WASHINGTON ― Dozens of students gathered in front of the White House on Monday to demand changes to gun laws, just days after a mass shooting at a Florida high school left 17 people dead.
The demonstration was organized by Teens For Gun Reform, an organization created by students in the Washington, D.C., area in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Protesters participated in what they said would be a three-minute lie-in, which began around 12:30 p.m. on Presidents Day. They lay down in front of the White House “in representation of the victims of school shootings,” according to a post on the group’s Facebook page.dogu
“By doing this, we will make a statement on the atrocities which have been committed due to the lack of gun control, and send a powerful message to our government that they must take action now,” the group wrote on Facebook.
Following the lie-in, protesters continued to hold signs in support of stricter guns laws and shouted phrases including “Shame on you” and “Disarm hate” toward the White House. The group also chanted “No more deaths,” “Am I next?” and “Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids have you killed today?”
Last week’s massacre at the South Florida high school, in which a 19-year-old former student opened fire using an assault-style rifle, sparked protests and calls to action from students nationwide.
A group of students who survived the Parkland shooting have been outspoken in their criticism of Trump and lawmakers who receive financial contributions from gun lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association.
On Sunday, the students announced plans for a march on Washington to demand congressional action on gun violence. The event, dubbed “March For Our Lives,” is scheduled for March 24.
Whitney Bowen and Eleanor Nuechterlein, both 16-year-old high school students from the D.C. area, started Teens For Gun Reform just two days after the Parkland shooting.
We might be 16 now and we might not be able to vote, but we can protest and we can use social media and we will make our voices heard.Whitney Bowen, co-founder of Teens For Gun Reform
“You never wake up thinking it’s going to be your school or it’s going to be your friends or family,” Bowen told HuffPost. “The Parkland kids didn’t either. … They woke up and went to school for the last time because there’s not enough gun control.”
Monday’s protest at the White House was planned on Presidents Day for symbolic reasons, Nuechterlein said. It’s not enough for President Donald Trump and other politicians to say “sorry” after school shootings, she said, they also need to start taking real legislative action to prevent them from happening.
Both Bowen and Nuechterlein said they plan to attend next month’s march on Washington.
“We might be 16 now and we might not be able to vote, but we can protest and we can use social media and we will make our voices heard,” Bowen said. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to politics. It comes down to kids dying in classrooms.”
Elodie Camus, a 15-year-old student at the British International School of Washington, D.C., participated in the White House protest Monday with her mother
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U.S. gun laws “have put so many people in danger over the years in this country and there needs to be reform,” Camus told HuffPost, adding that she no longer feels “safe at all” at school.
“Something needs to be changed so not as many people are harmed,” she said.
Elodie Camus, protesting with her friend, doesn’t feel as safe in school anymore
Felicia Garber, whose two daughters survived the Parkland shooting, was in D.C. with her family when she heard about Monday’s protest and decided to attend the demonstration.
“We felt it was important to be present and thank the people who felt it was worth coming out here on this cold, dreary, rainy holiday to help let whoever is in this beautiful White House know that we will not take this any longer,” Garber told HuffPost.
“These legislators need to step up for our children and not just for these lobbyists,” she continued. ”[Parkland] kids are smart, educated, savvy … and they are outraged. These are young adults who are ready and unforgiving, and I can only hope this is the beginning of the change they can create for our country.”
Several other student-led protests against gun violence erupted across Florida on Monday. Students staged a walk out at Olympic Heights Community High School in West Boca Raton, while parents joined their kids in front of American Heritage School in Plantation just 30 miles to the south.
Another student-led protest in response to the Stoneman Douglas High massacre. This one is happening now outside American Heritage School. The kids, joined by some parents, are demanding more gun control. @nbc6
Student protest in front of Hollywood, FL City Hall: “What Do We Want? Gun Control!” #ParklandShooting
See video and more photos of the D.C. protest below:
roger hollander 
White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before’ February 1, 2018
Posted by rogerhollander in labor, Nazi / Fascist, Racism, Uncategorized, Youth.Tags: adl, alt-right, atomwaffen, charlottesvile, christopher mathias, identity evropa, nazi, neo-nazi, richard spencer, vanguard america, white supremacists
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A new report from the Anti-Defamation League found a 258 percent increase in white supremacist propaganda on college campuses between 2016 and 2017.
