March for Our Lives Draws Thousands Together in Ann Arbor

Photo+provided+by+Annie+Nichol.+

Photo provided by Annie Nichol.

     On March 24th, 2018, hundreds of thousands of people around our country gathered in major cities to protest against a lack of gun laws and gun control; to obtain more laws against the possession of guns, but mainly to push the government into action by showing them that we, the people, will not stand by as countless young lives are lost due to the outdated second amendment and lack of action by our government.

      The organization March for Our Lives was originally created by students who survived the Parkland, Florida shooting–the same students that have feared that a bullet might take their own life on Wednesday, February 14th, 2018. Seventeen people were claimed that day to gun violence. The loss was felt around the country, but those students did not sit and wait for government action. For our president did not change any laws or try to make schools safer; our president merely sent a tweet giving his “condolences” and stating, “No child, teacher, or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.” Yet no action was taken until Trump could use the shooting for his own agenda, coming out with another tweet blaming the shooting on the FBI, because “they are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.” As these tweets circled social media, so did the student survivors rising up and taking action into their own hands. With hundreds of thousands of supporters, the students formed and created not only an organization, but a national movement, in just five short weeks after the mass shooting.

      In the Ann Arbor march, over 4,000 people came together at Pioneer High School to take a stand. They came from all different ages, backgrounds, communities, and stories. But all came with one shared goal and hope–to help take a step forward and put an end to gun violence. These people included speakers who came from all over our country–students, teachers, police, and survivors from mass shootings addressed the crowd. As the speeches were delivered, the crowd responded with shouting, crying, and rallying behind them with hands in the air and signs waving. By the end of the speeches, the message was clear: enough is enough.

     Listening and reading to not only the speakers, but the people in the crowd, showed the true mission of these protests. The organizations’ slogan is “Not one more,” which means not one more mass shooting. However, the people there that day expanded on the slogan with the realization that we the people want to be and feel safe. To be safe in places we once thought were safe havens but were torn from us by gun violence. Not only schools, but our homes, churches, concerts, nightclubs, movie theaters, airports, and more. The marches argued that no one should have to go to school or church or anywhere in fear that their lives might be claimed as yet another victim of gun violence. Liana Treviño, a survivor from the Las Vegas shooting, left the crowd cheering with this last point: “As people in this democracy, we all must ask ourselves the same question: Is the Second Amendment worth more to us than the countless lives lost everyday because of it?”