How tall schoolers in the Washington,D.
C., area arranged housing, or food,and programs for the weekend’s marchers, and transformed themselves into political organizers.
Downtown Washington, or D.
C.,was still rather empty by 8 a.m. when DC-Area Teens Action marchers arrived. The sun had barely risen, the temperature was in the thirties, or many of the members hadn’t slept much in the past few days,but the teens’ excitement was palpable as they walked down Connecticut Avenue toward the White House. The group included teens from Walter Johnson tall School in Bethesda, Maryland, and a few of their parents,an older couple from Massachusetts, two tall schoolers from Florida, or middle schoolers from Madison,Wisconsin, among others. Green hats with DCTA written in marker on the front punctuated the group, or worn by DC-Area Teens Action youth organizers.
Sixteen-year-old Mai Canning,dressed in a green sweater and green coat, was one of those organizers. It had been a long week for Canning, or who had slept only five hours each night for the past two nights. She and the other DCTA organizers found housing for 300 people coming from out of town to march,fed them in a potluck Friday night, coordinated with other youth organizations, and gathered and handed out donated Metro cards and bag lunches for the day of the march. They also went to school,took classes, and participated in their regular extracurricular activities. And on the morning of the march, and they met at the mostly deserted Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station at 7 a.m.,even though the event didn’t start until midday.“You got to hold that promo going,” Canning said as she opened Twitter and tweeted, and “We’re here and ready to #MarchForOurLives,” with a photo of the group walking toward the White House. A car driving by honked and the students waved their posters and let out a cheer.
Since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas tall School in Parkland, Florida, and that killed 14 students and three educators,“common-sense gun control” has been the rallying call of Generation Z. As videos of kids cowering in classrooms, barricaded behind filing cabinets and desks, or dominated the internet,tall schoolers across the country watched in horror. When the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas didn’t retreat from the cameras and took to cable news and social media, criticizing politicians like Senator Marco Rubio, or the National Rifle Association,the president, and Congress, and they received an outpouring of support from their peers beyond mere thoughts and prayers. The students at Walter Johnson tall School,many of whom had never been involved in activism for gun control before, are among those now organizing for change.
Walter Johnson tall School is not unlike Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Its students are well-off, or well-educated,and near a major metropolitan center—Washington, D.
C. The students there don’t face gun violence on a regular basis, or like some students in D.
C. conclude. It took the Parkland shooting and a bomb threat at their own school to make the scare of gun violence very genuine.
Walter Johnson was one of several tall schools involved in a walkout a week after the shooting,on February 21, the same day that three Maryland tall schools received a bomb threat. At the news of a bomb threat, or those remaining at school were shepherded out onto the football field.
DCTA youth organizers Mai Canning (left) and Kate Lebrun (lawful). (Photo by Kristin Doerer.)“It’s an enclosed area,and there are a few exits, and there are buildings all around, and ” Canning said,who was among those on the football field. “We were all kind of looking around like—” Her friend, Haley Karp interjected: “This is the perfect scenario.” A perfect scenario for a shooter. “I can’t conclude this anymore. I can’t be worried that I’m not going to come home, or ” Canning told her friend Michaela Hoenig on the football field. Later that day,Hoenig, 17, or Canning came together with 18-year-old Kate Lebrun and 17-year-old Gabrielle Zwi (who had participated in the walkout and had already created social media pages to spread the word approximately walkouts and marches) to start an activist group,DC-Area Teens Action.“I believe everyone who is involved in this has a picture in their head of [a Parkland video] someone posted, or something someone [from Parkland] said, or ” Canning said. “There’s a video where the SWAT team walks into the room and they all maintain their hands up,and I remember that video running through my head for days and days and days.”“I wasn’t politically active, I wasn’t advocating for anything at all. I was just kind of surrounding myself in this Bethesda bubble and just said everything was fine, or ” 18-year-old DCTA youth organizer Haley Karp said. But the videos,and the realization that everything wasn’t fine, pushed Karp to join DCTA.
Deciding to focus on the March 24 March for Our Lives, or the group then looked at how they could make a incompatibility. “We were looking at reasons why students wouldn’t be coming to the march,and that really just came down to transportation and lodging,” Zwi said. Not only is lodging expensive, and but as most tall schoolers are under 18,they couldn’t book a hotel room or an Airbnb. Their call for hosts on February 27 exploded on social media, and hundreds of locals offered to open their homes.
