NC School Forces Student Participation In ‘National Walkout’ Gun Control Stunt

ROXBORO – Schools across the Old North State participated in a national walkout Wednesday organized by a division of the Leftist ‘Women’s March’ called Youth Empower. The Left has promoted the walkout, held on the one month anniversary of the mass murder at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as a way to honor the memory of the 14 students and three faculty killed that day.

Underneath the veneer, though, the walkout is nothing more than using kids to push radical gun control. And if you as a student, or as a parent, don’t wish to be used as a pawn in that gun control narrative, then too bad.

According to Chris Weaver, whose 16 year old daughter attends Roxboro Community Charter School, parents were given no communications regarding the planned walkout and students were given no choice as to whether or not they would like to participate.

“When I took her to school today I told her if they do something, you do not participate, you do not lend yourself to this movement no matter how it’s disguised. About 10 o’clock my son says, ‘Dad she’s being forced to go to the auditorium, they’re meeting in the auditorium.’ So I called the school and an elementary school teacher named Ms. Ingram organized this thing. Now my daughter is 16 years old, I don’t know why they had an elementary school teacher organizing this.”

First, if this was really an organic student-led walkout, then why is a teacher organizing the event, not to mention a teacher that doesn’t even work at the school?

The ‘walkout’ destination was the auditorium, and students could not refuse participation because, apparently, all the teachers were participating as well.

“They weren’t given a choice. They weren’t allowed to be in the rooms without teachers, so I guess the teachers compelled that.[…[If the teachers weren’t going to remain in the class room, then students could not remain.”

So, the student walkout is really a teacher walkout in this case, meaning that even those opposed to lending support to a gun control protest on ideological grounds were forced by teachers to participate. These teachers stopped instruction and effectively forced kids to participate, after parents were never informed of the plans ahead of time.

The Roxboro organizer, Ms. Ingram, reportedly told Weaver that it was merely a memorial, maintaining the facade that the walkouts were not politically relevant.

“[Ms. Ingram] tried to say, ‘Oh it’s a memorial,’ and I said I don’t care how it’s dressed up. What it will be used for is for the national ruckus, and that’s an anti-liberty movement that I don’t want my child be used as a pawn in. […] No parents were allowed to say, ‘No I don’t want my child involved in that.'”

Weaver has requested all email correspondence relating to the planning of the event from the school. He is understandably upset that his daughter was compelled to participate in speech against gun rights, essentially, by being forced to assemble on behalf of an anti-gun political cause that is merely cloaked as a memorial for the victims in Parkland, Florida.

While some schools were docking students for absences if they participated in the walkout, at least one was forcing students to participate, and we wouldn’t be surprised to learn of more schools that compelled students to become pawns in the Left’s narrative against their will.