14 THE QUEENS COURIER • MARCH 15, 2018 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Jackson Heights students demand stricter gun control legislation
BY ANGELA MATUA
amatua@qns.com / @angelamatua
A day before the national walkout
planned at schools around the country
to acknowledge the 17 people who
died in a mass shooting in Parkland,
Florida, students from Th e Renaissance
Charter School in Jackson Heights met
with Congressman Joseph Crowley to discuss
gun control.
Th e National Student Walkout took
place on March 14, on the one-month
anniversary of the shooting, at 10 a.m.
It lasted 17 minutes, with each minute
representing a life lost. Students at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
in Florida organized the event to call for
stricter gun control laws aft er 19-year-old
Nikolas Cruz used an AR-15 to gun down
students.
According to Renaissance Charter
School Principal Stacey Gauthier, several
students approached her aft er the shooting
to ask if they could also advocate for
gun control legislation.
“It came out of a smaller group who
were really impressed by the Parkland kids
and they were like, ‘Wow, we need to do
something.’ So the fi rst thing they did is
ask, ‘Are you going to basically try to stop
a walk out?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Th ey also scheduled a conversation with
Crowley before holding a press conference
on March 13 to ask him questions
about what Congress was doing to prevent
these mass shootings from occurring.
“Tragedy aft er tragedy has left our
fellow Americans dead in classrooms,
in churches and in their communities
and quite frankly, enough is enough,”
Crowley said. “An overwhelming majority
of Americans support bi-partisan common
sense proposals that will protect our
children.”
Th is legislation includes banning bump
stocks, strengthening background checks
and closing the gun show loophole, which
allows people to purchase guns without
a background check from private sellers.
Crowley also supports the Assault
Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004.
“When rational gun legislation is passed,
it won’t be the Congress,” Crowley said.
“It won’t even be the parents. It will be
the young people who make a diff erence.”
Loren Francione, a junior at Th e
Renaissance Charter School, argued that
legislation should have passed aft er the
mass shooting at Columbine High School
in Colorado in 1999 where 15 students
died, including the two gunmen.
“Aft er all the lives lost in Columbine
there should have been stronger gun control
legislation passed but
with every choice comes consequences,”
she said. “When
the government chose not
to pass stronger gun control
legislation the consequences
were the lives of students
and teachers lost across
America.”
She also encouraged students
to “participate in
something larger than themselves.”
Nico Cortez-Alvarez, a student
at the charter school,
argued arming teachers is
not the answer to school
safety. Aft er the shooting,
President Donald Trump
proposed allowing teachers
to carry guns as a solution.
“Many people in the country
view the epidemic of
school shootings with the
perspective that we should
fi ght fi re with fi re and arm
our educators,” he said.
“However, I believe that this
simply creates more room
for violence rather than preventing
mass shootings from
ever happening again.”
Bayside students join national walkout to protest against gun violence
BY SUZANNE MONTEVERDI
AND RYAN KELLEY
editorial@qns.com / @QNS
Students at two high schools in Bayside
were among thousands who marched out
of their classrooms Wednesday morning
in an act of solidarity against gun violence.
The #Enough! National School
Walkout took place on March 14: exactly
one month aft er the deadly shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14. Th e
event was scheduled to last 17 minutes,
in remembrance of the number of students
killed in the massacre. Students participated
across the country to demand
Congress enact gun reform.
At Benjamin N. Cardozo High School,
thousands of students spilled out onto
223rd Street where traffi c was blocked
off by police in front of the school. Th e
crowd fi lled the length of the block as
Mackenzie Mattone, an 11th-grade student
who organized the walkout, yelled
into a megaphone to rally her classmates.
“I cannot imagine the moment where I
witness my own best friends being killed
before me, knowing there is nothing I can
do,” Mattone said. “But what if there is
something we can all do? We can make
our voices heard. We can make a diff erence.
We can force legislators to listen to
the demands of students who want to live
another day. We can register to vote. We
may just be teenagers now, but we are the
future, and with unity and determination,
change will come.”
Queens Borough President Melinda
Katz stood by Mattone’s side atop the
steps overlooking the student body, and
she expressed her pride in the young people
of Queens while advocating for meaningful
gun legislation.
“Take a second, look around you,” Katz
said to the crowd. “Th is is happening all
over the United States of America where
the kids, the students, are telling the
adults in Washington to get it together
and pass gun control. We shouldn’t have
to be out here protesting.”
With nearly 4,000 total students at
Cardozo, Mattone said that nobody was
told they had to participate in the walkout,
but she believed almost the entire
school chose to. Picket signs were scattered
throughout the mass and chants of
“We want change” rang out in waves.
Joli Amour, an 11th-grade student, said
that she was thankful
that Mattone
organized the protest
because it shows
how much the culture
surrounding
these issues has
changed.
“None of us want
to be next, especially
if they don’t do
anything to regulate
gun control, and
it’s an inevitability
that there’s going
to be a next school,”
Amour said. “It defi -
nitely feels great that
someone was able to
put this into eff ect
because it doesn’t
feel like years ago
that this would have
even happened.”
Tenth-grade student Alex Zavala added
that he’s experienced various threats at
Cardozo before, and he wonders why it
has become such a problem in America.
“At times I feel lucky that it wasn’t me,
but at other times I feel really horrible
because it shouldn’t be happening anywhere,”
Zavala said. “You only see it here,
and you only hear about it in the United
States.”
Gina Schroeter, a longtime Bayside resident,
waited outside of the main entrance
to Bayside High School in anticipation of
the walkout.
“Here they come,” she said, as the fi rst
students were seen emerging from the
doors at 10 a.m.
“We haven’t been able to get our generation
— and the generation of my children
— to put gun laws in place to protect
us. So this generation is going to do
it,” Schroeter said.
Hundreds of students poured out of the
building on 32nd Avenue and Corporal
Kennedy Street and onto the sidewalk.
Many held handmade signs with diff erent
sayings, including “g(un)safe,” “Enough
is Enough” and “Never Again.”
“A lot of things have been happening
recently, especially in this generation: a
lot of school shootings, a lot of terrorist
attacks,” said Flora Pierre, a 16-year-old
student. “And honestly, this isn’t the place
I want to grow up in. We have to be the
people to make a change because other
people aren’t doing anything about it.”
Pierre was among the students who
marched to converge in one of the school
yards, where they began chants of “Never
Again” and “Th is is BS.”
“Th ere have been over 18 shootings
since the beginning of this year,” said
Chantel Green, 14. “Th at shows that we
have to actually do something about this,
or else this will continue and more people
will die.”
Leila Martinez, 15, estimated that at
least a thousand students participated in
the walkout at the school. Th e school educates
around 3,300.
“Guns were created to do one thing: to
kill. And it’s really unfortunate that all
these kids had to die,” Martinez said. “Th e
government is not really doing anything
about it. And so, for this generation, since
we’re more aware about what’s going on,
we’ll all try our best to take a stand and
hopefully encourage a passing of gun legislation
that will control all of this from
happening again.”
Photos by Suzanne Monteverdi and Ryan Kelley
Photos by Angela Matua/QNS
Jackson Heights students called for stricter gun control legislation
in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
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