WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of students gathered in cities and towns across the country to participate in numerous March For Our Lives rallies on Saturday.
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized the event after a former classmate opened fire and killed 17 students and staff on Feb. 14. They are hosting the main event in Washington, where they will lead a march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.
Since the shooting, student survivors have worked together to speak out against gun violence and demand that President Donald Trump and Congress pursue gun legislation that would make it more difficult to acquire firearms, which they believe would stem “the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar,” according to their mission statement.
“To anybody who thinks their voice doesn’t matter, it does,” Samantha Goldberg, a 17-year-old student at Stoneman Douglas, said as she was walking to the rally Saturday. “Every single voice comes together and makes a huge impact. This is just the beginning. This march is the first step in a long process, but ultimately there’s going to be a huge change. I mean, there’s not half a million people here for nothing.”
And what Goldberg demands of her politicians reflects exactly what the greater March For Our Lives movement has called for.
“I want stricter background checks,” Goldberg said. “I want no assault rifles. No one should have access to an AR-15. It doesn’t make sense. An 18-year-old boy shouldn’t have been able to go to the store and buy a gun and come shoot up my school.”
Across the country, there are more than two dozen marches occurring in numerous cities, including New York, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. Rallies were also planned in other nations such as Israel, New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., Japan, Belgium, India, France and Chile.
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Emma Gonzalez, one of the main organizers from Stoneman Douglas, said on MSNBC that there were more than 800 marches occurring in total.
"And that's wonderful," she said. "We're so psyched, this is the coolest thing that could've happened and even Antarctica is going to have a march."
Michelle Lo Brutto traveled to the march in Manhattan on Saturday with her family and her cousins from their home in Old Bridge, New Jersey. Around her neck she wore a sign demanding gun control in memory of her sister, Christina.
In 2012, a gunman, armed with an AK-47, opened fire inside the supermarket where he worked with Christina Lo Brutto. Christina, 18, and her colleague Bryan Breen, 24, were both shot and killed. The gunman later killed himself.
"He had severe mental health issues and was hospitalized three times and he was still able to buy [a gun] legally," Michelle Lo Brutto said. "I think everyone has just had enough, they're just tired of seeing people they love get hurt or killed and they just don't want to be the next one."
In Washington, the main rally featured 20 student speakers who have all survived mass shootings. The Stoneman Douglas Drama Club will wrote the song “Shine," which they will perform with the student choir.
Cameron Kasky, one of the main organizers from Stoneman Douglas, spoke first on Saturday and demanded universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
"We hereby promise to fix the broken system we've been forced into and create a better world for the generations to come," Kasky told a cheering crowd filled with teenagers. "Don't worry, we've got this."
Later, Trevon Bosely, 19, talked about the gun violence in Chicago that killed his brother Terrell Bosely on the way to church in April 2006. He said that these gun deaths are tied to the White House and American political leadership.
“When you have a president that would rather constantly talk about and belittle Chicago's violence rather than send funds and resources, you have gun violence,” Bosley said.
“It's time for the nation to realize gun violence is more than just a Chicago problem or Parkland problem but an America problem,” he added.
But it wasn't just recent graduates and high school students who took the stage on Saturday. Naomi Wadler, 11, of Alexandria, Virginia, spoke in Washington on Saturday. She led a walkout at her elementary school on March 14.
“It's time for the nation to realize gun violence is more than just a Chicago problem or Parkland problem but an America problem."
“I’m here today to represent the African-American girls [killed by gun violence] who don’t always make the front pages of the newspapers," she said, and the crowd roared in response.
"My friends and I might still be 11, we might still be in elementary school, but we know," she added. "We know life isn't equal for everyone and we know what is right and wrong. We also know that we stand in the shadow of the Capitol and we know that we have seven short years until we, too, have the right to vote."
The rally also noted the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, as Christopher Underwood, 11 — who lost his older brother to gun violence in Brooklyn, New York — reminded the crowd that the civil rights icon's death was the result of gun violence.
The crowd was surprised when King's granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, 9, later came to the stage alongside Stoneman Douglas junior class president Jaclyn Corin with a microphone.
"My grandfather had a dream that his four children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," she said. "I have a dream that enough is enough & that this should be a gun free world. Period."
By the early afternoon, the march in Washington had drawn tens of thousands of people from all over the country.
Participants began arriving hours ahead of the noon start-time on Saturday to get a spot toward the stage, where Miley Cyrus, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt and Ariana Grande were among those expected to perform, with the Capitol building in the backdrop of the rally.
Lawmakers from the House and Senate left Washington on Thursday for a two week-recess marking Easter and Passover. Numerous Democratic lawmakers remained for the event, however, including Florida lawmakers Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
President Trump left on Friday evening for his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida.
A White House spokeswoman released a statement prior to the event.
“We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today. Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the President¹s, which is why he urged Congress to pass the Fix NICS and STOP School Violence Acts, and signed them into law," Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said.
Stoneman Douglas survivor Delaney Tarr said the current legislation offered was not nearly enough.
"We are not here for bread crumbs; we are here for real change," she said. "We are here to lead, we are here to call out every single politician to force them into enacting this legislation."
Rally-goers were chanting for “vote them out! Vote them out!” before the event began. Hundreds of homemade signs were held up above the crowd: "Stop the madness vote them out.” Another said, “18th century law can’t regulate 21st century weapons.” And another put it more bluntly: “What’s worth more? Your children or your guns?”
“Sandy Hook happened not too far from my hometown several years ago,” said Sophie Zipoli, a high school senior who traveled to Washington from Burlington, Connecticut. “After that, I thought there’d be some significant change, yet here we are years later and there still so many mass shootings and school violence.”
Chicago native Ke’Shon Newman’s 16-year-old brother was shot and killed a few blocks away from his home in Chicago’s south side. Now, the 15-year-old routinely checks an app on his phone that tracks gun deaths in his city.
Newman told MSNBC that he traveled to Washington Saturday, to not only demand safety for students in America’s classroom, but an end to gun violence in general.
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“I just want the world to be a more safe environment for everyone, this march today is going to bring more awareness around the country,” he said. “Let’s just stop all the gun violence in this country and let’s get to action.”
And it wasn’t just students who said they were tired of the status quo. Teachers and parents were also in attendance.
“It’s unacceptable to me that our children live in fear of something like what’s been going on in our schools,” said Deb Sheridan, an eighth grade teacher from Leesburg, Virginia. “We need to address gun control issues and make our children feel safe in schools — that’s the one place that they should be going in and looking for an education, not worrying about their safety.”
Richard McDonald, 70, came from Detroit to Washington to visit his granddaughter and bring her to the March.
“I know that they’re not fully engaged,” he said of Trump and Congress, “and I think the only way to do [create change] is to keep demonstrating that the public is against more guns. The idea of arming teachers is insane and it’s not going to make things any better. What makes things better is not having guns at all.”
Rebecca Shabad reported from Washington. Chelsea Bailey and Phil McCausland reported from New York. Jack Sears contributed reporting from Washington.