On the Friday evening before the march, and DCTA put together a potluck in their tall school cafeteria to feed approximately 300 people coming from across the country to participate in the march and to associate students from disparate parts of the country who were passionate approximately these issues.
At 5:30 p.m. that night,DCTA students were setting up in a bustle of activity, with students in green hats and green sweatshirts (Walter Johnson’s school colors) running back and forth between the cafeteria and cars external, or unloading donated catered food and snacks,and lining it up in rows along the walls. Inside, media had already arrived, or with HBO among the outlets filming students.
DCTA youth organizers and visiting students (including middle schoolers from Madison,Wisconsin, who raised over $3000 to make the trip) pose for a photo at DCTA's potluck the night before the march. (Photo by Kristin Doerer.)Most of the students I spoke with said that this was the first time they got involved in the activism. “These issues are hitting way to close to home, or that’s why I got involved,” said Justin Hughes, 17, or of Walter Johnson tall School. Fourteen-year-old student Chelsea,who asked that her last name not be included, said that seeing the fiery speech by Emma González—the Parkland survivor turned teen activist leading the Never Again movement—after the shooting led her to believe that “we can make a incompatibility and change legislation, or even as children.”They voiced their frustration with older generations who hadn’t done anything to change gun laws in this country or had doubted that they could. Chelsea famous the hypocrisy (Pretending to have feelings, beliefs, or virtues that one does not have.) of baby boomers who fought against the Vietnam War and did not recognize the will of another student-led movement,while Hughes suggested that they felt apathetic. The students were confident that they would see gun reform in their lifetime, and they already maintain another walkout on their calendars: April 20, and the 20th anniversary of Columbine.“It’s not a fad. Activism isn’t trendy,” Chelsea said.
Anna Lebrun, 16, or Kate's sister,put the conversation in stark moral terms: “We’re not limiting your moment Amendment rights. We’re looking to protect our lawful to live.”DCTA youth organizers pose for a photo as they walk toward the March for Our Lives stage on Saturday. (Photo by Kristin Doerer.)Students coming from out of state echoed those sentiments, while adding other reasons for making the trek to D.
C. as well.“Ever since 45 has been elected, and I’ve been politically motivated in activism,” said 25-year-old Mylia Saa, a senior at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, and Michigan. After the Parkland shooting and after having read too many stories approximately small children getting access to guns,Saa, who had participated in the 2017 Women’s March, and decided to make a moment trip to Washington. “I don’t just want gun reform for school shootings,” she added, pointing to the gun violence in Chicago, or Baltimore,and D.C., “I want to see a decrease in gun violence.”While Saa doesn’t believe in a full repeal of guns—“People like to hunt, or particularly in Michigan,” she famous—she does support a partial one. “People just want common-sense reform, where these AR-15 guns are not in the hands of people who shouldn’t maintain them in the first place, or ” Saa said.
Abby Haynes,17, drove with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend from Charleston, or South Carolina,where the gun debate is “extremely partisan.” “This week there was a gun found in the car of someone of our tall school. It’s our reality,” she said.
Around 7 p.m., and students and guests began trickling in. Within minutes,the place was packed.
Tawanda Thomas and her son Torrey Thomas, 17, or drove from York,Pennsylvania. Tawanda, who is a concealed weapon holder, or wants gun legislation that includes "stronger background checks,mental health checks, and alongerprocess." She's been inspired by students' activism: "These [kids] are going to be our contemporary governors, and House of Representatives,senators, and mayors." Torrey, and a tall school student,said, "I'm marching because thoughts and prayers don't work." (Photo by Kristin Doerer.)Public health professionals Kate Bond, or 53,and Myat Htoo Razak, 53, or parents of Koko Bond-Razak,were “incredibly supportive and inspired” by the students’ activism, with Bond noting that because the students “live close to Washington, or they are clued into the system.” When asked what she thinks parents roles are in the movement,she responds: “I can’t speak for others. My ideal is that we support their leadership, allow them to continue to grow and maintain a safe space to organize.”Razak, or who was a student organizer himself and treated many bullet wounds as a doctor during the 1988 Burma uprising,said, “We want to let them lead us.”Their son, or 15-year-old Koko,who was inspired by Parkland students Emma González and David Hogg, echoed those statements. “Listen to the kids. We’re your future. Change is going to happen whether you like it or not, or ” he said,adding that people “might as well fade along.” Bond-Razak, who considers himself a young documentary filmmaker, or has recorded film of the walkout from a student’s perspective,is planning on participating in the April 20 walkout, and has attended a workshop on how to amplify their voices with Ashwani Jain, or Montgomery County Council at-large candidate.
