On the one-year anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, former President Barack Obama took to Twitter to praise the shooting’s survivors.
Obama highlighted all that the survivors have accomplished in the past year, noting that “the students of Parkland refused to settle for the way things are.” Instead, the students “marched, organized, and pushed for the way things should be—helping pass meaningful new gun violence laws in states across the country.”
“I’m proud of all them,” Obama concluded.
In the year since their friends were killed, the students of Parkland refused to settle for the way things are and marched, organized, and pushed for the way things should be – helping pass meaningful new gun violence laws in states across the country. I'm proud of all of them.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 14, 2019
Several of the students have been instrumental in shaping the national dialogue around gun policy, organizing a student walkout and the March for Our Lives rally to demand stricter gun control laws in the weeks following the shooting.
Their work has also spurred efforts by other young people, including a project undertaken by 200 teen journalists to track every American child killed by violence and share their stories. The project, published Thursday, includes close to 1,2000 obituaries of children under the age of 18.
Many of the Parkland shooting survivors plan to “go dark” on social media Thursday to commemorate those killed in the shooting.