Students Demand Action Wear Orange Toolkit
Turn Your School Orange
Turning your school orange is easy. You can do this on Friday, June 2nd, National Gun Violence Awareness Day or at your last Students Demand Action meeting in May.
Here are some easy steps to go orange:
1. Pick a date you will go orange and tell us about it with this form.
2. Ask your Students Demand Action group, friends, and favorite teachers to Wear Orange. Pro Tip: Have them set a reminder on their phone.
3. Talk to your school’s administration or whoever runs the morning/afternoon announcements and request that information about Wear Orange be shared over the loudspeaker or on TV – wherever your school typically shares announcements about club meetings, sporting events or upcoming occasions.
4. Print out our Wear Orange posters to hang up in your school.
5. Reach out to someone on the school newspaper staff about writing a piece on your efforts to highlight the national epidemic of gun violence.
6. Interact with other school groups: many groups focus on issues that intersect with gun violence prevention and have members who will also be interested in joining Students Demand Action to Wear Orange for gun violence prevention.
6. Have fun with it and post on social media with the hashtag #WearOrange and tag @studentsdemand.
Graduation Honor Cords
Orange is the color that Hadiya Pendleton’s friends wore in her honor when she was shot and killed in Chicago at the age of 15—just one week after performing at President Obama’s 2nd inaugural parade in 2013. Importantly, this year, National Gun Violence Awareness Day falls on Hadiya’s birthday. After her death, they asked us to stand up, speak out, and Wear Orange to raise awareness about gun violence. Since then, orange has been the defining color of the gun violence prevention movement. Whether it’s worn by students in Montana, activists in New York, or Hadiya’s loved ones in Chicago, the color orange honors the 120 lives cut short and the hundreds more wounded by gun violence everyday.
Whether students are graduating high school or college, Students Demand Action is excited to distribute orange graduation honor cords to gun violence prevention advocates and survivors of gun violence.
Proclamations
Volunteers have been instrumental in obtaining proclamations from state & local governments recognizing National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Sample proclamation language can be downloaded here on Gun Sense University Online (GSUo) under “Proclamations 2023” or you can email students@everytown if you don’t have access to GSUo (available to all Students Demand Action leaders).
For 2023, we have three types of proclamations: one for cities/counties, one for School Boards/Districts and one for States. You’re encouraged to add state-specific data from everytownresearch.org/everystat to the template to make the proclamation even more poignant.
If you don’t already have a relationship with your local elected officials, here is a quick guide to request they proclaim June 2, 2023 National Gun Violence Awareness Day:
1. Identify a volunteer to call the mayor’s office/school board/student government association or Governor’s office and ask their process for proclamations, sharing the brief history of Wear Orange and National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Let them know you can forward a sample proclamation.
2. Follow up with the office to determine if they will issue the proclamation.
3. Often proclamations are issued at the beginning of a public meeting. Ask the office if this is their standard protocol and if it is appropriate for a volunteer to be in-person to accept the proclamation or attend virtually. Take photos and share on social media.
4. Let the Students Demand Action team know! Email students@everytown.org so we can track your work and put in an event form!
5. Finally, be sure to thank the people that supported the process!
Wear Orange Events
There are lots of annual Wear Orange events nationwide—for example, in New York City, Moms Demand Action, Students Demand Action, and Everytown Survivor Network volunteers organize a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. You can find a Wear Orange event near you.
PLEASE NOTE: Wear Orange is a nonpolitical, nonpartisan campaign that amplifies awareness for gun violence prevention. Wear Orange events are supported by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, which may not intervene in elections. Accordingly, Wear Orange activities, communications and events must remain focused on awareness and education, and may not include electoral activity or legislative advocacy. For more information, email students@everytown.org.