Recently, the Aurora community has been struck with multiple acts of gun violence from the death of Kendrick Castillo at STEM school, to the 8 others injured in the same shooting. Castillo showed hit true heroism when he lunged at the shooter in order to protect his fellow peers. Now, students in the CCSD are standing up and taking action in hopes to spread awareness and prevent further loss in the community.

Mina Mouaddine, 9, said “Me and a bunch of different people from different schools are arranging a walkout for (next)  Friday. It’s not even a protest against gun violence it’s more so just to bring everyone back together.”

Mouaddine believes that Aurora has always been and felt like a big family but that the recent events changed that and made everything tense among the community. However, she believes there’s still hope of change and going back to the family-like ways.

“I think it’s kind of (gun violence) ridiculous. Aurora has kind of always had a family feeling around it and a lot of my friends have been saying that’s not who we are, to be killing people over stupid things.” said Mouaddine.

Mina and everyone helping to spread awareness has plans to do so through making t-shirts, posting on social media etc.

“What we’re doing tomorrow is going to Sonic and we’re all gonna make t-shirts and posters. We spread the message all over social media so people are definitely aware of it. It’s just a matter if they decide to go out for 20 minutes or not.” Mouaddine said.

For Mina, it’s not about the recognition for taking a stand and more about spreading positivity and showing people that Aurora doesn’t have to dwell on the bad times.

“…people lost people last week because of all of this so my motive is just to bring back a positive vibe in the community because we’re all kind of surrounded by negativity.” Mouaddine said.