SILENCE BROKEN:
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His voice somber, Manuel Oliver told a crowd heading to the March for Our Lives on Saturday in Washington D.C. that he will never stop marching.
“My fight, sadly but true, won’t make any difference in my house, but it can certainly make a difference in your house,” he said.
Oliver, whose son Joaquin, 17, was killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was was one of several speakers Tuesday afternoon at the “Pep Rally for Change” at the Parkland Equestrian Center, a sendoff to the march.
Many of the approximately 200 people who attended plan to head to the nation’s capital in the next few days. T-shirts with the school’s name were sold at the rally and many people bought several to wear and to give to friends or relatives also making the trip.
Like Oliver, each speaker resolved to continue their gun control activism in the name of the 17 students and school staff killed on Valentine’s Day inside the 1200 building at Stoneman Douglas High. Oliver said his family moved to the U.S. 14 years ago from Venezuela, looking for a safe community. “My son trusted that decision. He was only 3.”
Angelina Lazo, a senior, said her school “will now be a part of history for all the wrong reasons.”
And she noted a message that has greeted students at the entrance of the school for years: ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ “We are now that change,” she said. “We are not advancing anyone’s political agenda; we are tired of seeing our friends and family killed by gun violence.”
“Why do we allow them to dictate our national gun policy?” she said about the National Rifle Association.
Anna Fusco, the president of the Broward Teachers Union, also spoke, saying the students should not be dismissed as they have been by some because of their youth, and that their activism isn’t because of adult intervention.
“We stand behind you and we stand with you,” she said.