Wear Orange Community Tailgate

Community comes together to bring awareness to gun violence

Last weekend multiple organizations came together for the “Wear Orange Community Tailgate” event hosted by We Are Linden, Moms Demand Action and Mothers of Murdered Columbus Children (MOMCC).

The tailgate took place at Maloney Park behind St. Stephen's Community House, were everyone in attendance were wearing orange shirts with the anthem of the weekend to “End Gun Violence.” This was in conjunction with the national Wear Orange weekend.

This is a movement started eight years ago to honor and remember the victims and survivors of gun violence.

Shela Blanchard, a member of Moms Demand Action, opened up the event explaining to the attendees why they Wear Orange. In her remarks she said, “Enough is Enough…We know that firearms are now the leading cause of death among children.”

Blanchard joined this fight shortly after losing three people in the tragic Oregon District Mass Shooting in Dayton, OH on August 4, 2019. One those three was her niece Monica Storey Brickhouse.

Jacqueline Casimire, the Adult Division director of MOMCC and the mother of C. Ray Casimire. Lost her son to gun violence nearly two years ago, and she implored everyone who was in attendance at the event “to register to vote,” but most importantly “to vote locally.”

Prior to Ray’s death he worked for The Columbus Department of Parks and Recreation, for over 10-years, according to his mother. “One of the things my son was trying to organize was a community kickball game.”

Guess what the kickball game took place at the tailgate in C. Ray’s honor.

Laura Robertson-Boyd with Moms Demand Action told UnBossed! that it was important for all three groups to come together for the Wear Orange tailgate because “Wear Orange is a national event that a lot of different organizations do, that Moms Demand Action has been doing for eight years. We said we don’t want it to be moms coming in telling people this our event and you can join us. We said, “we wanted it to be a collaborative community partnership”.”