At 10 a.m., students poured from classrooms and into protest mode in communities throughout Sonoma County to demand action to prevent gun violence and to remember the 17 high school students and teachers who lost their lives last month in Florida. This slideshow includes protests (and a few counterprotests) in Sebastopol, Windsor, Healdsburg, and Cloverdale.
In Healsburg, more than 100 Healdsburg High School students joined the national school walkout against gun violence and for school safety on Wednesday in tribute to the 17 students and teachers killed a month ago at their Parkland, Florida School. HHS walkout leader Giselle Gomez led chants of “enough is enough” and “this must stop.” The mid-morning protest under rainy skies included a reading of the 17 Parkland victim names, with flowers laid around the school’s flagpole. A few other brief speeches were made and the students joined in several minutes of silence in memory of the Florida fallen. The walkout and protest was monitored from a distance by school administration, but the call for the walkout, all organizing details and the protest itself were all student-led. HHS principal Bill Halliday said he was proud to support the students’ free speech exercise.
