Update: March For Our Lives Gainesville postponed when it will return to Tallahassee to protest. The article will be updated when that date is announced.
Ninety-six.
That’s how many faces made their way onto the marbled white floor of the Florida State Capitol building Wednesday afternoon.
They formed a line on both sides of the House of Representatives’ door. Each with a name, location and age.
Cynthia Watson. Sebring, Florida. 65. Light blonde hair frames a round, peach-toned face. She smiles softly, wrinkling the corner of her eyes.
But she wasn’t standing in the Capitol. She was shot and killed in a Suntrust Bank in January.
Her and 95 others’ images were those of Floridians killed by gun violence.
Lauren Herwitz, an 18-year-old UF health science and theater freshman, held a picture of Watson in front of her chest.
She stood in silence with a straight face, seemingly emotionless. But this was a facade.
“I’m almost in tears,” she said with a nervous sigh. “I’m standing in chills right now.”
About 20 people took a two-hour bus ride with the Gainesville chapter of March For Our Lives to Tallahassee to participate in a Day of Action, which included a rally, press conference and demonstration to oppose Senate Bill 7030 and House Bill 7093.
The Senate Bill and the House Bill would both allow classroom teachers to volunteer for training from local law enforcement to carry guns in schools to respond to active shooters as “Guardians.”
These bills build upon the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, passed after last year’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed and 17 others injured. The Public Safety Act introduced the new program to arm school “Guardians.” A school guardian does not have the authority to act as law enforcement besides stopping an active shooter on school grounds.
In the original bill, school employees whose main duties lie outside of the classroom would be able to become guardians. Districts could choose if they want to partake in the guardian program.
The House Bill was temporarily postponed and a date was not specified as to when it would be readdressed.
Senate Bill 7030 was set to potentially be heard by a committee on Wednesday, but it was postponed.
March For Our Lives Gainesville will return to Tallahassee to protest at a later date.
This is the first political protest March for Our Lives Gainesville has participated in, as previous events focused on gun violence awareness, said Alyson Moriarty, an executive board member of the chapter. The organization received $8,000 funded by grants from March For Our Lives Orlando to use for the Day of Action.
The 20-year-old UF behavioral and cognitive neuroscience sophomore said she doesn’t consider herself a political person.
It wasn’t until the Parkland community, which is 10 minutes down the road from her hometown of Coconut Creek, Florida, was attacked that she said she opened her eyes to the consequences of guns.
“You never know when your life can be impacted directly or how your family can be impacted. You fight for how you want to live,” Moriarty said. “So if I don’t want to live in fear of being shot, then I’m going to fight for that.”
There was supposed to be a second line-up outside the chambers at 3 p.m. when the session ended, but it ended at about 2:15 p.m. The senators did not walk out through the main entrance where protestors would be, Moriarty said.
Republican State Senator Keith Perry, who represents Alachua County, said Wednesday he plans on voting for the Senate Bill’s current form.
He said he didn’t have appointments set up with the protestors nor did he know they were coming, but he enjoys seeing students get involved.
After the mass shooting at MSD, the Public Safety Act was one of the quickest pieces of legislation he’s seen passed.
Decisions like these are complicated, Perry said.
“We’ve just got to have dialogue and be willing to sit down and talk,” Perry said.
• • •
At 9 a.m., the dull, gray concrete contrasted the vibrant blue “March For Our Lives” shirts. The group of about 20 students and active community members emitted excited, yet nervous, energy.
Standing amid the crowd waiting for the large, yellow commercial bus was Maggie MacDonald, 74, of Gainesville, eager to get to the Capitol.
She believes teachers shouldn’t be armed but rather that guns should be taken away.
As a retired linguistics professor of 25 years at an Ohio state university, she said she would be petrified to see some of her former colleagues armed in class.
“It’s horrifying. It’s not the way you solve the problem,” she said. “The world that we are leaving our children, people who have grandchildren — it’s obscene.”
There’s a dawning of awareness in college students, MacDonald said. For a long time, she’s noticed a passive attitude within the younger generation, and it’s taken something as dramatic as mass shootings to see more activism.
She said it does her heart good to see students fight for a change because they are the future.
“I’m so tired of seeing the same color hair as mine in control,” she said while pointing at her own short, white hair. “Unfortunately, the future is determined by old white men who don’t seem to care about their grandchildren.”
As the group boarded the bus, excited chatter settled down as the protestors took their seats.
The bus ride to Tallahassee was quiet, with murmured conversations about difficult classes, the slow but heavy breathing of those able to sleep and thumbs that scrolled on glowing smartphones screens. Some sat silently with their eyes fixated on the rapid movement of blurry green forestry and white trucks outside the window.
Blocking the sun on the bright, shining day, the monumental structure that is the Florida State Capitol building towered over the blue dots of students who made their way inside.
Meeting up with those blue dots was Nicolette Springer, a member and legislative advocate for the Florida League of Women Voters. The league partnered with the Florida Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence to host the Day of Action with the March for Our Lives chapter.
“Our No. 1 objective is to keep firearms out of our classrooms,” Springer said.
After the activists waited about an hour, the sessions finished with no mention of the bills.
The press conference that followed was emotionally fueled as each speaker discussed the dangers of arming teachers, how the bill could put minority students at risk and the fear it brings MSD alumni.
There were about nine speakers, each passionately negating the bill.
“No student should have to hide underneath their classmate’s body, but I had to do that,” said 18-year-old Aliyah Eastman, a senior at MSD and a survivor of last year’s shooting.
She and Zion Kelly, 18, a March For Our Lives activist and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University business administration freshman, are both black students who spoke about how the bill could unfairly target minorities, as law enforcement tends to statistically target more people of color.
They said they fear that school may become another location for law enforcement to continue these patterns.
Toward the end of the press conference, Democratic Florida State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, who represents part of Orange County, discussed what he called the elephant in the room.
“The bill is temporarily postponed, but we’ll be back,” Guillermo Smith said.
Students and supporters amplified in volume with sounds of clapping and cheering, “We’ll be back.”
The group departed for Gainesville as the workday came to an end. The protestors sat in silence once again. The air conditioning hummed softly, and the paved road rumbled under the bus as the sky changed from bright blue to an ombré of orange and pinks.
Maia Hebron, an MSD alumna and shooting survivor and 18-year-old UF communications science and disorders freshman, said she believes the legislators’ decision not to address the bill in front of the group shows how much power her and other students have.
Fighting for the safety for those such as her little sister, who also survived the shooting last year, motivates her to prevent anything like that from happening again, she said.
Hebron says she plans to continue to fight against the bills and anything related to them.
“There’s a reason why we’re here,” she said. “We need to make a change.”
Lauren Herwitz (center), an 18-year-old UF Health Science and theater freshman and March For Our Lives Gainesville member, protests Florida Senate Bill 7030, which would allow teachers to carry firearms in case of an active shooter, Wednesday afternoon. “I’m almost in tears, this is just incredibly powerful and emotional," she said.
