun violence. And these are kids. These are innocent kids.

ALLEN: Kids like 12-year-old Tequila Forshee, killed by stray gunfire when bullets ripped through her grandmother's living room while she was having her hair braided. Seventeen-year-old Tyah Amoy Roberts is part of a group of African-American students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas working to connect their movement to efforts to address gun violence in the black community. The common denominator in all the shooting, she says, is a firearm.

TYAH AMOY ROBERTS: This is not only about school shootings. Shootings happen everywhere. This is not only about mass shootings because shootings happen on a day-to-day basis in communities of color.

ALLEN: Marjory Stoneman Douglas junior Brandon Dasent wants to build connections with the Black Lives Matter movement. He and other African-American students, he says, aren't reassured 4 by more officers at school. In the days after the shooting, there was a tense moment when he was reprimanded in a school hallway by an officer for how he was dressed. Dasent says he turned and walked away.

BRANDON DASENT: If that type of conflict happened outside of Douglas's gates, I probably wouldn't be here speaking to you right now, or I would be - I would have ended up in handcuffs. I would have been detained. You know, that's how it works.

ALLEN: The call by Marjory Stoneman Douglas students for town halls continues with more scheduled in Florida through the weekend. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami Gardens.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH'S "RULER REBEL")