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“March for Our Lives” was created in 2018 by students that survived the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The mass shooting killed 17 students and staff and wounded 17.
A month after the shooting, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched across the nation to create change and prevent more school shootings.
Four years later, those same protesters and more marched again calling on lawmakers to create laws for better gun control and to prevent school shootings.
It has been a month since the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, leaving 19 students and two teachers dead, which caused the return of the March for Our Lives demonstrations.
Earlier this month, thousands rallied in Texas, Washington, D.C., Florida and New York, among other states.
“If people in power continue to ignore the urgency, we’ll simply vote them out,” Solyana Mesfin, a recent high school graduate, told NPR at a protest in Louisville, Kentucky.
NPR reported that one of Mesfin’s classmates died last fall due to a shooting at a bus stop. She and hundreds of others gathered at the protest demanded for better gun laws.
Protesters in Georgia traveled to Atlanta to support the event. According to WABE News, Democratic State Sen. Jen Jordan marched with the students and gave a motivational speech.
“We always hear in the Georgia Capitol, ‘Good men with guns.’ What we saw was those good men with guns stood outside when children were murdered. That is not the solution,” Jordan said, referring to the Uvalde police, according to WABE News.
In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams and New York Attorney General Letitia James joined activists and protesters as they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The time to dam the rivers of violence, to stop the flow of guns into our city and to protect the lives of our children is NOW. Not tomorrow, NOW,” Adams said on Twitter. “I’m proud to have stood with these young people today to say enough is enough.”
In Houston, NPR reported that during the protest, a young activist led the crowd by reciting the names of the Uvalde victims, and chanting, “We demand change.”
State Representative Penny Shaw spoke to the protesters there and showed support to the cause according to NPR.
“DNA is more important than the NRA, and it’s our job to let them know that human life is more important than rifle life,” said Shaw according to NPR.
Elizabeth Brown, a mother and veterinarian who lives in Uvalde, Texas, told The Texas Tribune that she didn’t feel anywhere was safe for her and her family.
“I shouldn’t have to fear sending my kids to school. I shouldn’t have to think that they’re not going to come home after I just dropped them off on the way to work every morning,” said Brown.
She wants to see the state enact stronger gun laws for her family and her community as do many others like Jazmin Cazares who lost her nine-year-old sister Jackie Cazares in the Uvalde school shooting.
“While I was fearing for my own life, I didn’t know that my sister had lost hers,” the 17-year-old told the Texas Tribune, referring to the school-district-wide lockdown during the shooting at Robb Elementary. “I am unbelievably angry, but I’m not going to turn my anger into hate. I’m going to channel that anger, and I’m going to create some real change.”