Teenage protesters at March for Our Lives, USA Young Catholics joined the tens of thousands of students from across the country who participated in a massive demonstration along Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue protesting gun violence called ‘March for Our Lives’.
The event was organised by survivors and friends of those who died at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, where 17 died, including an assistant coach and the school’s athletic director.
Several more were injured in the latest mass shooting to take place at a school. Those who went to the march said they were there to support the march organisers and to applaud their effort.
Stephon Wheaton, a 17-year-old from Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School in Takoma Park, Maryland, said he was participating because he had lost his best friend, his brother, to gun violence, an event that left him feeling “mad, frustrated and alone”.
J’TA Freeman, a junior at Bishop McNamara High School, told those gathered at St Patrick’s Church that she experienced gun violence at age four, when “somebody brutally murdered my uncle”.
Violence in the streets and violence in schools come from the same source, she said, and something must be done.
“Bullets have no name, they have no race, no gender…they don’t care who you are. They will hit any and everybody,” she said. “We need to take these guns off the streets.”
Referencing the alleged gunman in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, she said, “It should not be that easy for a 19-year-old male to put a gun into a guitar case, get in an Uber, go to the school and kill so easily.
“It is not okay, it should never be okay. After this march, I hope, we will need to take action. The people in charge, they need to hear us,” she said. It’s “not okay” that parents like hers should have to wonder if “I’m going to go to school and I’m going to come back alive or with a bullet wound”.
Others, such as Diego Garcia, a 16-year-old from Chicago’s Brighton Park neighbourhood, who organised a group of 50 students from his parish to join the Washington march in solidarity with Parkland students, said he was concerned about the safety of his younger peers.
“I have two brothers and younger friends, I don’t want anything to happen to any of them,” he said.