Hey, there! Log in / Register

Somerville High students walk out in protest of gun slaughter

Somerville High School students in protest

Tim Devin watched Somerville High School students get into the positions they've been taught to assume during a school lockdown in a walkout this morning to call for restrictions of guns used for mass murders.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Are light years ahead of my teenage years, can cities like Somerville give 16 year old citizens the right to vote in municipal elections?

up
Voting closed 0

No more eating Tide pods.

up
Voting closed 0

The generation that forced its children to eat soap over using "special" words that only grownups were allowed to say is weighing in on Tide Pods.

up
Voting closed 0

Tide Pods. At least most kids these days are smart enough not to smoke cigarettes, unlike the teens of your (and my) generations.

up
Voting closed 0

I disagree they are "light years" ahead..
Killing each other with guns was not a thing we did to each other when we were kids. I'm not just talking the mass murders, I'm talking kids having "beef's" with others that they only solve with guns.

Nope, we were better than that.

up
Voting closed 0

Murder is not one of those things that never happened before the year 2000.

up
Voting closed 0

Juvenile crime was at a 30 year row as of 2014 http://jjie.org/2015/02/26/ncjj-report-shows-juvenile-crime-keeps-fallin...

So I guess they are "better" than you.

up
Voting closed 0

Don’t be fooled by the selfie generation. The Kendall Jenner “cool protester” TV commercial was controversial simply because it exposed the truth: that protest for this cohort is commonly just fashion, not something intellectual. We all know teens who have been to a half dozen protests already. They show their best act or demonstration to the cameras, because everything is for the camera! Look at me, boo, I’m the new Rosa Parks - retweet. The selfie generation brings only the emotion, perfected by their actor and actress icons in media, but the selfie generation is largely hollow and shallow inside the facade of their extreme emotionality. Please don’t let them vote until they are 26 (the Obamacare age of fully formed brain). These dramatic narcissists who find their way to identifying as victims through intersectionality and other transitive properties are far from ready to govern us. These kids are only ready for their semi-accurate reenactments of political activism and other recitals. Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.

up
Voting closed 0

Nobody's talking about electing an 18-year-old as you Supreme Leader. In the meantime, settle back into your easy chair on put on some Fox News.

And, no, that commercial wasn't controversial because it exposed anything, because it didn't. Advertisers have been trying to co-opt protest movements since at least the '60s, and the disgust was along the lines of what we saw after that Super Bowl commercial using Martin Luther King's words to sell pickup trucks.

up
Voting closed 0

because the only student protests that ever meant anything were the boomers, amirite, back when smoking weed really MEANT something.

I'm an (older) millennial and I gotta say, I'm super proud of this oldest edge of the new gen z cohort. my generation ended up kind of disillusioned and worn out and nihilistic between the recession and loans and housing prices and the unending being shit upon by boomers; these kids are here and passionate and angry about the injustice of it all. yeah, they take selfies, because they understand the power of selfies and visibility and uniting in visible ways. they express themselves online because the old media is stacked pretty ridiculously against them, and isn't interested in helping their cause. they've figured out where we fucked it up with occupy and blm and all our other movements that tried to establish legitimacy in a system that wasn't ever interested in helping those causes.

don't let the bastards grind you down, kiddos.

up
Voting closed 0

It's really not that hard to understand. 2012, a generation of children lived in terror that they would get gunned down in their own elementary schools just like the kids at Sandy Hook. 2018, that same generation of teenagers live in fear that they would get gunned down in their own secondary schools just like in Florida. Twice they lived through this, twice they've seen leaders do nothing to protect them. The GOP and NRA, through their own inaction, are creating an entire generation of soon to be voters who want an end to guns and who know the GOP isn't looking out for them. So by all means, keep doing nothing and you'll be extinct as a party in less than 10 years.

up
Voting closed 0

I remember myself at 26, and I'm not sure I should have been trusted with the franchise. So make it even older.

Voting by the elderly also has its problems, however; memory loss, ingrained habit, lack of exposure to information about how other people live today, and, of course, good old dementia.

