Large crowds in Washington, D.C., and other cities
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the nation’s capital and cities across the country Saturday to demand action against gun violence, vividly displaying the strength of the political movement led by survivors of a school massacre in Parkland, Fla.
Organized by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a gunman killed 17 last month, the March for Our Lives showcased impassioned teens calling on Congress to enact stricter guncontrol laws to end the nation’s relentless, two-decade stretch of campus shootings.
Hundreds of “sibling protests” took place across the world, from New York City where demonstrators spread across 20 blocks - to Jonesboro, Ark., a small city marking the 20th anniversary of a middleschool shooting that left four students and a teacher dead. Gun rights advocates mounted counter-protests in Salt Lake City, Boise and Valparaiso, Ind., where one sign read “All Amendments Matter.”
Although the District of Columbia march was funded by Oprah Winfrey, George and Amal Clooney and other celebrities, Stoneman Douglas High students have been its faces. Their unequivocal message to legislators: Ignoring the toll of school shootings and everyday gun violence will no longer be tolerated.
“To the leaders, skeptics and cynics who told us to sit down, stay silent and wait your turn: Welcome to the revolution,” Cameron Kasky, a Stoneman Douglas student, said to a standing-room-only crowd that packed at least 10 blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. “Either represent the people or get out. Stand for us or beware. The voters are coming.”
The main march in Washington was a heady mix of political activism, famous entertainers and the undisguised emotion of teenagers confronting the loss of friends and loved ones in a national spotlight.
Sam Fuentes, a senior shot in the leg at Stoneman Douglas, threw up on stage while delivering her speech to a national television audience. She recovered and led the crowd in a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for her slain classmate, Nichles Dworet, who would have turned 18 on Saturday.
Emma Gonzalez, 18, took the stage in a drab olive coat and torn jeans, speaking of the “long, tearful, chaotic hours in scorching afternoon sun” as students waited outside Stoneman Douglas High on the day of the shooting.
With a flinty stare, tears streaming down her face, Gonzalez stood silent on the rally’s main stage for nearly four minutes evoking the time it took Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz to carry out his attack. The crowd began chanting, “Never again.”
The powerful moment was widely shared on social media. “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job,” Gonzalez said before she left the stage.
The march emphasized not just the highly publicized mass shootings in suburban, white schools, but also the far more common shootings that leave one or two young people dead and often affect predominantly black and Hispanic students in poor neighborhoods.
Zion Kelly, a senior at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Washington, gave a moving speech about his twin brother, Zaire, who was shot and killed by a robber in September. Choking back tears before a rapt crowd, Kelly described the close bond they had shared.
“From the time we were born, we shared everything. I spent time with him every day because we went to the same schools, shared the same friends, and we even shared the same room,” he said. “I’m here to represent the hundreds of thousands of students who live every day in constant paranoia and fear on their way to and from school.”
The march drew a huge crowd, though there were no police estimates of its size. One indication: Metro officials reported there had been about 334,000 trips on the system by 4 p.m. Saturday, compared to 368,000 trips by the same time on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Women’s March last year generated 597,000 trips by the same time of day.
Because many of the demonstrators were children, authorities in the nation’s capital said they took extra security precautions. By day’s end, police had reported no violent altercations or other problems, despite a small contingent of counter-protesters decrying efforts to toughen gun laws.
“To be honest, I’m scared to march,” Stoneman Douglas senior Carly Novell said in a Saturday morning tweet, citing the risk that a shooter might terrorize those gathered to protest in Washington. “This is a march against gun violence, and I am scared there will be gun violence on the march. This is just my mindset living in this country now, but this is why we need to march.”
The march offered a window on a generation that has come of age after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, which left 13 dead and is considered a milestone in the evolution of modern school shootings.
Nearly 200 people have died from gunfire at school since 1999, and more than 187,000 students attending at least 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours, according to a Washington Post analysis.