Thanks to Tricia in the CHS Facebook Group for sharing this image of the memorial

A memorial to the Uvalde shooting victims has been set up by a neighborhood effort in Capitol Hill’s Seven Hills Park. Later in June, a national day of protest in support of gun control reform will include a march beginning in downtown Seattle.

The small and stark memorial of 21 crosses and children’s toys appeared in the 16th Ave at E Howell park last week following the Tuesday, May 24th Uvalde, Texas shooting, the second worst school shooting in the nation’s history. The dead include 19 children.

Earlier in the month, ten people were shot and killed in a mass shooting at Buffalo, New York’s Tops Friendly Markets, a grocery store at the center of the city’s Black community.

Leaders have responded with renewed proposals to reform national gun control laws. House Democrats are preparing a package of legislation under the “Protecting Our Kids Act” that would raise the age for purchasing some high-powered rifles from 18 to 21 years old, and ban large-capacity magazines. Any significant reform seems likely to be bogged down by the nation’s 50-50 Senate split.

Meanwhile, local March for Our Lives organizers will be part of a day of protest planned across the nation on Saturday, June 11th including a march that day on Washington D.C. The Seattle march is being planned to begin downtown. UPDATE: Organizers have decided not to hold a Seattle march, opting instead for events in Bremerton and Redmond.

2018’s march

In March 2018, hundreds of students including marchers from across the state gathered at Cal Anderson before marching down Pine to downtown to call for gun control and voting rights. That first day of March for Our Lives protests came amid a surge in calls for gun control following that February’s mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school. Much of the push came from students. Earlier that March, students at high schools across Capitol Hill, the Central District, and Seattle walked out of class to mark the one-month anniversary of the Florida shooting.

Four years later with another school shooting tragedy and the Tops attack part of a wave of continued gun violence this month across the country, protest efforts have so far been smaller as attention has centered on the government’s stalemate in Washington D.C.

https://twitter.com/Abba_A_Solomon/status/1530595677582917638

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