I have fed all these concerns into my Voting Age Optimization Program, and it has informed me that people should not become eligible to vote until they are forty-six, and that such eligibility should expire when they turn thirty-eight. I've tried to reason with it, but to no avail.

up
Voting closed 0

And probably more common today (thankfully) than in recent decades, with some exceptions: When I was a senior in high school, student government organized a sit-in that shut our school down for a morning to protest the Town's cuts to the school budget that resulted in the layoffs of five popular non-tenured teachers (If I recall correctly, some of the positions were restored a month later when Town Meeting reconvened and passed a new municipal budget that funded the positions). The excerpt cited above states it was 150 students protesting, but to the best of my knowledge, it was likely closer to 900 -the vast majority of the student population in all four classes. I also remember the school administration handling it very well. They let us have our say: they listened, let the press do interviews, addressed the issues, and then when it was done, told us it was time to resume classes (with the threat of suspension, etc for those who didn't end it), in the end, we respectfully ended the protest, but it was talked about for the rest of the day. It was a valuable lesson in civic engagement.

up
Voting closed 0

Only restrictions for guns used for mass murdering. Okay for to use any gun to shoot at each other in our own city's neighborhoods is okay, though? Remember the 2017 stats that came out on the number of deaths to young black men due to gun violence in Boston? Let's try to stop that also.

up
Voting closed 0

Pretty sure these protesters are opposed to easy access to guns for anyone. It's not just about school shootings.

up
Voting closed 0

As an old Boomer, I am sensing something in these students that (forgive me for painting with a broad brush) I did not see in millennials who seemed more flighty and entitled. These kids mean business.

up
Voting closed 0

Kudos to these kids indeed. But many Millennials are in their 30s now. We sure as hell didn't have smart phones or social media to plan protests and tell Marco Rubio he sucks. If there was a protest, sites like Uhub were pretty much non existent to report on them. Maybe just don't generalize a billion people.

up
Voting closed 0

"We sure as hell didn't have smart phones or social media to plan protests and tell Marco Rubio he sucks. If there was a protest, sites like Uhub were pretty much non existent to report on them."

That's limited thinking. The 1960s generation didn't have social media or smart phones either and they did a darn good job of organizing and protesting things like the senseless war in Vietnam, and organizing massive (and effective) marches for civil rights.

up
Voting closed 0

Like you do with drivers?

up
Voting closed 0

piss themselves when you take their back-lit screen away from them. I will refer you to the recent story of a group of teens beating down a 70 year old woman at Tino's Pizza in Milton when the owners told one of them they couldn't charge their phone there.
Gen Y/ Millennials learned pretty quick that we were screwed, that we wouldn't have it better than our parents, that the boomers did all the drugs, had all the sex, and basically ruined everything for future generations, so why try?
I commend these young kids for their spirit. It hasn't been broken yet. It will be when NOTHING meaningful happens in the way of gun legislation and the next mass shooting happens, or the lead Boomer takes us to war with North Korea, or Kim Kardasian says something racist or announces her plans to change her gender. These events won't even make foot note status in the history books.

up
Voting closed 0

And really, you make a conclusion about all teenagers, all millions and millions of them, based on a single incident involving three or four punks in Milton?

up
Voting closed 0

"the boomers did all the drugs, had all the sex, and basically ruined everything for future generations,"

You mean the boomers used up all the sex and drugs for future generations?

up
Voting closed 0

These kids piss themselves when you take their back-lit screen away from them.

Gen Y/ Millennials learned pretty quick that we were screwed, that we wouldn't have it better than our parents, that the boomers did all the drugs, had all the sex, and basically ruined everything for future generations, so why try?

Dude, I cannot believe that you're simultaneously crapping on both Gen Z and boomers, both with absolute bullshit generalizations, in the same rant. You are one whiny bastard.

up
Voting closed 0

I sense in boomers a tendency to overstate their own hardships, overlook the problems they created for future generations, (economic, environmental, diplomatic, etc) and then mock those who got stuck dealing with those problems.

up
Voting closed 0

why as a Boomer did you decide to raise Millennial's to be flighty and entitled? They sure didn't ask for the participation trophies you gave out.

up
Voting closed 0

The Boomers were Gen X's parents, Gen X are the Millennial's parents. So you Gen X needs to take the blame for the participation trophies. The Boomers are guilty of a lot of sins, but that doesn't happen to be one of them...

up
Voting closed 0

Gen X's parents were the Silent Generation - people born during the latter part of the depression and WWII.

up
Voting closed 0

Boomers begat millenials. Gen X was a tiny generation - unless they had 15 kids each, this isn't an issue.

Later millenials and gen X maybe - but this is all boomer by the numbers.

Boomers were our older brothers and sisters, not parents.

up
Voting closed 0

30 y/o. My parents are Boomers. My dad is actually only barely a boomer - if he had been born a year earlier he would have been a Forgotten.

