1 year ago today, in Parkland Florida 17 high students and staff lost their lives in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
In the past year the young people who were affected by the shooting have become fierce advocates for gun control and have made their voices heard across the country.
For students across the country, this event was a terrifying reminder of the dangers U.S. students can face.
How did the Parkland shootings affect you?
To those who lost their lives last year, rest in peace. You are not forgotten.

Patchwork – This is a collective piece that looks like a quilt of ideas.

Each square is designed by Kim, Val, Shelby, John, and Nanii in 3 minutes.

–Kim, Val, Shelby, John, and Nanii

Flip Me Upside Down – This is a collective art piece completed by the young adult group.

Each artist contributed their own artistic talent to the picture, submitting their own touch to the piece in 3 minutes. This piece is called “Flip Me Upside Down” because the original artist started by drawing trees and hills, but the other artist turn the hills into trees.

Look from both angles and see the full image.
-John, Nanii, Kim, Val, and Shelby

If you have been following the news since lately, you would have probably noticed a string of anti-gay laws popping up around the country, which gets really scary for LGBT people living in states like Tennessee, Colorado, Mississippi, North Carolina and so forth…

Not to say that here in the ‘north’ (in Massachusetts and Connecticut for example) it’s all well and hunky-dory.

Of course we get our own share of antigay hate in our schools and supermarkets, at gas stations, in public parks and in communities that are so homophobic you would probably think that you are in another country.

But the new laws that we are now learning about puts LGBT people in a very peculiar place… you are neither safe from the general public nor the government.

One of the most heartless bills that has been proposed and that also targets young adults comes out of Tennessee…

Here… if you are LGBT, a therapist can refuse to provide counseling to you.

Now, I don’t know which is more devastating…
…the ordeal of coming out to someone who means judgement, who has no regards for your feelings and who refuses to even consider you for counseling
Or
…Knowing that you were denied service because something ‘might’ be wrong with you, an idea which your own government agrees with

In the first place, LGBT people who feel victimized would rather not speak to anyone… if a single therapist or the rest of society denies their value as human beings, then its best if they keep their true feelings to themselves.

…That doesn’t help the kid who is being bullied in school, by his parents or by his church… instead it forces him to find a very quiet room, where he begins to have negative thoughts, that could very well lead him to hurting himself.

Should that bill gets signed by the governor in Tennessee, more religious conservatives could get their way in picking what group of people in society they think is normal (taking us back many years)
While
Thousands of LGBT youth are being shun from the counseling and therapy that they need.

What good does that do?

I’ve met people here in Connecticut who still aren’t sure where to go to school or where to live. Their whole lives turn out to be a political message or a constant riot.

In North Carolina you could be told to leave a bathroom because you just don’t fit in or in Atlanta, a store owner could shut you out of his store…

But regardless of what’s happening in the South, I still think that hate is anti-American… we just need to reunite, rethink and begin to understand that we are all people who cry, bleed and sweat the same.