Dear Commons Community,
See PSC President Barbara Bowen’s email below calling on us to participate in today’s school walkout for 17 minutes to call attention for the need for stronger gun control.
Tony
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Dear Members,
Students at CUNY and public schools throughout the city will participate in the #Enough National School Walkout tomorrow, Wednesday, March 14. The peaceful walkout will take place at 10 AM and will last for 17 minutes, in remembrance of the 17 students killed during the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The student-led walkout is in protest against Congress’s continued inaction on gun control. For details of the national event and its demands, read more here.
Students have historically been at the forefront of many powerful movements for justice. The PSC joins the organizers of the walkout in commemorating the Parkland students and calling on Congress to act. We urge faculty who have classes during the 10:00 hour to provide an opportunity for students who participate in the walkout to make up the missed class time and to notify students that they will not be penalized for participating for the 17 minutes. (See the NYC Department of Education notice permitting K-12 students to participate.) We call on faculty who are not teaching at 10:00 to join the students in support, and on professional staff who can arrange for those 17 minutes to be taken as part of their lunch hour to do the same.
Students are also leading the nationwide March for Our Lives on Saturday, March 24, to demand legislation that will protect children, students and others from mass murder and gun violence. Student survivors of the mass murder in Parkland have changed the national conversation on gun control. They have organized a march in Washington, and now similar marches are being organized throughout the country. Many PSC members and CUNY students are expected to attend the Washington march, and the PSC will organize a contingent for the march in New York City. Email PSC Organizing Director Deirdre Brill if you plan to attend. For the NYC march, we will meet at W. 74th St. and Central Park West at 10 AM on Saturday, March 24.
In solidarity,
Barbara Bowen
President, PSC