Soooo....no.

up
Voting closed 0

People are born every year to parents of varying ages, and trying to carve out broad-stroke generations across millions of families is preposterous. That said, I blame it on the Baby Boomers.

up
Voting closed 0

I'm a Millenial with two boomer parents

up
Voting closed 0

Generally (and since we're painting with big brushes here)

Boomers: 1946-1964
Gen X: 1965-1984
Millennials: 1982-2002

Is there overlap? Of course. I have an uncle my age; technically Boomer based on his siblings's ages, but Gen X aged. But that's besides the point.

If we're going to paint with ludicrously large generalizations, (in an apparent effort to totally avoid the actual topic at hand) at least get them right!

;)

up
Voting closed 0

zetag's parents both born: 1946-1964 which makes them Boomers
zetag born: 1982-2002 which makes me a Millennial

up
Voting closed 0

I'm one of the older millenials (1984.) When I was in college, one of my professors was discussing the war in Afghanistan/Iraq and various social issues, and said that she didn't understand why none of us walked out or protested, because when she was in school, campus protests for political reasons were so big, campuses were shutting down. She wanted to know why our generation was different.

The answer she got from the class was:
"It's too expensive."
"Our tuition breaks down to $75 per class hour"
"$75? No that was last year, it's $82 this year."

There is a time and a place for protesting. When you walk out of class and take away class time from your own education- which benefits you, not your teachers or professors, and certainly not politicians- you are only shortchanging yourself, not "the man."

up
Voting closed 0

...and you call yourself a millenial? You must seriously be in need to coolness points (which you aren't gonna get by calling yourself a millenial, anyway).

up
Voting closed 0

demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years.

That's Wikipedia.

the Millennial generation, those born after 1980 and the first generation to come of age in the new millennium.

That's Pew Research.

Time keeps marching on, Millenials are mostly adults now and about 1/3 of adults are Millenials.

up
Voting closed 0

tl;dr: bug off

Longer: I'm an older millennial. I was in high school in 1998-2002. Remember when we wanted to protest things and could take out our phones and make Youtube videos and post them on Twitter? No? Because none of those things existed. The first image shared from a phone was in 1997. We had IRC and AIM. AOL was actually cool. We could sort of hack stuff together in html. That's about it.

So maybe the TL;DR wasn't appropriate: you had no way to pay attention. In 2000, my class was the guinea pig year for MCAS: 13 hours of meaningless testing, with no long-term ramifications. (And, no, I'm not equating this with the #NeverAgain movement, but then again no one was coming in and shooting up our schools with AR-15s, although Columbine scared the shit out of us. Also we had an assault weapons ban, which we at least still have in Massachusetts, which is why the guy in Winchester killed one person with a knife and didn't shoot up the whole library.) Students hated it. Teachers pretended not to have opinions, but it was clear they weren't fans. Was there an easy way to have a statewide boycott which would render the test meaningless (basically: everyone leaving it blank)? Nope, not really. Because it was hard to get beyond talking to each other, and making posters to hang in the halls.

The upside of this is that we developed a lot of skills which the younger millennial set didn't. The ability to read a map and get somewhere without your phone yelling directions. The ability to write a letter using words and punctuation and grammar and not emoji and little pictures and GIFs and abbreviations.

But, yeah, sorry we didn't make you aware of our concern for things using technology we didn't have.

(And, also, as an older boomer your cohort is responsible for everything we're dealing with, so maybe you should be the ones out on the street.)

up
Voting closed 0

up
Voting closed 0

(And, also, as an older boomer your cohort is responsible for everything we're dealing with, so maybe you should be the ones out on the street.)

At some point you'll understand what an asinine statement that is. If you google "1%" and think about it, you may even understand it today.

up
Voting closed 0

get into the positions they've been taught to assume during a school lockdown

More like the position they are going to assume when begging on the street for pocket change after graduation. That photo looks like any street in modern day Seattle.

Attention seekers playing the role of victim off someone else' tragedy.

up
Voting closed 0

Keep going, kids, it's working

up
Voting closed 0

Yeah, why don't these kids just put a smile on their face while republicans prostitute themselves to the gun manufacturers who put weapons in the hands of people that kill children?

I am glad you are being replaced by a better and more tolerant generation. You will not be missed and the world will be better off without you.

up
Voting closed 0

Yeah, why don't these kids just put a smile on their face

Remember when the Founding Fathers all huddled in the streets with doe eyes, looking for attention. Remember how that got the attention of the King, and he got off our back with the taxes and all was well?

Remember ANY TIME in history that squatting down in the street to make a show for the media got any respect from anyone? The heroes of the left get a special place in history for their huddling in fear for the cameras. Remember Cindy Sheerin lying in a sewer ditch at the Reagan ranch protesting war? How did that work? Remember the girl who lay down in front of the bulldozer in Gaza?

