Gun violence prevention groups met this past weekend at Idlewild park to mark “Wear Orange Weekend.” The national nonprofit, Wear Orange for Gun Safety, encourages survivors to wear orange in support of ending gun violence.
“Orange is the color that Hadiya Pendleton’s friends wore in her honor after she was shot and killed in Chicago at the age of 15 — just one week after performing at President Obama’s second inaugural parade in 2013,” the organization explained on its website.
Some attendees at the Idlewild Park event wore pins that simply read “survivor,” which referenced that they had experienced gun violence in their lives.
Heather Sallan, a survivor of the 2017 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas, talked about what it was like to be in a mass shooting. She told the hushed listeners about the sound of rifle rounds hitting and ricocheting of surfaces, the pop of the rifles, the people she met at her booth, where she was selling cowboy boots, who did not survive.
Sallan even shared that she was wearing the cowboy boots she had on the night of the attack.
The discussion was not limited to mass shootings, though. Attendee Sylvia Gonzales discussed domestic violence, and John Saludes discussed a bill awaiting Governor Sisolak’s signature that will prohibit “certain acts relating to the modification of a semiautomatic firearm.”
Riley Grove, a McQueen High School student, closed the speaking part of the event by playing John Lennon’s imagine with his ukulele.
