Todd Ritchie, Lance Morrison, Chris Skeens, and Dee Scritchfield with the We Care Safe Schools Initiative were the guest speakers at the weekly Rotary meeting on Wednesday.
Ritchie discussed several school shootings that have occurred over the last few years in the United States. He voiced his concern regarding these travesties and what caused them.
“If we think it’s going to go away, it’s not,” Ritchie said.
Ritchie played some clips from interviews done after school shootings, the one thing that is always said by students is, “no one is listening to us, we knew this was going to happen but nobody cares.”
Ritchie said this struck a cord with him and he knew then that something has to happen, something needs to change to prevent these types of situations.
“It was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Ritchie said. “Within the next week, we had organized and had a session over at First Church in Ravenswood with 125 people from the community who responded.”