Civil disobedience: Teen shooting survivors shake up Capitol
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Holding hand-scrawled signs and wearing black “Parkland Strong” T-shirts, the 40 teenagers filed warily into a committee room at Florida’s state capitol on Wednesday. They hadn’t been invited and the lawmakers they were intruding upon were in the middle of a meeting. Timid yet determined, they stood their ground.
And they got what they wanted: a chance to speak.
It was perhaps the first act of civil disobedience ever by the high school students whose lives were turned around just one week before by a shooting that left 17 of their friends and teachers dead. The teens politely stood up and told their stories to the politicians, some of whom a day earlier had voted against a ban on assault weapons.
“I had to run for my life,” said Erika Rosenzweig, a slight, dark-haired 15-year-old sophomore at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. “I had to listen as the dead were reported. … I didn’t know where my friends were. This cannot happen again.”