This Friday is National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Also known as Wear Orange Day, it is a day each year we come together to honor and to remember the victims and the survivors of gun violence.

It was first started in honor of Hadiya Pendelton, who was killed by a stray bullet in 2013. Hadiya’s friends started Project Orange Tree in 2015 on what would have been her 18th birthday. Since then, their project has grown into a national, collaborative, anti-gun violence movement that now honors victims and survivors on the first Friday each June.

How can you participate? It’s easy.

Start by wearing something orange on Friday, taking a photo of yourself or, better yet, a photo with friends and posting to your social media platform of choice using the hashtag “#wearorange.”

Take your orange out into the community, say who you are wearing orange for and why you are adding your voice to the thousands of people across the country who’ll be doing the same thing.

If you want to take it even further, attend one of the hundreds of “Wear Orange” events happening across the country this weekend — marches, tricycle races, concerts, kite-flying contests, hula hooping, 5Ks and blood drives. The Orange sky is pretty much the limit on Wear Orange Weekend. Text the word ORANGE to 644 33 to find an event near you.

I’ll be wearing Orange in memory of my home church, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (2008); Salisbury’s own A’yanna Allen (2016); Jemel Robertson (2018); and Muhlaysia Booker (2019) as well as the many here in our community who have felt the pain of gun violence in their lives.

— Teresa C Rowell

Salisbury