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| A student holds a sign at the "March for Our Lives" demonstration in New York City on March 24. Parkland, Fla., students announced a bus tour this summer during which they will encourage Americans to vote in November's midterms. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo |
By Ed Adamczyk, UPI
Students of the Parkland, Fla., high school where 17 people died in a February shooting announced plans Monday for a nationwide bus tour this summer to address multiple issues, including voter turnout for this fall's midterm elections.
Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the Feb. 14 attack at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School who co-founded the "March for Our Lives" movement, announced the summer bus tours -- in which activist students will make stops to encourage registering to vote.
The tour is called "March for Our Lives: Road to Change."
The students' aim is to get voters to polling places with the hope they will tip the scales and better facilitate gun reform legislation. On tour, the students said they plan to identify politicians who accept donations from the National Rifle Association.
About two dozen students will be involved in the 60-day bus tours. One will cover Florida and another will visit 75 cities in 20 states. It will start in Chicago.
"We are encouraging people around the country to educate themselves on their vote, to get out there and turn voting into more of an act of patriotism than a chore," Kasky said Monday. "This generation is the generation of students you will be reading about next in the textbooks."
The tours follow weeks of political activism among some MSD students. In March, thousands marched in Washington, D.C., and other cities to call for gun reform.
One of Parkland's more prominent student activists, David Hogg, said he plans to take a year off before college to continue pressing for change.
"Over the summer I'm also gonna be going to D.C. a lot to lobby. And I'm gonna be traveling way more than I ever have in my life -- to try to fix this issue," he told ABC News.
Graduation ceremonies took place Sunday for MSD seniors in Sunrise, Fla., which was filled with emotion and remembrance of the four would-be graduates from the school who died in the shooting attack.
A surprise guest was Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, who told the graduates, "The first thing is this: when something feels hard, remember that it gets better. Choose to move forward. Don't let anything stop you."
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