7-year-old rallier says she’s tired of hiding in closets

WASHINGTON – Hannah Christenson is only 7, but she is tired of cowering in closets in her classroom.

The pint-size protester — whose younger sister goes through the same shooting drills in preschool — just wants people to “not have any guns.“

Hannah, who donned a white-andblack pin reading “guns down” as she stood near the stage at the March for Our Lives rally in the nation’s capital Saturday, clutched her mother’s hand as she described the “scary” drills at her Maryland elementary school.

“I have to hide in closets. It’s so crowded and scary,” she said. “I don’t wanna have to do them anymore.”

Betsy Christenson said she brought her daughters to the anti-gun-violence rally, organized after the Feb. 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., to show them that “so many people care about their safety.”

Standing in the middle of the massive, energized crowd, she said she and other parents aren’t going to stand for violence anymore.

“I get that this march might not lead to immediate change, but these kids will all be able to vote soon,” Betsy Christenson said. “If (lawmakers) don’t see how important of an issue this is to all of us, they will soon.”

Abby Andrews and Caroline Larzelere of Columbus, Ohio, both 13, came to the anti-gun rally in Washington to finally have a say — even if they are just in middle school. They tried to walk out of their class at Weaver Middle School on National Walkout Day on March 14 but said their principal told them the walkout was just for high schoolers.

The Parkland rampage shook them up. “I am scared to go to school now,” Larzelere said.

Members of another generation that took to the streets in decades past also came out to the D.C. rally Saturday.

Lee Gurel, 91, said he protested during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and saw Martin Luther King Jr. give his I Have a Dream speech.

He said he couldn’t sit back on his couch watching this movement on television. He wanted to help change things for his great-grandchildren.

“Even if this rally and this effort doesn’t lead to change today or next week or next month, it will,” he said. “I’ve seen what impact something like this can do.”

Teachers were also front and center. Joyce Hylton, a retired high school teacher, said she’s watched gun violence continue to rip apart the country for years and “couldn’t just stand back anymore and wait for someone” to push for changes.

“The thing that gets me is that when Sandy Hook happened, those kids were in first grade — they were babies. And I thought change was going to happen then. It saddens me that nothing happened after that,” said Gloria Cooperblue, a teacher at Baltimore County Public School.

“This happens every day in Baltimore. I lost my first student the first day of this year,” said Cookie Colbert, a teacher at Frederick Douglas High School in Maryland.