Yesterday, between 1:30 and 2 p.m, a moving scene began to unfold outside of the Parkland, FL shooting site of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School--as hundreds of students from a school 12 miles away began to trickle onto the campus.
With it being a weekday and all, the impassioned truants had attended classes in the morning before convening for an extended moment of silence at West Boca High, in Boca Raton. The assumption on the part of the administration was that granting the student body space and time to heal over last week's tragic massacre would provide a mental clearing for those still shaken and that classmates could then walk one another back to their rooms. But about 90 percent of the young people enrolled in the school had different plans.
Upon being directed to resume their regular schedules, at around 10 a.m., a drove of students rushed the school's exits. Then more and more followed, and before long there were nearly 1,000 teens setting upon a march that would take them 4 hours to complete. They did it in the name of those 17 who were murdered, and they did it with the spark of a burgeoning youth movement that is gearing up to confront the gun lobby head-on in the coming months.
As the crowds continued to arrive, they were greeted by cheers. And for the ensuing hours, the students demonstrated to let their voices be heard. Later on West Boca principal Craig Sommer conceded that albeit they had violated his word, he was proud of the youth, stating: "This is history."