March for Our Lives Draws Hundreds of Thousands to Capital

At one of the biggest marches in Washington’s history, young activists call for action on gun control.

The march came after 17 students died following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14. Since the shooting, student survivors have begun a movement for increased gun control that has thrust them into the national spotlight.

The power of young people to change gun policy was a major theme of the march.

Some of the most buzzed-about speeches were 11-year-old Naomi Wadler’s about “the African-American girls who don’t make the front page of every national newspaper,” and 9-year-old Yolanda Renee King’s (Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter) in which she led a chant of “Spread the word, have you heard? All across the nation. We are going to be a great generation.”

18-year-old Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez has been a prominent member of the movement following the shooting, and her six minute and 20 second speech representing the length of the shooting was one of the most noteworthy moments of the day.

“No one could comprehend the devastating aftermath or how far this would reach or where this would go,” Gonzalez said. “For those who still can’t comprehend because they refuse to, I’ll tell you where it went: right into the ground, six feet deep. Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15 and my friend Carmen would never complain to me again about piano practice.”

In the crowd, many marchers brought their young children out to urge lawmakers to prioritize their children’s safety over gun laws and NRA donations.

Israeli-American Eli Meshula came to the march to protest the NRA out of fear that one day his child may be part of a school shooting.

“I know I’m a foreigner but I’ve been here for a pretty long time and I know at some point my kid is going to start at a school over here and I don’t want to wake up one day and get a phone call like, ‘There’s been a shooting in your son’s school,’ he said.

Meshula said that he’d like the U.S. to adopt gun control laws more similar to those in other countries.

“In the place I come from there is gun control,” he said. “We’re living in basically a war country but we still have gun control, because it [doesn’t] make sense that every civilian can just get a gun and do whatever they want.”

Many of the march’s organizers emphasized the need for less guns in the U.S. and refuted that “good guys with guns” could stop the violence.

“I have a dream that enough is enough,” King said in her speech. “That this should be a gun-free world. Period.”

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