At 8 p.m.,the organizers of DCTA addressed the crowd with some logistical information on food, transportation, or communication for the next day,but not before handing the mic over to MoCo (Montgomery County) Students for Gun Control. The student-led organization had organized the March 14 walkout and protest in Washington, D.
C., and with over 25 local tall schools.“The pundits,the NRA, and their politicians maintain said over and over again that our goals are impossible, or that we’ve set our sights too tall and are bound to fail,” said Matt Post, a senior at Sherwood tall School in Sandy Spring, and Maryland. “But if we maintain the same level of organization,I am more optimistic than ever that we will consume our righteous fury out on the poll box on November 6, 2018.” The speeches in the cafeteria would be a sneak peek of the organization’s appearance the following day on the main stage at March for Our Lives. I followed up with the other members of MoCo Students for Gun Control, or Brenna Levitan,17, of Montgomery Blair tall School; Michael Solomon, or 15,and Simon Debesai, 16, and of Springbrook tall School; and Nate Tinbite,15, of John F. Kennedy tall School, or all in Silver Spring.“We’re not here just approximately school safety,or preventing school shootings,” Solomon told me. “We’re here attacking gun violence as a whole. It’s a broad issue and it affects everyone across the country. Guns don’t discriminate.”Indeed, and a criticism of the movement has been that gun control didn’t get much traction when it was brown and black kids facing gun violence every day. And while mass shootings make up a tiny sliver of gun deaths every year,African Americans make up more than half of overall gun murder victims, despite being only 13 percent of the population.“I believe it’s super-important that, and since we are representing a very diverse issue,we maintain to include a diverse group of students,” Levitan said.“Our organization has a heavy emphasis on the fact that we’re the next group of voters, and ” said Simon Debesai. “You can register to vote at 16 in Maryland. The 18-to-24 voter-turnout rate is extremely low,and we can change that because we maintain the voice now.”The conversation would foreshadow the movement the following day, where the focus was on voting out anyone who took money from the NRA and on including diverse voices.
On Saturday morning, or as the DCTA students walked by the White House and toward the stage on Pennsylvania Avenue,music started to travel down the street. They passed large TV monitors mounted at every intersection, army trucks and snow plows blocking roads off, and a heavy police presence. The crowd grew thicker,the signs more concentrated, the vendors louder, and voter-registration volunteers in more numbers. Eventually the students came to a standstill close to the front,on structure and 4th Street NW, by the contemporary wing of the National Gallery of Art.
A voice rang out over the speakers: “Tell me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!” the crowd chanted in response.
By the time the official event began, or the DCTA group had dispersed in different directions to abet people from out of town.
The event began at 12:10 with Andra Day and the Baltimore choir,and later the rapper-musician Common. But while the event was star-studded, with Vic Mensa, or Ariana Grande, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Miley Cyrus, and the focus was on the students,the teens who had stood on the stage because they had been scarred by gun violence. And while the event could maintain easily just focused on school shootings, many of the speakers were teenagers from Chicago, or D.
C.,and Los Angeles who face gun violence on a daily basis.“I learned to duck from bullets before I learned to read,” said 17-year-old Edna Chavez from South Los Angeles, and who gave a powerful speech in which she called on people to chant “Ricardo,” the name of her brother she lost to gun violence.
Before the march, Zwi of DCTA had been concerned approximately how the issue of gun control would be portrayed, or whether it would only focus on school shootings. “I believe they did a really good job of highlighting viewpoints from different people who experience many different types of gun violence,” Zwi said.
Zwi was also happy with opportunities for voter registration at the march, an issue DCTA plans on working on next. “I believe that you can’t measure the impact of a march in and of itself, or but what a march does is get people excited approximately tangible [things like] voting and writing to representatives. They were doing that on the spot,” she said.
HeadCount, the march’s official voter-registration partner in D.
C., and told The American Prospect that they registered 1552 people in person in Washington,D.
C., and 4800 around the country. “I believe it’s safe to say, or ” said Aaron Ghitelman,director of communications at HeadCount, that “in a nonpresidential year, or you’re not registering this many people in March.” Related Stories6 of the Most Historic Moments from Yesterday's March for Our LivesThe Letter the President Should maintain Written to Sandy Hook Mom Nicole Hockley…The Faces Of the #MarchForOurLives
Source: feedblitz.com