13-year old Hoboken activist invites you to "Columbine Anniversary Rally" TODAY

  Toby Platt, age 13, of Hudson County Chapter of Students Demand Action with Hoboken Mayor Bhalla and Councilwoman Jabbour

GA continues to be amazed at how our kids have stepped up, organized, and become the conscience of a nation, demanding passage of gun-safe legislation, demanding safe schools.  Love it.

These kids aren't using the Internet to organize bar crawls.  No, they've harnessed the power of social media for public good, for a movement that isn't stopping, for changing how we think. Best of all, they are being heard.  That's right. Millions will be of voting soon, and you bet that scares the crap out of NRA-coddlers in Congress and at the state level.

Message: Get with the program, or get out of the way. 

So, today on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting, the newly-formed student organization, Hudson County Students Demand Action, is holding rallies in Hoboken and Jersey City.  A day to remember and say "never again".  The rallies are scheduled as follows:

HOBOKEN:   Today at 4pm  

Hoboken City Hall (94 Washington St)  

JERSEY CITY:   Today at 6pm  

Jersey City, City Hall (280 Grove St)

On that note, let me introduce you to one Hoboken's bright lights, 13 year-old Toby Platt.   

I asked Toby to tell me a little about himself, and about how today's rally came about. 

"I'm 13 and I attend 7th grade at Hoboken Charter School. We're (the we being myself and a few other kids from our school) organizing this as part of the Hudson County Chapter of Students Demand Action, a branch of Everytown (like Moms Demand Action) that formed in the wake of February's shooting in Parkland. Jai Patel, the organizer of March for our Lives Jersey City, a group of his fellow organizers, my group of fellow organizers, and myself make up the membership of Students Demand Action Hudson County. His group had planned for a little while to do their rally tomorrow; calling it the Columbine Remembrance Rally. 

Inspired by the prospect of continuing to push forward the movement led by survivors of the Parkland shooting, I began to piece together details; speak to city hall for logistics and permits, put together a team who I thought was committed to this issue (some of whom had helped organize my school's walkout), and reached out to Councilwoman Emily Jabbour for extra help getting out the word."

[Toby explained why it was "necessary" to keep tragedies like Columbine in the public eye.] 

"The argument I've seen play out unfortunately well in the past has been the one that portrays taking action with these specific tragedies in mind. What I think has made that logic that seems to have worked against even the most sensible, common sense gun laws, so blatantly invalid this time around is that the students themselves from Stoneman Douglas, the ones advocating for closing these loopholes in our country’s policy. And what their action has shown us is that it is not disrespectful, but rather completely and totally necessary to keep these specific shootings in mind if we want to create stronger policy. If we want to truly solve these problems, we need to look at the specific loopholes or weapons that were taken advantage of in tragedies like that at Columbine. That’s not politicization, that’s comprehensive problem solving.

I'm  excited to see the turn out tomorrow!"

There you go, people.  America's future is in good hands. 

So please, if you can make it, attend today's rally to support these kids, their gun safety advocacy and show them we  (adults) have their back.