Students are taking matters into their own hands. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people rallied Saturday in cities across the US to protest gun violence and demand gun-control action from politicians and leaders. The March for our Lives events have been largely student-organized and student-led.
The March for our Lives Rochester rally drew around 5000 people, according to Rochester Police, to Washington Square Park, and included people of all ages listening to high school and college-age speakers tell their stories and call for change. One speaker, a student at SUNY Brockport, is from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and described the lockdown at her school and hearing the police sirens and helicopters while the shooting took place at nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“Why do we wait until more students and teachers lose their lives to remember the last time we said, ‘Enough is Enough’?” she asked.
“Enough is Enough” has become the rallying cry for students after the death of 17 people during the Stoneman Douglass High School shooting on February 14. On the one-month anniversary, millions of students walked out of class, including people from nearly two dozen Rochester schools.
Speakers on Saturday also called for attendees to remember and protest against the gun violence that frequently occurs in some Rochester neighborhoods, particularly impacting black communities. A group of organizers from Teen Empowerment Rochester referred to the August 19, 2015, shooting outside of the Boys and Girls Club on Genesee Street, which left three black boys dead and injured four others. “If this is a march for our lives,” one of the organizers said, “let’s make sure it’s a march for all lives.”
Following the speakers, the rally turned into a march, which went down Court Street, turned along Exchange Boulevard, and back to Washington Square Park by way of Broad Street. Among the signs were many saying teachers are better with degrees than with firearms, several Black Lives Matter posters, numerous witty jabs at the Nation Rifle Association — and a poster featuring the “Game of Thrones” Eddard Stark meme saying “Midterms are Coming.”
This article has been edited to update the number of rally attendees, reported by Rochester Police Department.
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This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2018.
Lemmings. Rifle homicides kill ~350 year in the US. Tobacco kills ~550,000. When’s the march?
Eric, when someone can walk into a school with a pack of cigarettes and kill a dozen people in five minutes, then there will be a march.
Ah got it. Rifles are bad because they have the potential to kill faster than tobacco. Yet given that, they still kill ~549,650 people less a year than tobacco. When’s the march?
I’ll be gentle on you Kathryn. I’ll knock it down from total tobacco deaths (~550k) to just second hand smoking deaths(~34k).
“Smoking during pregnancy results in more than 1,000 infant deaths annually.”
Huh, look at that pesky fact. 1,000 infant deaths alone a year from tobacco. Yet again, ~350 total (all age groups) from rifles…. When’s the march?
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistic…
“Why do we wait until more students and teachers lose their lives to remember the last time we said, ‘Enough is Enough’?” she asked.
Why didn’t the last guy do anything about this during his 8 years in office?- I’m asking
It seems the comfortable role for government on many important issues is just to kick the can farther down the road. Government does this with immigration, the environment and certainly with gun control. What politicians don’t seem to realize is that actually resolving issues removes them as campaign centerpieces. Would Trump be President if immigration had been resolved during the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations? There would have been much less excitement for Trump’s racism and no chanting to “build the wall.”