It gets pity.

People pity those fools.

I pity those fools with all their jibber jabber.

up
Voting closed 0

Go walk the freedom trail, idiot.

They were out rioting, honey - that's why there is a big metal thing in front of the Old State House.

Moron.

up
Voting closed 0

Remember ANY TIME in history that squatting down in the street to make a show for the media got any respect from anyone?

Yes. It's pretty famous. You should look it up.

Remember how that got the attention of the King, and he got off our back with the taxes and all was well?

Remember how the king was an elected official who needed to be concerned with public opinion?

up
Voting closed 0

Yes. It's pretty famous. You should look it up.

Tank man was the bomb.

Tank man went right to the source. No pity. No fear.

He has my respect.

I bet there were others that day in Tianemman square. Cowering in fear, looking for pity. For some reason, no one remembers them. But we remember Tank Maaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!

up
Voting closed 0

Tell us a nice story of how you would have run in unarmed, despite legendary bone spurs.

Yeah, tell us a story.

up
Voting closed 0

There were other protests, closer to home, that focused on sitting in places too.

Can't recall what they were called though...hmm..

up
Voting closed 0

And who respected that? I sure didn't.

But is *does* rise above playing victim for pity.

up
Voting closed 0

You might not respect it but someone with authority did, seems to matter more than your personal opinion.

up
Voting closed 0

IMAGE(http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/044/247/297.png)

Crawl back under your rock, you hateful schmuck.

up
Voting closed 0

"Attention seekers playing the role of victim off someone else' tragedy."

That's exactly how I would have felt 5-6 years ago.. Even much of the Occupy Wall Street counterpart in Dewey Square seemed like posing to me, Millenials playing at being rebels. I even remember one of them saying on the news "I've been waiting all my life for something like this". There is something deeper with these students. Lives are being lost. It's not just the "I want a high paying job" or whatever the still undefined goal of the Occupy era was.

up
Voting closed 0

You troll

up
Voting closed 1

RIP David Bowie

And these children that you spit on as they try to change their world are immune to your consultations - they're quite aware what they're going through.

up
Voting closed 0

Marches and protests get short-term attention, and participants feel like they're being heard, but honestly, I don't feel they accomplish anything in the long run.

If these kids really want to change the world, maybe they could examine how they treat each other in their day to day lives.

So many kids are ostracized and shunned by their peers for being different. Being ganged up on by their peers in person and especially on social media is devastating and easily sends kids over the edge to commit suicide or pick up a gun.

Is banning guns the answer, or changing the behaviors that lead someone to think that killing themselves or others is the only way out?

up
Voting closed 0

I don't feel they accomplish anything in the long run

Oh and "treat each other in their daily lives"? Right. Because baby boomers were the kings and queens of hazing and hating.

up
Voting closed 1

lets get rid of assault weapons and be nicer to each other.

problem(s) solved.

up
Voting closed 0

[quote]Is banning guns the answer, or changing the behaviors that lead someone to think that killing themselves or others is the only way out?[quote]

yes

up
Voting closed 0

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/3o85xIO33l7RlmLR4I/giphy.gif)

up
Voting closed 0

Tell us about your experience with protests and marches, do, and how none of it was effective. Oh...define "effective" too, please.

up
Voting closed 0

They look miserable

up
Voting closed 0

You'd be miserable if you had to shelter in place from somebody with a gun and lots of ammo, too.

up
Voting closed 0

...makes as much sense as ascribing a set of behaviors to people based on their pigmentation.

up
Voting closed 0

Ascribing a set of behaviors to people based on their age makes as much sense as ascribing a set of behaviors to people based on their pigmentation.

If you are right then we should stop this 21 years old to buy a gun nonsense.

If you are right.

up
Voting closed 0

It wasn't that long ago that children were taught to huddle under their desks for fear that they, their classmates, and everything within 25 miles would be vaporized. As an adult you wonder why, the desk certainly isn't bomb proof. Hiding on the ground today just makes you an immobile target.
This stuff is why there are so many conspiracy theorists.

up
Voting closed 0

Long enough ago that I wasn't taught that, going to school in New York City--and I was born when Kennedy was president.

Maybe because my teachers knew how useless that would be. A basement might be some good against fallout, though--if missiles are being fired across the ocean, they're not aimed at a particular corner of a public school, so "immobile target" is irrelevant.

up
Voting closed 0

Hiding under the desk wasn't supposed to protect you if the bomb hit overhead - it was supposed to provide some protection if the bomb went off 25 miles away and all the glass windows blew in.

up
Voting closed 0