The amount of white supremacist propaganda on college campuses in the U.S. increased 258 percent between fall 2016 and fall 2017, according to a report the Anti-Defamation League released Thursday.
There were 147 incidents of white supremacist flyers, banners, posters or stickers found on college campuses during the 2017 fall semester, the report states, compared to 41 such incidents in the fall semester of 2016.
The ADL counted a total of 346 incidents of hate propaganda that had been spread on 216 college campuses in 44 states and Washington, D.C., since September 2016.
“White supremacists are targeting college campuses like never before,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the organization, said in a statement. “They see campuses as a fertile recruiting ground, as evident by the unprecedented volume of propagandist activity designed to recruit young people to support their vile ideology.”
The propaganda delivered “a range of messages,” according to the report.
“It may promote a white supremacist group, or trumpet the urgent need to ‘save’ the white race,” the report says. “Frequently, the propaganda attacks minority groups, including Jews, Blacks, Muslims, non-white immigrants, and the LGBT community.”
The groups responsible for the majority of the propaganda belong to the so-called “alt-right,” a newer generation of organized racists and fascists. The report says one such group, Identity Evropa, targeted college campuses with its propaganda 158 times, accounting for 46 percent of the incidents counted by ADL.
Identity Evropa eschews traditional white supremacist imagery and language in favor of more innocuous-sounding slogans like “Our Generation. Our Future. Our Last Chance.”
Other groups, however, like the Atomwaffen Division, posted flyers directly threatening minority groups or featuring Nazi imagery.
The ADL report offers further evidence of an emboldened and increasingly active white supremacist movement in the U.S. This movement gained international attention in August 2017, when white supremacists held a nighttime march through the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesvile before violently confronting counterprotesters.
The next day, these same marchers were part of a violent pro-Donald Trump rally in Charlottesville — the largest gathering of white supremacists in over a decade — that turned deadly when a member of the group Vanguard America allegedly drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
White supremacists killed twice as many people in 2017 as they did the year before, according to a separate ADL report published last month.
White supremacists made other concerted efforts to make their existence known on college campuses last year.
Identity Evropa held a private speaking event at San Diego State University. At Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, white supremacists associated with Vanguard America tweeted photos of themselves giving Nazi salutes on the campus. And at the University of Texas in Austin, 25 people affiliated with the white supremacist group Patriot Front filmed themselves wearing masks and marching with torches through the campus.
Prominent “alt-right” activist Richard Spencer also delivered speeches at Auburn University and the University of Florida.
The night before the speech at the UF, HuffPost asked Spencer and Eli Mosely, formerly of Identity Evropa, why they focused so much of their efforts on universities.
“This is a young person’s movement,” Spencer said.
“Young people matter, and college campuses have been where political battles have been fought since the ’60s and before it,” Mosley said. “This is where political change happens. Fundamentally, it’s where the most anti-white institution is. Academia has become a factory for anti-white individuals, and to teach whites to hate themselves.”
“When we go to these schools, we’re not going to intimidate people of color or anything like that,” he added.
Spencer’s speech the next day was drowned out by rowdy counterprotesters. Afterward, three white supremacists who had traveled to Florida for Spencer’s speech were arrested for firing a gun at counterprotesters.
Spencer is scheduled to speak at Michigan State University and the University of Cincinnati in the next few months.
White supremacist groups have already been active in targeting campuses with their propaganda in the first month of 2018.
Members of Idenity Evropa tried to disrupt an ethnic studies class at the University of California, San Diego. Last week, Vanguard America vandalized a Black History Month poster at Middle State Tennessee University with its own propaganda. And Patriot Front claimed to have posted its propaganda at San Diego Mesa College in California on Wednesday night.