Education, inspiration, motivation and remembrance will be on display Saturday (June 8) at the Orange Mound Community Center when residents of Memphis and the Mid-South gather to mark National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
The event is free and open to the public. It is among hundreds of gatherings nationwide to mark June 7-9 as Wear Orange Weekend.
The Wear Orange campaign began in 2013 following the shooting death of Hadiya Pendleton. Hadiya was shot in Chicago a week after performing at President Obama’s second inaugural parade. She was 15 years old. Orange was Hadiya’s favorite color.
Following her death, Hadiya’s friends at a South Side Chicago high school asked their classmates to honor Hadiya’s life by wearing orange.
In Memphis, the Wear Orange Party in the Park is sponsored by the Memphis chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. It is set for 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Orange Mound Center at 2572 Park Ave.
Along with food trucks and local dance teams, the event will include Memphis mothers speaking about the toll of gun violence. Activists, motivational speakers, religious leaders, educators and others will talk about efforts underway locally, nationally and nationwide to reduce gun deaths. Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner is scheduled to attend.
The event is spearheaded by the national nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which reports that every day 100 Americans are killed as a result of gun violence.
For details about Wear Orange events set for Tennessee and elsewhere, visit wearorange.org. Follow #WearOrange hashtag. More information is available at https://everytown.org/.
