March For Our Lives tour to make stop in Houston
Organizers seek to reform gun laws, promote voter registration for youth
The national March For Our Lives tour, which aims to rally the youth vote following mass shootings on school campuses this year, will arrive in downtown Houston on July 8, organizers said.
David Hogg, one of the most prominent student activists after February’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla., will headline an event from 4- 7 p.m. at Revention Music Center. Hogg and others affiliated with the March For Our Lives movement are planning more than 50 stops in 20 states this summer, advocating for changes to gun laws and registering voters.
Organizers of the Houston event said it will be an opportunity to “unite as a community and discuss the need” to better address gun violence prevention. Other nationwide stops have involved rallies, town halls, voter registration drives and visits to the offices of political leaders.
“It will be a lot of things happening at once — we’ll be doing a town hall, it’ll be a rally of sorts, and the key will be changing the discussion around gun laws and violence,” said Marcel McClinton, a lead organizer of March For Our Lives Houston.
The event will feature several Houston-area students who have coordinated local March For
Our Lives events and created Orange Generation, a youth coalition working toward reform of gun laws. Several students from Santa Fe High School, where eight students and two adults were killed last month, are involved with both organizations.
The Orange Generation advocacy platform calls for mandatory gun lockers, mental health service reform and federal research into gun violence.
More than 10,000 people gathered in downtown Houston in March as part of the student-led, nationwide March For Our Lives rallies. Thousands of students and adults carried signs and chanted for change on a three-block path from Tranquillity Park to the downtown office of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. The events came one month after a gunman killed 14 students and three adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which Hogg attended.
Students and advocacy organizers affiliated with March For Our Lives launched the national tour June 15 in Chicago, planning stops through mid-August.
They will also be in Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio next month. A simultaneous trip through all 27 of Florida’s congressional districts is ongoing.
In announcing the national tour this month, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Cameron Kasky said organizers want their influence to extend beyond marches, emphasizing the need for young voters to cast ballots in the 2018 primaries and beyond.
March For Our Lives organizers have backed candidates generally in favor of more restrictive gun rights and opposed politicians receiving support from the National Rifle Association.
“So many people have shrugged it off as not important,” Kasky said. “People think midterm elections are not important.
“We can march, we can bring our politicians into a new light and make sure they are being held accountable, but at the end of the day, real change is brought from voting.”