D.C. activists host local gun-control rally before March for Our Lives

Students in the District took center stage in the gun debate on Saturday morning by holding their own rally to a crowd of hundreds.

D.C. students, parents, politicians and activists met on the chilly Saturday morning in Folger Park in Southeast to rally against gun violence in the District of Columbia before heading to the national protest downtown at the March for Our Lives.

“Together we are here to express concerns about the violence in our community and encourage others to take action,” said Nehemiah Sellars, 12, a student at District of Columbia International school. “The environment in which we are living is having a negative effect on our youth.”

Although several local legislators were attending, the crowd focused on the D.C. students who took to the stage to share the impact of gun violence in their community, and in some cases, to their families.

“If I could rewrite history I would change the day a senseless act of gun violence rocked my world,” said Devontae Gliss, 15, from Bishop McNamara High School, whose mother was murdered in a drive-by shooting three years ago.

Before the speeches began, people bundled up against the cold, sipping coffee and dusting off sugar from powdered donuts donated by DC Vote. Several toddlers were seen running through the park holding the nonprofit’s statehood protest signs. The city’s Board of Elections also set up a table to register voters, including 16-year-olds who will be eligible to vote in the 2020 election. Organizers set up a giant homemade clock with the city names of mass shootings instead of numbers, and an AR-15 instead of a hand.

Standing on a stage behind the countdown clock, local legislators also spoke briefly.

“The District of Columbia has moved on some of the toughest and smartest gun legislation in the United States of America,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat seeking re-election.

“But our laws don’t help us if Virginia doesn’t pass common sense gun laws, if Maryland doesn’t pass gun laws, and if there are legal guns coming into our city,” she continued to cheers in the crowds.

The District is currently embroiled in a fight with Sen. Marco Rubio over a bill the Florida Republican introduced last year which would repeal the city’s bans on assault weapons and concealed carry. The bill would also bar the District from passing future restrictions on gun owners.

“We’re standing up to gun owners that think the only way to protect their Second Amendment right is on the backs of our children,” said Michael Brown, a Democrat and one of the District’s non-voting shadow senators.

Gun violence was a fresh topic for the crowd, many of whom participated in last week’s National Walkout Day.

Audrey Neumann, 10, and her sister Elise Neumann, 7, attended a “sing out” at their school, the School-Within-School in Northeast. Her mother, 52-year-old Linda Neumann from Ward 6, said emotions around gun violence remained high this week as the school planned a safety drill on Friday.

Audrey told the Times she practiced hiding behind small classroom furniture and being quiet.

“I have to say that I was pretty appalled when they came home from school yesterday and were told to hide behind pillows,” said Ms. Neumann. “It’s not our school’s fault, it’s just that it’s not an effective plan.”

The rally was also a source of critique for the national movement started by the survivors of the Parkland shooting to reform the nation’s gun laws after a mass shooting killed 17 people in February. Since then a group of the students launched a social media campaign reaching millions and have appeared on several talk shows and the cover of Time magazine before leading the March for Our Lives on Saturday.

“I had a friend ask me, if this same shooting happened in our school, would we get the same amount of press?” said Imami Romney, 12, a junior at Richard Wright Charter School during her speech.

The idea was echoed by the D.C. chapter of Black Lives Matter.

“When the black students in Baltimore walked out of the schools for Freddie Gray they were met by riot policemen in gear,” said local Black Lives Matter organizer, Dornethia Taylor, who referring to the student walkouts in 2015 to protest the death of Freddie Gray during police custody.

“These are D.C. students’ streets,” said Ms. Taylor, a Southeast native. “We welcome Parkland, but these streets belong to D.C. students.”

Joining the group was Parkland shooting survivor Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, 17, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and came to Washington, D.C., on Thursday for the March. She traveled to the District alone with her mother instead of with her classmates, and told The Times she felt a disconnect between the organizers from her school and the communities in the country most affected by gun violence.

“At the end of the day these kids go home to gun-free homes in their nice house and they don’t really have to worry about guns on the street,” said Ms. Ho-Shing. “On the other hand there are black students and Hispanic communities that come to this March to march with us but then when they go home [gun violence] is their daily reality.”

Critics complain that data on gun violence is incomplete because of a 1996 federal law prohibiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control.”

Available data from the CDC and the FBI show that almost two-thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides, according to analysis from the gun-reform advocacy organization Everytown. Among the 12,726 annual gun-related homicides that do happen each year, some communities are disproportionately affected: black men are 13 times more likely to be killed than white men.

In the District of Columbia, the rate of homicides in 2017 has decreased 14 percent since 2016, according to police reports. However, gun violence persists with legal and illegal firearms in the District. In February, NBC reported that half the year’s homicides were children of color, and 5 out of the 6 of those victims were killed with guns.

“In a lot of these cases, we have young people who are unable to resolve conflict. When you add a gun to that, you have a deadly situation,” MPD Patrol Chief Robert Contee told NBC in February.

“This is my one experience with it and I’m so traumatized by it.” Ms. Ho-Shing told The Times. “Imagine what other people have to go through on a daily basis?”