Why #WearOrange on National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

Each year on National Gun Violence Awareness Day, the Activist Lab, Dean Galea, and members of our BU Medical Campus community gather on the Talbot Green for a group photo wearing orange as part of a national campaign to raise awareness about gun violence.

Why orange? Because on January 21, 2013, Hadiya Pendleton, a high school student from the south side of Chicago, marched in President Obama’s second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground back in Chicago. Soon after, Hadiya’s childhood friends commemorated her life by wearing orange. They chose the color because hunters wear orange in the woods to protect themselves and others.

On June 2, 2015—what would have been Hadiya’s 18th birthday—a broad-based coalition asked people nationwide to join in what Hadiya’s friends started, honoring her life, the lives of the more than 90 Americans killed by gun violence plus the hundreds more who are injured every day, by wearing orange.

We wear orange to demand to be seen and demand to see change.