Outraged youth hit streets to protest guns
Students lead huge rallies across US
WASHINGTON: Standing before vast crowds from Washington to Los Angeles to Parkland, Florida, the speakers — nearly all of them students, some still in elementary school — delivered an anguished and defiant message: They are “done hiding” from gun violence, and will “stop at nothing” to get politicians to finally prevent it.
The students, as they seized the nation’s attention on Saturday with raised fists and tear-streaked faces, vowed that their grief about school shootings and their frustration with adults’ inaction would power a new generation of political activism.
“If they continue to ignore us, to only pretend to listen, then we will take action where it counts,” Delaney Tarr, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where a gunman killed 17 people last month, told tens of thousands rallying in Washington. “We will take action every day in every way until they simply cannot ignore us anymore.”
For many of the young people, the Washington rally, called March for Our Lives, was their first act of protest and the beginning of a political awakening. But that awakening may be a rude one — lawmakers in Congress have largely disregarded their pleas for action on television and social media in the five weeks since the Parkland shooting.
That reality helped drive the Parkland survivors in Washington, as they led a crowd that filled blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill. Thousands more rallied at about 800 “sibling” marches around the country and abroad, where students, like those in the capital, made eloquent calls for gun control and pledged to exercise their newfound political power in the midterm elections this fall.
Aerial video captured seas of people — in front of Trump International Hotel in New York; in a central square in Tokyo; along the streets of Boston; at a rally in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, and crammed into a park less than a mile from Stoneman Douglas High.
Delivered in soaring speeches, emotional chants and hand-painted signs, the protesters’ messages offered angry rebukes to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and politicians who have left gun laws largely intact for decades. A sign in Washington declared “Graduations, not funerals!” while another in New York said: “I should be learning, not protesting.” Crowds in Chicago chanted “Fear has no place in our schools” as they marched.
Celebrities, i ncluding Lin Manuel Miranda, the Hamilton star, and pop singers Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus, performed in Washington, where politicians and adult activists were largely sidelined in favour of the fresh-faced students offering stories of fear and frustration, but also hope for change.
The most powerful, and impassioned, moments came from the surviving students of the Parkland shooting, who declared themselves angry, impatient and determined to stop the slaughter.
“Today, we march,” Tarr said. “We fight. We roar. We prepare our signs. We raise them high. We know what we want, we know how to get it, and we are not waiting any more.”
An 11-year-old girl from Virginia, Naomi Wadler, captivated her audience as she declared “Never again!” on behalf of black women and girls who have been the victims of gun violence.
Calls like Naomi’s stood in stark contrast to action on Capitol Hill and at the White House in the hours before the rallies. President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that took no significant new steps on gun control: It did nothing to expand background checks, impose additional limits on assault weapons, require a higher age for rifle purchases, or curb the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The spending legislation, which was viewed as the last opportunity this year for Congress to enact major new gun restrictions before the midterm elections in November, included only some school
safety measures and modest improvements to the background check system.
Gun rights organisations largely stayed silent on Saturday, after vigorous efforts since the Parkland shooting to squash any movement toward implementing significant gun control legislation. A spokesman for the NRA declined repeated requests for comment.
A White House spokeswoman said in a statement, “We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today.”