Parkland Students Rally in Israel and Dubai to Demand Gun Control in America

Dani Tylim, 18, is a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She is one of three Parkland students scheduled to speak at Tel Aviv’s March For Our Lives rally, to be held at 1 P.M. on Friday March 23 in front of the U.S. Embassy (with participants assembling at noon at Mike's Place on the beachfront).

It’s a solidarity event ahead of the main March For Our Lives rally the following day in Washington, demanding changes to the U.S. gun legislation that made it possible for suspected shooter Nikolas Cruz to purchase an assault rifle like the one he used to murder 17 people on February 14.

Sisters Maia and Eden Hebron (18 and 14, respectively) are the other Stoneman Douglas students set to speak at the Tel Aviv rally, organized by alumni from the school now living in Israel, plus Democrats Abroad and Pantsuit Nation Israel.

...In the past, she says, she occasionally used to worry about traveling here. “I grew up listening to people telling me about bomb threats in Israel. I go there every year, but I always get a little bit of anxiety,” she says. “But now I’m not really scared to go. After all, I experienced the worst thing I could ever go through. I thought I was safe in class – and I wasn’t.”

Eden’s older sister, Maia, a senior at the school, agrees. “People say Israel is so unsafe. But the truth is, when I walk in the streets in Israel, I don’t have the same fear I have walking now in the halls in my school, [in what] is supposed to be one of safest cities in the country.”

Survivors of the #Parkland school shooting have been taking their message of greater gun safety abroad- to Dubai. They've been meeting with lawmakers, participating in townhalls, and next, planning the 3/24 #MarchForOurLives in DC to push for change: https://t.co/J0mOH9WhjR pic.twitter.com/1WfJdYG5nQ

— #DreamActNow (@MiFamiliaVota) March 18, 2018

What next #Parkland School #Florida shooting #GESF2018 @GESForum @vikaspota @GEMS_ME @kings1309 pic.twitter.com/AlSt0mUTQn

— Viji VP TWS Dubai (@TwsVijaya) March 17, 2018

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Student survivors of the worst high school shooting in U.S. history took their message abroad for the first time on Saturday, calling for greater gun safety measures and sharing with educational professionals from around the world their frightening experience.

...“It’s so important to be educated, and to be educated in a productive sense is to feel safe at school,” Suzanna Barna, 17, said. “No child should ever have to go through what we did.”

Barna and her classmates Kevin Trejos and Lewis Mizen, all seniors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., each wore a red ribbon representing the color of their school in honor of the victims as they talked about their experience and their push for stricter gun safety measures. They spoke in Dubai at the Global Education and Skills Forum that coincides with the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, awarded to one outstanding teacher from around the world each year.

...Mizen said that addressing the global forum in Dubai was as a chance to talk to world education leaders and stress the importance of safety in schools.

“If we can get the international body on our side then that will make it so much easier to make change back at home,” he told The Associated Press.