Change the Ref Announces Penalty Flag for Change, the Campaign to Mark the Inaction of the 34 'Pro Gun' Senators

WASHINGTON, February 12, 2023 (Newswire.com) - While the United States is getting prepared once again for the Big Game on February 12th, the event with the highest audience nationwide, few are aware that last year there were more than 45,000 gun violence victims, and just during the first month of 2023, there were more than 39 massive shootings in the country.

That is why the Penalty Flag for Change campaign gives a voice to victims and honors its memory, alerting about the "epidemic" gun violence and denounces those people who had the power in the U.S. to take action and change the statistics, but haven't done anything.

This campaign is an initiative of Change The Ref, an organization created in 2018 by the parents of Joaquin Oliver, one of the victims of the Parkland Florida massacre, whose 5th anniversary will be this February 14th. For this reason and the notorious blockade of 34 senators against gun control, Manuel Oliver, Joaquín's father, visited the senate offices to throw each senator a penalty flag (https://youtu.be/RiFGSgjShOw) on behalf of all the victims.

By this day, Manuel's actions have turned into a movement which celebrities and family victims join, penalizing and demanding politicians to change the score of victims, posting videos in their own social media, throwing homemade penalty flags to them.

To continue with the commemoration of the 5th year since the murder of his son, Joaquín and the 16 victims in the Parkland shooting, Manuel Oliver, his wife Patricia, and other young people from different organizations against gun violence have planned to take a tour aboard a school bus, another symbolic element of Change the Ref campaigns, from Florida to Washington D.C. This is what Oliver said about his final action:

"We are going to do some spontaneous stops in the street. Patricia and I are going to be driving the Change The Ref School Bus to Washington. We will be leaving Florida tomorrow to be there for the weekend, that day is going to be really important, because we are going to finish our campaign with the Penalty Flags for Change and restart our street activism, which will culminate that day with a vigil, an event that will bring us all together."