Area students walk out on classes in gun control protest
CENTRAL FALLS – Heidy Villagran was tired of being scared of wondering if she and her classmates could one day become shooting victim statistics.
And when she heard of the National School Walkout, organized by the group Women’s March Youth Empower, she knew that’s where her voice could be heard.
“I felt we had to take it on,” Villagran, a senior at Central Falls High School, said on Wednesday morning. “Gun control is important. A gun kills lives, not just a person, and every life matters.”
Villagran was one of a group of students who helped to bring the protest to Central Falls High School, where about 100 students left class at 10 a.m. Wednesday and went outside for 17 minutes – a minute for each life lost in the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“It could have been our school,” she said from Illinois Street. “I’m standing up for schools. The walkout shows we can change the world … In the future, maybe a law could be passed to show we care about avoiding this situation.”
Villagran said she believes guns should not be sold to an individual before a full evaluation is completed, ensuring the owner has been properly vetted to be armed.
Students from thousands of schools across the country walked out of class on Wednesday morning in an event described by national organizers as a protest for “all people who have experienced gun violence, including systemic forms of gun violence that disproportionately impact teens in black and brown communities.”
The protest was often silent and mournful, as students held signs and marched up and down Illinois Street between Central and Summer streets. Occasionally, the silence was broken by a cry of “Gun control!” or a chant of “The NRA has got to go!”
Senior Euclides Barbosa was holding a sign that read “Say Nay to the NRA” as he marched up and down Illinois Street. He said he’d left class that morning to step outside “for the kids who got shot and to say we should be protected in school to focus on our tasks.”
Standing next to Barbosa was fellow Central Falls High senior Ariel Yas-Corado. He said he was worried that there were people in society who would rather protect their guns than children, which is why he marched out of school Wednesday morning to be alongside his classmates.
Central Falls High Principal Troy Silvia said he was immensely impressed with the demonstration, saying it was “fantastic.” He explained that student advocates met with teachers and administrators to discuss how to express their displeasure with a lack of legislation aimed at gun control.
“This goes with what we want. We want student voices to be heard,” Silvia said. “It’s wonderful how many students got involved.”
Central Falls School Superintendent Victor Capellan said he felt the protest was an “important part of student education, to share opinions and share their voices.”
“It’s nice to see they’re organized,” Capellan said, adding that the administration was “very supportive of their efforts.”
Capellan also said the students who chose to walk out of class on Wednesday morning would not be disciplined, saying that the way they organized the walkout and discussed it with school staff was a “perfect example of how to demonstrate.”
Senior Kenyetta Winns was among a trio of girls who were leading the protesting students in a chant of “Hey hey! Ho ho! The NRA has got to go!” Winns said she felt it was necessary to step out of class for 17 minutes on Wednesday morning “for the lives we lost in Parkland and to protest gun violence and for the voices that can never be heard.”
Winns said she felt there was “something wrong” with the mentality from the leadership of the NRA, saying she was baffled how they could not feel in some way “at fault” for the mass shooting in Florida last month.
Winns further said that if those older than her weren’t going to do anything about it, it was up to her and members of her generation to take the lead.
“Adults need to start acting like adults,” Winns said. “So children don’t have to take control.”