March for Our Lives in Washington: How we got here

WASHINGTON — They did not shrink. They did not retreat. They saw classmates die and took cover as bullets flew on Valentine’s Day, but when the slaughter stopped, the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High stood up and did not shut up. With primal urgency and modern technology, the kids of Stoneman Douglas let loose a mighty roar. “Enough … Never again … We call BS.”

Today, 38 days after 17 people were killed and after shifting the national dialogue and Florida law on guns, they will march. In Washington. In Parkland. And at more than 800 satellite March for Our Lives events around the nation and world.

“My main mission now is to follow the lead of these kids,” Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was killed at the school, said this week before leaving for Washington. “Saturday is just the beginning.”

Today, we will see how many people — from their self-described “mass shooting generation” and beyond — walk with the students of Parkland. Will 500,000 turn out in Washington, as organizers have predicted? Will millions more mass across the globe?

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” Angelina Lazo, a Stoneman Douglas senior, said at a pre-march rally in Parkland this week, reciting a Gandhi quote that has long been displayed at the school. “We are now that change.”

On Friday evening in Washington,

D.C., hundreds of students, teachers and parents assembled in the atrium of the National Education Association headquarters to make posters for the march. Students as young as 6 from as far as Seattle held markers and worked with stencil lettering to make posters that read, “Do you love your kids more than your guns?” and “Keep kids safe.”

“What these [Stoneman Douglas] kids have done has been so impressive,” said Carolyn DeWitt, president of Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan group that encourages voter registration and a co-sponsor of Friday’s event. “Their voices have had an impact across generations, across races, across people who aren’t even old enough to vote and who aren’t usually thought of as civically aware.”

As planes, buses and cars filled with students, parents and concerned citizens converge on the nation’s capital, here are some snapshots from the days leading up to the march.

Sunday, March 18, 4:20 p.m., Miami: Seventeen empty desks with name placards and obituaries of the students and teachers killed at Stoneman Douglas sat in a cavernous and quiet gallery space in Wynwood. The temporary exhibit, titled “Parkland 17,” also featured enlarged photos of the 14 students and three educators, along with facts about gun violence in America (13,000 annual gun homicides) and a phone booth labeled “Ring Your Rep,” with a direct line to Congress. A mural painted by Joaquin Oliver’s father read, “WE DEMAND CHANGE.” Some visitors wept as they walked around the room.

Tuesday, March 19, 5:10 p.m., Parkland: At a premarch rally in Parkland, that same father, Manuel Oliver, took the stage wearing the high-top basketball sneakers of his murdered son. “The night before he died he was buying flowers for his girlfriend,” Oliver said. He wondered about a world where some teens buy flowers and others buy guns. Oliver vowed to work with student activists to bring about sensible changes to gun laws.

He read the crowd a retweet sent by his son last Dec. 14, the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, when 20 first-graders were killed by a troubled former student. Joaquin’s retweet said those who believed that AR-15s and similar war weaponry should be allowed had been “brainwashed by the NRA.” “I lost my son and nothing can bring him back, but I’ll be his father for the rest of my life,” Manuel said. “Tonight, do something I can’t do — talk to your kids, listen to them, have fun with them, hug them.”

Thursday, March 22, 6 p.m., driving north on Interstate 95 in Georgia: While some Stoneman Douglas students and parents were already in Washington lobbying politicians, I was in an SUV with three Broward County students making a 1,050-mile, 16-hour trip to the march. The Parkland students have been so determined, fierce and eloquent that others have been inspired to join them. “It’s important to be there,” Lena Bergquist, 15, a sophomore at Nova High in Davie, said as she rode with her sister Erin, 12, and father, Scott Bergquist. The march coincides with spring break for Broward public schools. Lena, who plays water polo, told how Douglas’ water polo team uses the Nova pool for some matches, including one that day. “Our coach had ‘MSD Strong’ shirts made for everyone to wear,” she said. “I’m getting one when I get back.”

Friday, March 23, 6:30 p.m., Washington, D.C.: As her son Otto, 11, and daughter Etta, 7, hunched over a table making posters that read, “End Gun Violence Now” and “Guns kill,” Kate Beck of Shoreline, Wash., said she felt compelled to make the cross-country flight to support the students of Stoneman Douglas.

“It’s so heartening to see this,” said Beck, who said she became involved with gunreform organizations after the Sandy Hook massacre. “I think people are finally starting to pay attention. I had a lot of hope after Sandy Hook, and then it faded. But I feel like something is going to happen this time. Just look around. It feels different. … The parents of Sandy Hook, they built the foundation over the last few years, and these kids are going to launch it forward.”

Will Saturday be a watershed moment leading to meaningful change, akin to the Civil Rights or antiVietnam War movements of the 1960s? Or will this gun reform effort fade like the ones did after horrific previous events such as Sandy Hook.

Michael Mayo