Spike Lee Turns Empire State Building Orange For Gun Control

Director Spike Lee joined gun control activists Wednesday morning to flip a switch that bathed the Empire State Building in orange light in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

The ceremonial lighting was part of the #WearOrange campaign, a media campaign promoted by celebrities and gun control organizations including Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action intended to raise awareness of and promote gun control laws.

National Gun Violence Awareness Day is held annually on June 2 since its launch last year, but included the lighting and other events on June 1.

“This is a very important moment in American history, and people [are] standing up all across this great country and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We’re going to keep getting the word out, make it a bigger movement day by day,'” Lee said during the lighting, according to Newsweek.

The 59-year-old Do The Right Thing director was reportedly joined at the ceremony by Everytown for Gun Safety president John Feinblatt.

“For the Empire State Building to kick off by turning the spire orange is a powerful way of saying this is an American movement,” Feinblatt told Newsweek. “This isn’t really about politics, this isn’t really about policy. What the Empire State Building is essentially expressing is that we want to honor the people who have been killed by gun violence and we want to bring Americans together.”

Lee is a member of Everytown Creative Council, a group of celebrities and other activists who advocate for strict gun control policy on behalf of the Michael Bloomberg-funded group Everytown for Gun Safety. Other celebrities in the council include Jud Apatow, Jason Bateman, Elizabeth Banks, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Broderick, Steve Carell, and Julianne Moore, among others.

Celebrities, activists and even President Obama tweeted messages supporting the #WearOrange campaign on Thursday. The campaign comes just one day after a gunman murdered a professor and then killed himself on the gun-free campus of UCLA.

 

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.