We need to keep building on lessons of Parkland

It has been exactly a year since the brutal massacre of students at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. 

Feb. 14, 2018, was not a typical Valentine’s Day of people celebrating their loved ones. It was a day in which people mourned them, all 17 of them. Mother America was bleeding that day; 17 bright kids in the spring of their lives had given their last breaths as a result of a problem that was, and still is, needing to be solved. 

Parkland is a name that now resembles a nasty image of a bloody gun in a school with kids, not the beautiful palm trees, nor the five-star hotels. It has become the name of a tragedy many hoped would mark the beginning of an end, but no. Twenty seven school shootings have happened after Parkland.

It was the beginning of an end of silence, however. It was the beginning of an end of students being fed up. The Parkland students, both alive and dead, have become the voices of every single school shooting victim. They have become the voices of us. Students. Our lives. 

Since the day of the massacre, Parkland students did not let their tears stop them from taking action toward this blasphemy that took their loved ones away on a day to celebrate their love. 

They have spoken on every platform provided, on the streets, on shows, political fields, everywhere they could to make a change to show the world that our lives matter. 

In the following days, the streets of America were filled with angry youth demanding change. Not only on the streets either. We took this anger to our voting booths, shaking the people in power with fear, proving everyone wrong who doubted the power of our voices. 

So let’s continue. Let’s continue to shake those in power. Let’s continue to speak up. Let’s close our eyes for 10 seconds, think, and remind ourselves that those students did not die for nothing.

Let’s remember them and how their silence right now is what gives us the power of our voices.

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