WASHINGTON D.C., United States (AP) – In a historic groundswell of youth activism, thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied across the US against gun violence Saturday, vowing to transform fear and grief into a “vote-them-out” movement and tougher laws against weapons and ammo.
They took to the streets of the nation’s capital and such cities as Boston, New York, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California, in the kind of numbers seen during the Vietnam era, sweeping up activists long frustrated by stalemate in the gun debate and bringing in lots of new, young voices.
They were called to action by a brand-new corps of leaders: Student survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14.
“If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking,” Parkland survivor David Hogg said to roars from the protesters packing Pennsylvania Ave. from the stage near the Capitol many blocks back toward the White House. “We’re going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. We’re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run, not as politicians, but as Americans.”
“Because this,” he said, pointing behind him to the Capitol dome, “this is not cutting it.”
Some of the young voices were very young. Yolanda Renee King, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nine-year-old granddaughter, drew from the civil rights leader’s most famous words in declaring from the stage: “I have a dream that enough is enough. That this should be a gun-free world. Period.”
