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‘People need to listen to us’: Demonstrators gather around the U.S. to protest gun violence

by Katie Zezima March 24 at 2:50 AM

Demonstrators around the world demanded action on gun violence Saturday, a massive display spurred by a shooting at a Florida high school last month that left 17 people dead.

Protestors from Los Angeles to London marched, held signs and chanted during “sibling marches” of the March for Our Lives rally, which has drawn an enormous crowd of protesters to the nation’s capital.

More than 800 events are happening worldwide, according to the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Counterprotests and separate rallies organized by gun rights groups are also taking place.

In New York, a sea of gun-control demonstrators stretched for about 20 blocks. In Boston, throngs of people jammed Boston Common. In Columbus, Ga., hundreds protested downtown. People gathered outside city hall in Las Vegas, where a gunman killed 58 people at a country music festival last year. A march is also planned in Jonesboro, Ark., on the 20th anniversary of a shooting at a middle school there that left four students and a teacher dead.

And in Parkland, Fla., where the shooting that became the catalyst for the marches took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Anishka Milleret pushed a wheelchair through the grass and up and down the small hillocks at Pine Trail Park to make sure her children were present at the city’s rally.

Her daughters, Dianna and Deanna Milleret, are 16-year-old twins, both sophomores at Stoneman Douglas. Deanna’s cerebral palsy requires her to be in a wheelchair much of the time. It was rough going on the park’s bumpy turf Saturday morning, but that didn’t stop them.

“They both have memories of that day, and they’re both dealing with it in their own ways,” Milleret said.

Along with the trauma of being in school during the shooting, the Millerets had the added anxiety of not being able to locate Deanna for hours afterward. She was evacuated along with hundreds of other students to a nearby hotel, but it took her mother hours to get to her.

“I’m hoping things can get back to normal at some point,” Milleret said. “I think they will. I hope so.”

Groups gathered outside the U.S. Embassies in Copenhagen, London and Stockholm; in London they shouted “gun control now.” In Tokyo, people gathered at Shibuya Crossing, holding signs with the names of people killed in mass shootings. In Frankfurt, a group walked down a street shouting, “No guns in our schools.” In Sydney, a group of children held posters.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/anti-gun-marches-planned-for-cities-throughout-the-us-world/2018/03/24/a7365514-2f59-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.9df1dec4eca5