"Kids Before Guns"

A national turning point

So many school shootings. So many protests. But it really is different this time. 
This moment reminds me of when the Greensboro Four sat down at a lunch counter in 1960 and captured the nation’s attention, largely because it was covered on national TV and the timing was right. It wasn’t nearly the first sit-in of it’s kind, but it had a bigger impact than most before it.
 
These young people have a national platform and they’re using it SO WELL. They’re increasingly intersectional, and they’re building a movement. I think this will evolve beyond guns and really help to energize the actual majority of the country that is sick of Republican greed and corruption.
 
I hope we can all continue to support their leadership.

 

During University Day 1976, students protested the reallocation of Upendo Lounge in Chase Hall. (The Daily Tar Heel, October 13, 1976.)

Student activism is UNC

I’ve been enjoying this excellent UNC History site with an interactive timeline of the successful student activism that led to the creation of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History that we know and love today.

Don’t let Carol Folt or anyone else tell you activism is anathema to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UNC students have been on the vanguard of social changes for many decades, and our state is the better for it.

See also the 1960s Speaker Ban, organizing food workers and housekeepers, and hosting the first-ever student environmental conference in 1989. That’s just a handful of examples off the top of my head. UNC’s legacy IS activism. Even if you never picked up a sign or chanted a slogan, if you live in NC you benefitted from that spirit of optimism and change.

 

Photo: During University Day 1976, students protested the reallocation of Upendo Lounge in Chase Hall. (The Daily Tar Heel, October 13, 1976.) http://unchistory.web.unc.edu/building-narratives/sonja-haynes-stone-center-black-culture-history/