Lily Parzych, Leah Capomaccio and Ashley Lombres are sophomores at Cambridge High School. They attempted to speak out about gun control and the need for change in schools during National Walkout Day, but were silenced.
It happened not once, but twice.
With the tap of a record button, Grace Parzych, Leah’s older sister and Cambridge Senior, took a video of the happenings.
“I love my sister, I wanted to have a video of it because I'm proud of her. I took the original video of the speech they were forced to give because they told me they might do something and I wanted to make sure I had it on video and it ended up being very powerful since they shut the mics off when Lily said ‘Fulton County silenced us,’” recalled Grace.
She recalled when Leah and Lily were standing on the tables, in a second attempt to speak, and felt she “should definitely film this because it is empowering.”
“This might not make a difference nationwide, but it's going to make a difference in our community and that's what matters,” said Leah Capomaccio about speaking at the Cambridge event.
Grace's friend told her to put it on twitter, what happened next was unexpected.
“I was thinking maybe Atlanta would see it and at the most, something would happen in our city,” said Grace.
The girls’ message has been heard nationwide.
“We got a message from someone in California thanking us for what we did,” said Lily.
National media outlets such as USA Today and CNN also reached out to speak with the girls.
Notoriety was never the intention.
“I feel like the message is famous and I hope that is what people get,” said Lily Parzych.
“It's a fear, it's a real thing,” said Leah Capomaccio about the possibility of mass school shootings happening in other schools.
Leah recalled meeting “with student council after the Parkland shooting and asked what we could do” on National Walkout Day.
According to Leah, Fulton County emphasized the importance of memorializing the 17 students who lost their lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
The first part of the March 14 walkout, the memorial, occurred as planned and it was “beautiful,” according to Grace.
Lilly noted that Ashley Lombres was at the helms of coordinating the memorial.
Each of the 17 students were individually represented by a Cambridge student.
“A cross country runner and 16 other students each made a t-shirt with one of the victims’ names on it and wrote a speech about that person, who they were and their impact,” said Lily.
“The kids involved, who were speaking about the student who passed, were involved in some of the same activities as the student they were memorializing,” said Grace.
According to Grace, the purpose was to show everyone that “this could have been me, this is who this person was.”
A poem, entitled 'Rollercoaster,' written by Alex Schachter, one of the victims of the Parkland tragedy, was read at the Cambridge memorial.
It was agreed that following the memorial, the girls would have the opportunity to speak. Before Parzych, Capomaccio and Lombres could do so, they already felt silenced.
Capomaccio and Parzych recalled on March 13, being called into a meeting, alongside Ashley Lombres, with their school principal, their teacher working with them, student body president and school administrators, and were “given guidelines from Fulton County about what they could say and that it could not get political.”
Lily expressed to Leah she felt they were going to cut their speech.
“We knew they weren't going to allow us to say what we wanted to say,” said Lily.
"I turned to Lily and told her that I felt silenced, which is where the title came from," said Leah.
The girls rewrote the speech, but according to Leah, “it didn't feel like our speech, there was no meaning in the speech for us.”
“Everyone wanted it to be about Cambridge Unity. We both felt this is not the meaning of this demonstration,” said Lily.
Leah had reached out via Twitter direct message to the Women's March organization guidance and learned it was focused on “calling on Congress to act.”
“We came to a compromise to say our speech at the end. We wrote a whole new speech and didn't believe in it. We were going to say this wasn't our original speech and Fulton County silenced us,” said Lily.
The girls printed 100 copies of the original speech to hand out to students on March 14.
“We knew if we said we weren't going to follow their guidelines, they might not have let us speak at all. We did get the school message across, but we wanted our speech and message out there as well,” said Leah.
The next question was, “should we do what we were told we couldn't do,” said Lily Parzych about giving their original speech. They had no time to think, but took the opportunity to act.
“Ashley told us to get on our table and say our speech,” said Lily, who described Lombres as “the rock of the group.”
Lily and Leah described standing up and speaking out as “one of the scariest things we've ever done.”
“Once we got up there, we didn't even know we were going to do it. That's what the look is for, to figure out which one of is going to say something,” said Leah.
“Someone has to say it or else no one will. If I had waited a second longer, I wouldn't have been able to say it.”
The girls were focused on “wanting it to be heard.”
“The message is bigger than us,” they said.
According to Grace, a friend who attended the rally with her “the whole time she was waiting for someone to address gun control.” When Lily and Leah started to speak, but got silenced, she described the walkout as “it wasn't what I thought it was got it was going to be.”
“If we had to do it all over again, we would still do it,” said Leah.
The one regret the girls have is for any negative attention the teacher who stopped them is receiving.
“For the record, she was told to stop us, this was not her fault. We put her in a bad position, we knew we did and that was one of the consequences,” they said.
Fulton County Schools released a statement late in the day of March 14 addressing what happened.
"The student assembly at Cambridge High School had ended when two students stood on picnic tables in another area and continued speaking. They were told to stop because the time the school allotted for the assembly was over."
As of March 17, Lily and Leah had met with Fulton County Schools representatives the day before.
“Fulton County apologized to us for stopping us and hindering our freedom of speech, but it's not about that,” said Lily, who felt stopped when given the speech guidelines on March 13.
“Had they let them speak, there would not have been an issue,” said Grace.
In response to what was previously said in a statement by Principal Spurka, about how "the school cannot appear to take one political opinion over another," had the other side spoke, the girls said they would have approached them peacefully and taken the opportunity to have a discussion.
“A conversation is what leads to change. Leah and I started a conversation in our school, not only about gun violence, but the rights of students,” said Leah.
In everyone's approach, the main goal of both groups is student safety.
"Our job is to be students and we want to be able to do our job without being put in danger,” said Lily.
“Dr. Spurka asked us ‘where do we go from here?’ in a post-demonstration meeting and the girls discussed the walkout on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School tragedy.
According to Leah, they are willing to work with school administrators, as long as they are allowed “to do it how we want it to be done,” in regards to the demonstration.
Grace described “the greatest part of national walkout movement is that it is student led.”
“Students can't vote yet, things happening are happening to us and we have no control over what happens in the government. This is our way to get our voices out, it's the first time we've had a voice. The only forum that we have as young adults to speak out, the way we make change as of right now,” she said.
Both girls stated that if Fulton County does not make changes by the April 20 walkout, they are prepared to do the same thing again.
At the end of the day, according to the girls, all they are striving for is to be able to focus on their job, being students and going to school, without fear.
Neighbor News Online will continue to provide updates regarding the next National Walkout Day on April 20.
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