A student at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, is selling original T-shirts to benefit the Parkland, Florida, shooting victims and the anti-gun violence movement.
In the weeks following the massacre in which 17 people were killed at Stoneman Douglas High School, Julia Rubin couldn’t shake the tragedy from her thoughts.
“Just like many other people, it’s kind of the only thing on my mind,” the 17-year-old student said.
Rubin, who has a knack for drawing, is friends with some of the students at Stoneman Douglas who she went to summer camp with and she wanted to show her support.
“A lot of times when I’m thinking about something, I’ll start to draw,” Rubin said.
That’s when she had an idea.
With the support of her teachers, Rubin turned a sketch with “March For Our Lives” in block letters and the number seventeen in the background, into a digital image.
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“I just wanted to help energize Whitman in this fight for gun control,” Rubin said.
Rubin has already sold more than 100 shirts, marked with the names of the lives lost in the tragedy, which will be delivered to her peers next week.
“Students should feel like they can express themselves at school for sure,” Whitman Principal Alan Goodwin said.
The students are planning to wear the shirts in a school walkout set for next week and again later this month at the March for Our Lives rally March 24.
“I hope they do go on the walkout and I assume they will," Goodwin said. "It’s a safe walk-out; it’s on campus."
The proceeds of the $10 T-shirt will be split between the March for Our Lives Action Fund, which covers expenses associated with the march, and support to the victims and families of the shooting.
