17-Jun-18 – The 720 seconds – 12 minutes – they laid in chalk outlines represented the 720 victims of mass shootings since June 12, 2016.

Students in four cities staged a National Die-in to honor those victims and raise awareness of gun violence. In Chicago, the names of victims and their schools were written in chalk on Wacker Drive across the Chicago River from Trump International Hotel & Tower.

The June 12 protest in Chicago was organized by Maddy Norten, a student at GCE Lab School, an independent private high school in the Lincoln Park neighborhood north of the Loop.

“We...are calling B.S. on the lethal legislation that has failed to protect people in school, in movie theaters, in nightclubs, in concerts, on the streets, and even in our homes,” said Norten. “We are here to show that everybody suffers from gun violence. We need common sense gun reform. We refuse to allow another child, another student, another human to witness and feel the pain of this violence.”

(Right) Student protestors in front of and on Heald Square Monument on Wacker Drive near Wabash Avenue. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

Nissrine Bedda, a GCE Lab School freshman who helped organize public debates on the issue in Washington Square Park, says gun violence in Chicago is “a daily threat.”

“We are the next generation,” she said. “We are the ones who are able to choose how we want to be represented. That starts by the decisions we make in order to make our generation the most memorable out of all the others. We do not need violence. We will not be recognized as the ‘dangerous generation.’ We demand to be recognized as the ‘strongest generation.’”

Similar protests were held in Philadelphia, Nashville, and Des Moines.