A senior at Fort Myers High School used chalk to write mass shooting victims' names outside of her school this past weekend.
Sarah Brown, 17, first wrote the names of gun victims at a public park, using chalk, after the Las Vegas mass shooting in October.
“Every name is a person and it's kind of hard to realize fully what that means when you see a statistic and you're like ‘Oh well, 1,077 people have been killed in mass shootings since 1966.’ That's a lot, but you don’t quite get how many it is until you see it written out and that's what it was for me," says Brown.
She’s picked up her chalk again in response to the 17 lives lost to a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland this past Valentine’s Day. Brown says when she heard the news, she thought about her little sister, Margaret, who’s a freshman at her high school.
“Thinking about that happening and not being able to reach Margaret would be really, like, it freaks me out,” says Brown.
But she says the teenaged survivors of the shooting in Broward County give her hope for the nation’s future because they’re calling on lawmakers to tighten gun laws.
“What happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a horrible tragedy, but that fact that they’re coming out of it stronger and with their voices and using it to promote good is really, really, really inspiring,” she says.
Brown plans to attend the “March For Our Lives” in Washington DC on March 24, and she’s also helping to plan a similar march locally in Fort Myers.
Hear an extended conversation between WGCU's Jessica Meszaros and local teen artist Sarah Brown.
NOTE: On Tuesday's Morning Edition, the story originally aired previewing another chalk event for Thursday, Feb. 22, but organizers have since canceled the event.
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