Thanks to Joe and Alice W.
Next Friday, June 5, 2020 is National Gun Violence Awareness Day—also known as Wear Orange—a day when gun violence prevention advocates across the country wear orange to honor the victims of gun violence and show support for the gun safety movement.
Wear Orange was started in 2013 after 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed in Chicago just one week after she performed at President Obama’s second inauguration. Her friends and family chose to wear orange—Hadiya’s favorite color and the color hunters wear to protect themselves from gunfire—to honor her life and the tens of thousands of lives lost to gun violence every year. Since then, the gun violence prevention movement has carried on their efforts by wearing orange the first Friday in June.
Wear Orange will look different this year, but COVID-19 has made it clear that the fight against gun violence and the systemic inequities that make so many of our communities more vulnerable to both the coronavirus pandemic and the gun violence epidemic is more important than ever.
So we’re asking you to join us in wearing orange on Friday, June 5th in solidarity with the victims and survivors of gun violence.
It makes sense that every one of us be safe from guns. They have killed. They have maimed.