Students walked out of classrooms across the U.S. on Wednesday, waving signs and chanting their demands for tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by survivors of the deadly shooting spree at a Florida high school last month.
The #ENOUGH National School Walkout began at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) with 17-minute walkouts planned at 10 a.m. local time in western time zones, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14.
Some students got in an early start. At Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, the colour of the gun-control movement.
Grass-roots movement
In Parkland, students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field. The walkouts are part of a burgeoning, grass-roots movement that grew out of the Parkland attack.
A large crowd of students gathered and chanted slogans outside the gates of the White House.
The protests took place a day after Florida prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Parkland attack.
