Protesters demand action on gun violence, days after school massacre in Minneapolis

Several dozen protesters crowded a Squirrel Hill intersection Thursday — many holding provocative signs, some chanting at passing motorists — to demand an end to the nation’s rash of gun violence.

Eight days had passed since a gunman opened fire in a Minneapolis Catholic school. He killed two children while they prayed in church pews. Nearly 20 more were injured.

Many who turned out Thursday felt the recent shooting was another footnote in a sea of crime statistics — and a symptom of a larger problem in American society.

“Today, we stand here with one message: protect our kids, not the gun industry,” barked Beth Foringer, a regional coordinator for CeaseFirePA, which helped organize the protest. “I’m sick and tired of ‘thoughts and prayers.’”

Foringer, a mother of two, started advocacy work after hearing a 17-year-old student describe surviving the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

“I learned how to duck from bullets,” the teen said, “before I learned how to read.”

Community organizer Ally Fedor told TribLive she protested Thursday to prove something to herself.

“I work directly with teens and one of the things we do is talk about preventing gun violence,” said Fedor, 25, of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. “So, I like to put my money where my mouth is.”

Fedor, a Pitt graduate student who works for the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwestern Pennsylvania, recalled how an Aug. 27 Zoom meeting abruptly halted when news broke of the Minneapolis shooting.

But Fedor, like many, couldn’t recall where she was when other attacks — Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland — claimed young lives.

“Minneapolis is something that happened recently,” she said. “But this happens all the time.”

The protest drew crowds to the corners of Murray and Forbes avenues before it even officially started at 6 p.m.

“Policy and action, NOT thoughts and prayers,” read a handwritten sign one protestor held high at 5:50 p.m. “Disarm hate,” shouted another.

By the time activists addressed the crowd at 6:40 p.m. at nearby Sixth Presbyterian Church, the commuters who honked car horns at protesters — seemingly with approval — nearly outnumbered those assembled.

One speaker, Woodland Hills High School senior Calise Cowans, read a poem that compared her father — who was fatally shot in his car this year while Cowans’ baby brother sat nearby — to a Monarch butterfly.

Another, community organizer, Tracy Baton from the group Indivisible, demanded that legislators help forge a society that’s safer for her grandchildren than it was for her children.

Turtle Creek Mayor Adam Forgie, who’s running against Rep. Summer Lee in the spring’s Democratic Party primary for Congress, expressed both hope and frustration.

“As a parent and a teacher who’s lost 21 students over 24 years to gun violence, it’s time to demand real change,” said Forgie, 48.

For some, though, turning out was as personal as it was political.

Denice Galpern has attended protests for more than 40 years, starting with calls to ban nuclear weapons in the 1970s.

Her grandchildren live in Colorado — not far from Columbine High School, where two shooters murdered 18 students and one teacher in 1999.

“I think people need to know that others are thinking about this,” said Galpern, 70, of Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood. “With all of these horrible things that are happening, we have to be hopeful. And I think this is one way to share hope.”