‘Enough is enough’: Charlotte youth advocate for an end to gun violence
In 2012, fourth-grader Criss Berke hid in a dark closet at Sandy Hook Elementary School. At first, she was confused, but after awhile, she realized that someone was at her Connecticut school killing people. Her teachers. Her classmates.
“I remember thinking about what it would be like to live without my friends and family,” Berke said. “What would their lives be like without me? What would it be like for my brother, still in the womb, to grow up without one of his sisters?”
Berke asked these same questions seven years later in front of more than a hundred people in Charlotte. On Sunday, Moms Demand Action hosted Wear Orange at Resident Culture Brewing Company in Plaza Midwood. The event was part of a nationwide weekend of rallies in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day last Friday.
Guest speakers — ranging from shooting survivors to elected officials — and attendees expressed concerns about the impact of gun violence on the community’s youth.
“For the future generations, I don’t want this to be a thing,” Krissy Oliver-Mays, a senior at Community School of Davidson, told the Observer. “I don’t want there to be fear in school. I don’t want to send my kids to school and have to pray over them every day... It’s our job to end it. Enough is enough.”
Oliver-Mays attended the event with her classmate, Ollie Ritchey. Both have led numerous walkouts at their school, but they said they’ve had trouble recruiting members for their club, called The Leadership Team. Ritchey, who identifies as queer and Hispanic, said that one of the problems could be that non-minority students don’t believe the issue affects them.
“We’re watching groups of people — students, the synagogue shooting, Pulse nightclub shooting — being targeted,” Ritchey said. “A huge part of it is how much we identify with it. We want our generation to be engaged because we are the mass shooting generation.”
Wear Orange event leader Scarlett Hollingsworth said that her children, 25, 21, and 18, have never known a time without a school shooting, so she knew that Charlotte “was not immune to the dangers of gun violence.”
Charlotte has had 53 homicides so far this year, according to CMPD, nearly as many as the 57 all of last year. Over 90% involved guns.
UNC Charlotte senior Cade Lee started a campus chapter of March For Our Lives in March. Like Oliver-Mays and Ritchey, he had trouble gaining interest. After this spring’s mass shooting at the university, campus interest skyrocketed.
“We couldn’t get anyone to come to meetings,” Lee said. “We tried to bribe people with ice cream. We tried to bribe people with pizza. We continued to have no members until April 30. Then everybody started reaching out to us — on Twitter, on Instagram, texting me, calling me.”
Rev. Sharon Risher, who lost three family members in the 2015 Charleston church shooting, urged people to be activists with “boots on the ground” instead of relying on social media. Ritchey agreed.
“Social media plays a really big role in spreading the word,” Ritchey said. “There’s a duality to it because now it’s a trend to post on your story and be like, ‘Thoughts and prayers,’ or ‘Join the big walkout.’ But if that’s all you’re doing, you’re not making an impact.”
N.C. Rep. Christy Clark, a Huntersville Democrat, mentioned three bills related to gun safety that are in the House judiciary committee this session. They propose requiring background checks on all gun sales, heavier enforcement of extreme risk protection orders and increasing safe storage laws. Clark also referenced two bills in committee that Republicans support. One involves deciding on a safe storage education program for the state. The second authorizes police officers to destroy guns in their facilities — right now officers are required to sell them.
This story was originally published June 10, 2019 at 5:12 PM.