Throngs fill Washington for rally
Looking west, people fill Pennsylvania Avenue during the “March for Our Lives” rally in support of gun control Saturday in Washington. Parkland, Florida, packed streets with protestors of all ages — but dominated by the young.
"If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking," said David Hogg, a Parkland student who took video as he and his fellow students hid from the gunman who opened fire in their school last month. "Inaction is no longer safe."
"Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job," said fellow student Emma Gonzalez, who stood silent for much of her time on the stage to illustrate how long it took the shooter to kill 14 students and three staff members and wound 17 others in her high school.
The march was organized by Hogg and his fellow students. But speakers — all young — represented students from Chicago,
Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The oldest speaker was 19; the youngest, 11. Only the entertainment — which included Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson and Lin–Manuel Miranda — were older.
Preliminary estimates put the crowd at about 500,000 people, making it the largest gathering to descend on Washington, D.C., since the January 2017 women's march, which drew roughly the same number.
While that march was billed as the women's march, however, speakers at that march also talked about other causes. Saturday's protest was focused on one issue: Stopping the mass shootings that have occurred around the nation and ousting lawmakers who are unwilling to help stop those shootings by passing gun
control legislation. But the protestors themselves didn't look like a well-heeled special interest group; instead, it appeared as if a massive high school tour bus had suddenly dropped off thousands of passengers on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
"I am here to represent the African-American girls whose stories don't make the front page of every national newspaper, whose stories don't lead on the evening news," said Naomi Wadler, 11, of Alexandria, Va., who organized a walk-out and die-in on February 14 at her elementary school. "I represent African-American women who are victims of gun violence who are simply statistics instead of vibrant, beautiful girls who are full of potential."