John,
Our hearts are with Brown University following a mass shooting on their campus that killed two students – Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov. Nine more were injured and an entire community will never be the same.
No student should ever have to hide from an active shooter on their campus – but two Brown students have now lived through two separate school shootings. In addition to surviving this recent shooting at Brown, Mia Tretta survived the Saugus High School shooting in 2019 and Zoe Weissman survived the Parkland shooting in 2018. It’s beyond comprehension. When surviving a school shooting is no longer unthinkable but a recurring experience, it is a profound moral failure.
This is the devastating reality of gun violence in America. Young people forced to rehearse escape plans instead of focusing on their education, communities shattered again and again, and lives stolen or forever changed. The normalization of this violence robs students not only of safety, but of peace, stability, and trust in our leaders to protect them.
This same weekend, an attack in the Bondi Beach area of Sydney sent shockwaves through Australia and around the world, reminding us how quickly ordinary public spaces can turn into sites of unimaginable loss.
No community should have to endure this. So let’s take the time we need to absorb this news, mourn these losses, and then get ready to fight so shootings like this aren’t a part of our daily lives anymore.
—The team at March For Our Lives
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