WATCH: NYC Students Join School Walkout To Protest Gun Violence

NEW YORK, NY — Thousands of New York City students walked out of class Wednesday morning to join a nationwide protest calling for stronger gun control laws in the wake of the deadly Parkland, Florida school shooting.

Students at dozens of schools across the five boroughs left class at 10 a.m. a month to the day after Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Several protests included a silent observance in memory of the victims.

With help from Women's March organizers, students planned walkouts across the nation as their peers in Parkland who saw their classmates killed became prominent voices in a reinvigorated movement for gun reform.

"We as a student body do not deserve to encounter the possibility of being shot down in a place we are meant to grow," Anna Moore, a senior at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, said at a rally there Wednesday morning.

"It is so frustrating to see a country that I believe in let me down with every day that passes without gun reform," she added.

Hundreds of students at Bard Early College High School on Manhattan's Lower East Side stood in silence as the name of each Parkland victim was read aloud.

Students there wanted to both mourn the Parkland deaths and show the country that they're ready to take action, said Maya Brady-Ngugi, a senior who organized the walkout.

"We wanted to say that we're going to move to act to ensure that our state and our nation have stricter gun control laws and that students can do that, and we can be civically engaged," Brady-Ngugi said.

Ori Shaham, a junior at Bard Early College, said his best friend is a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She sent him two texts as the massacre was unfolding, he said — one read, "There's a school shooter in my school," and the other said, "I love you."

"She's totally fine. But a girl in her AP psychology class was killed, and two other kids in her band were killed, and countless faces that she sees in the hallway every day were killed," Shaham said Wednesday.

"I wanted to share this today because it made me realize how close this is this problem of gun violence is to everyone's life."

The walkouts in New York got support from Democratic elected officials who agree with the students' assessment that Congress has sat idle as young people continue to die in mass shootings.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman participated in the Bard walkout, while Gov. Andrew Cuomo joined students in a die-in protest at Zuccotti Park, the onetime home of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed students at Murrow High School, saying they and others have "shown a kind of leadership that we've never seen before."

"You are making so clear to this whole country that you are sick of the violence, you’re sick of the madness, you’re sick of the slaughter and you won’t stand for it," de Blasio said.

Many students went right back to class after the walkouts, but the day of action didn't end there. Hundreds of Brooklyn students took to Borough Hall in Brooklyn Heights for a massive morning rally where read the names of the Parkland victims and observed a moment of silence.

Some students made speeches from the Borough Hall steps as others held colorful protest signs with messages such as "Cowards love guns" and "Not one more."

"I don’t want to be 21 years old and still be talking about this and I don’t want to die in the next year," said Chi Phifer, an 11th-grader at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn Heights. Phifer held a pink and white poster with bold black letters that read "Ivanka kills teens," a reference to President Donald Trump's daughter.

"I just want this to be over," Phifer added.

A group from Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Harlem marched to U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat's office to call for federal action on gun control.

New York already has some of the nation's strongest gun laws. But Ethan Rubin, a junior at Columbia Secondary School, said he thinks the protests could inspire students to vote in this year's midterm elections and create "momentum" toward reform across the country, even in conservative states.

"We are the next generation," Rubin said. "We have to be just as active as anyone else, if not more."

The faculty at Columbia Secondary supported the walkout, said Rubin, who serves on the school's student government. Leading up to the protest, students and teachers talked about the "civic duty" students have and how bullying can lead to gun violence, he said.

But Sean Friedman, a junior at Bayside High School in Queens, said administrators weren't as supportive of the walkout there, which drew about 400 students. The princpal allowed the time for it to take place, "but other than that it’s like they didn’t want this to happen," Friedman said.

"It’s time for us to make a change," Friedman said. "College students did it during the Vietnam War, now it’s our turn to do this for the shootings."

The walkouts came 10 days before students and gun-control activists head to Washington, D.C. March 24 for March for Our Lives, a planned mass protest to press Congress to pass stricter federal gun laws. Dozens of sister marches are set to occur the same day in cities around the country, including New York.

Those marches and the walkout will constitute protests of an "unprecedented" scale proving that students across the nation "won't rest until our lawmakers enact common sense gun reform," said Kristen Pettit of Brooklyn, a founding member of the anti-gun violence group Moms Demand Action. Pettit's group is helping to organize the New York City March for Our Lives.

The Parkland massacre has energized efforts to stiffen U.S. gun laws as teens demand an end to the shootings that have plagued American schools. Students are planning another national walkout on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre.

Pettit likened the burgeoning movement to the student protests against the Vietnam War and the student-led sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement.

"There is an energy here," Pettit said. "These students are wielding the truth like a sword and going up against the biggest most powerful special interests and elected officials in the country."

Watch the walkout at Bard Early College High School on the Lower East Side.

Watch the walkout at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Harlem.

Watch part of the rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Ori Shaham.

Brendan Krisel, Ciara McCarthy, Nick Rizzi and Danielle Woodward contributed reporting.

Photos by Ciara McCarthy, Nick Rizzi and Danielle Woodward

(Lead image: Hundreds of students rallied for stronger gun control laws outside Brooklyn Borough Hall Wednesday morning during a national student walkout a month after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Photo by Nick Rizzi/Patch)