March for Our Lives Updates: Chants of ‘Enough Is Enough’ at Huge Rallies on Guns
By THE NEW YORK TIMES UPDATED 3:47 PM Demonstrators are flooding streets across the globe in public protests on Saturday, demanding action against gun violence. Hundreds of thousands of marchers have turned out, in the most ambitious show of force yet from a student-driven movement that emerged after the recent massacre at a South Florida high school.
At the main event in Washington, survivors of mass shootings, including the one in Florida, rallied a whooping crowd — “Welcome to the revolution,” said one of the student organizers — and spoke of communities that are disproportionately affected by gun violence. “It is normal to see flowers honoring the lives of black and brown youth that have lost their lives to a bullet,” Edna Chavez, 17, said of her South Los Angeles neighborhood.
In New York, marchers bundled in bright orange — the official color of a gun control advocacy group — charged toward Central Park. And in Parkland, Fla., less than a mile from where the shooting took place last month, one protester’s eyes brimmed with tears, surrounded by the echoing chant, “Enough is enough!”
Counterprotesters supporting gun rights also marched in different cities. In Salt Lake City, demonstrators carried pistols and flags. One of their signs read: “What can we do to stop mass shootings? SHOOT BACK.” In Boston, opposing groups of protesters shouted at one another before the police intervened.
Here’s what we’re watching around the globe:
• More than 800 protests were planned in every American state and on every continent except for Antarctica, according to a website set up by organizers. Check out photos from around the world and a map of planned protests.
• The National Park Service approved a permit for the Washington march that estimated 500,000 people could attend. Called March for Our Lives, the main event there started at noon, featuring some of the most prominent student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a shooting left 17 dead last month.
• The student leaders who organized the events, many of them sharp-tongued and defiant in the face of politicians and gun lobbyists, have kept attention on the issue in a time of renewed political activism on the left, as they helped lead a national school walkout and pushed state officials in Florida to enact gun legislation.
• On Saturday, the White House said in a statement, “We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today.” On Friday, the Justice Department proposed banning so-called bump stocks, but President Trump signed a spending bill that included only some background check and school safety measures.
• The Times has journalists covering the marches in Washington; New York; Boston; Montpelier, Vt.; Parkland, Fla; Dahlonega, Ga.; Chicago; Salt Lake City; Los Angeles; Anchorage, Alaska; Rome; Berlin; and Tokyo. Follow them on Twitter.
The student activists emphasized that they would soon have access to the ballot box as they hope to build support for candidates who support universal background checks and bans on assault-style weapons.
At street intersections in Washington on Saturday, voter registration volunteers waved clipboards over their heads, shouting, “It takes less than three minutes!” They wore neon yellow shirts that read, “Register to vote!”
“These Parkland students have already been able to make change that no one else could for decades,” said Carol Williams, a volunteer from West Chester, Pa.
In Parkland on Saturday, Sari Kaufman, a Stoneman Douglas sophomore, urged people to “turn this moment into a movement” that would push out of office any politician who took money from the National Rifle Association.
“They think we’re all talk and no action,” she said to loud applause and cheers, and urged the crowd to prove politicians wrong by voting in huge numbers.
“Remember that policy change is not nearly as difficult as losing a loved one,” she said. “Don’t just go out and vote: Get 17 other people to go out and vote.”
The crowd was particularly rousing in its appreciation of Casey Sherman, 17, a Douglas student and one of the Parkland rally organizers.
“My love for Parkland had taken on a whole new meaning,” she said. “After all this heartbreak, we have come back stronger than ever. Those 17 people did not die in vain. We will stop at nothing until we make real,
Welcome to the revolution,’ a high school student said.
At the rally in Washington, the first speaker was Cameron Kasky, 17, a junior at Stoneman Douglas who last month challenged Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican, to stop accepting donations from the National Rifle Association. Mr. Kasky called for universal background checks on gun sales and a ban on assault rifles.
“To the leaders, skeptics and cynics who told us to sit down and stay silent: Wait your turn,” Mr. Kasky said. “Welcome to the revolution.”
Another speaker, Edna Chavez, 17, a high school senior in Los Angeles, said she had lost her brother to gun violence. “Ricardo was his name. Can you all say it with me?” she asked.
The crowd said his name over and over again, as Ms. Chavez smiled through tears.
Alex Wind, 17, a junior at Stoneman Douglas, spoke about the need for legislative change.
“To all the politicians out there, if you take money from the N.R.A., you have chosen death,” he said. “If you have not expressed to your constituents a public stance on this issue, you have chosen death. If you do not stand with us by saying we need to pass common sense gun legislation, you have chosen death. And none of the millions of people marching in this country today will stop until they see those against us out of office, because we choose life.”
David Hogg, 17, a senior at the high school and one of the most recognizable faces of the movement, said: “Who here is going to vote in the 2018 election? If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking.” In New York, 150,000 people were marching, the mayor said.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio said early in the afternoon on Twitter that an estimated 150,000 people were marching. “You have to know when a revolution is starting,” he said.
The musician Paul McCartney, speaking to CNN at the march, opened his jacket to show a T-shirt that read “We can end gun violence.”
“This is what we can do, so I’m here to do it,” Mr. McCartney said. “One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so it’s important to me,” he added, referring to his Beatles bandmate John Lennon, who was shot and killed in December 1980 outside his apartment on the Upper West Side.
As the crowd thickened before a rally in front of the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle, Mary Ann Jacobs, 55, of Sandy Hook, Conn., milled in the crowd with her husband.
Ms. Jacobs was a library clerk during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She barricaded herself in the school’s library, “in a closet hidden behind file cabinets” along with 18 fourth graders. ...
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
