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March 21, 2018
Students Declare ‘Enough’
C ontinued From F ront
northeast Portland middle school.
The students left classes at 10 a.m.
and held signs, marched down
Martin Luther King Boulevard
and chanted, “What do we want?
Gun control! When do we want it?
Now!”
Roosevelt High School in St.
Johns also held a rally on their
athletic field that included an ed-
ucation talk about gun laws in the
U.S. and other countries, student
and teacher testimonies, and a mo-
ment of silence.
“We just want to survive high
school without being gunned
down,” one Roosevelt sophomore
pleaded to the crowd of over a
hundred students and teachers.
Portland Public Schools Su-
perintendent Guadalupe Guerre-
ro, elected officials, and school
board members were also in atten-
dance. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown,
who signed a new state law this
month that makes it more diffi-
cult for abusive intimate partners
and stalkers to obtain guns, also
attended.
Tracie Talerico, who has been
teaching English at the school for
the past four years, was a Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School
graduate in 1996.
“I didn’t have lockdown drills,
the only drills I ever had were fire
drills,” she said to students and ad-
Photo by d anny P eterson /t he P ortLand o bserver
Roosevelt High School students assemble in the stands of their athletic field to add their voices to the issue of gun violence and
school safety during a school walk-out in solidarity with similar actions at schools across the nation. Portland School Superintendent
Guadalupe Guerrero and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and others also attended the March 14 demonstration.
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“Douglas is no different than
Roosevelt. Douglas is no differ-
ent than any other school where
you go to class, and you talk with
your friends, and you try to learn,
and you try to make it through the
day,” she said before calling on
students, who she called “fear-
less” and “brave” to take action
and vote. “The future is in your
hands,” she added.
Senior Magda Armendarig Sul-
livan, 17, made the case for adopt-
ing policies similar to Australia.
That country banned semi-auto-
matic weapons, created more hur-
dles for people to buy guns, and
implemented a government gun
buy-back program. They’ve not
had a mass shooting since the laws
took place in 1996.
“I hope that lawmakers see they
need to listen to us and they need
to change the laws surrounding
guns,” Armendarig Sullivan told
the Portland Observer.
“As students, we do have a
voice and it’s powerful and they
need to listen to us and they need
to create change,” said senior Zoe
Dumm, who shared a moving
poem at the demonstration.
“I feel like it’s been happening
my whole life. I’ve watched kids
die and wondered if that could’ve
been me. And it’s just kind of
been swept under the rug,” anoth-
er student, Dyllan Newville, 16,
remarked.
“I just hope that we’re heard or
seen, and that somebody takes an
action with us, not just us,” sopho-
more Taylor Greene, 15, said.
Greene said she will be helping
with an a “March for Our Lives”
demonstration happening on Sat-
urday, March 24 in downtown
Portland, which will also coincide
with protests across the nation in
solidarity with the Parkland stu-
dents who have been advocating
gun law reforms.