- Credibility:
CHICAGO — People throughout the country are wearing orange this weekend to raise awareness of gun violence.
The orange shirts signify the wearer is “fight[ing] for a future free from gun violence,” and they’re meant to be worn throughout the weekend starting Friday, according to WearOrange, the organizers behind the movement.
The WearOrange movement started in honor of Hadiya Pendleton, a South Side 15-year-old who was shot dead in January 2013. Pendleton was slain just days after performing at President Barack Obama’s 2012 inauguration, and her death made national news.
In the wake of Pendleton’s death, her friends wore orange to remember her and to raise awareness about gun violence.
“Orange is basically the color hunters wear to signal to other hunters not to shoot them. So that’s why we’re wearing it — to say, ‘Don’t shoot me,’” Ayisha Stanley, a student and organizer for the Project Orange Tree anti-violence campaign, told DNAinfo in 2013.
The color is now used as a symbol of anti-gun violence movements around the country.
“Whether it’s worn by students in Montana, activists in New York, or Hadiya’s loved ones in Chicago, the color orange honors the more than 100 lives cut short and the hundreds more wounded by gun violence every day,” according to WearOrange.
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