Pali High Students Prove Persistent, Walk Out Again

By CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA | Reporter

For some it was an excuse to leave school early, for others it was a day to celebrate California’s newest legal plant life.

But for hundreds at Palisades Charter High School and schools throughout the country, April 20 was a day to protest against gun violence and remember the 13 students who were killed in the Columbine High School massacre 19 years ago.

Following the national March For Our Lives event on March 24, students again walked out of class and down Temescal Canyon holding homemade signs and demanding gun law reform—this time without the support of the school, or politicians.

The hundreds of students stopped at Temescal Park to give speeches in honor of gun violence victims, urge their peers to preregister to vote and to keep the conversation going on an issue that makes national headlines for weeks, but gets forgotten for months.

When Pali High student Sophia Ziskin, 15, attended the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., she was inspired to do more in her community and to take a stand against gun violence. Seeing an opportunity to participate in a national walkout day, she enlisted the help of her friends and met regularly to plan the walkout without Pali High’s blessing.

“Students who are not in class or who leave class will be marked absent,” the school said in an email to parents the day before the walkout. “Should you elect to clear your child’s absence, the Attendance Office will require a handwritten or email message explaining the reason for the student absence.”

But Ziskin felt that a student-led effort was much more genuine and impactful as well as necessary to continue the fight for gun law reform.

“In the past, at our school, we’ve had teacher- and leadership-led things, but I don’t think that makes as much of an impact,” Ziskin said. “This is only students, no adults had any say in this, and I think that is the coolest thing in the entire world.

“We’re here to reassure everyone that this is still happening, it’s still a problem and were going to do something until it is solved. Unfortunately the people that are [taking action] are teens, not adults, but I think that makes a bigger impact.”

Shaking from an activism-induced adrenaline rush, Muhammed Aly, 17, led the crowd in a moment of silence for the Columbine victims, and set the record straight as to why they were there.

“We’re not marching here to pass a liberal agenda, we’re marching here because kids are getting slaughtered and that shouldn’t have to be one specific party. All we want from congress is to protect us so that we don’t get shot before we’re 18 years old,” Aly said.