All across the country on Wednesday morning, students stood in solidarity with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School family by participating in a planned classroom walkout protest for gun control law reform.
In northwestern New Mexico, where two students were gunned down by an armed intruder at their high school in December, hundreds of their classmates gathered at the Aztec High flag pole for a "walk-up" rather than a walkout -- still in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of students nationwide.
The student council had asked school administrators for time in their schedule Wednesday so they could honor the 21 students who've been killed in school shootings in recent months —including their two classmates — and to talk about 21 pledges they can take to make their campus safer and to get involved.
Principal Warman Hall said the students wanted to feel empowered but didn't want a contentious political debate or demonstration.The nationwide walkouts are the biggest demonstration yet of the student activism that has emerged following the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.