mARCH FOR OUR LIVES

Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Aurora, Fort Lauderdale, Parkland. These schools, movie theaters, cities and airports are recognized these days because of mass shootings, which have occurred in the past years. With only four months into the year, there have been 63 mass shootings in the US in 2018, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

In the weeks since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on February 14th this year, that left 17 people dead, many students decided to not become only lucky survivors but become young activists leading a mass gun-control movement, dubbed as #NeverAgain. Students all around the country led the charge in organizing the March for Our Lives, an anti-gun-violence event primarily in Washington, DC, on Saturday March 24th, emulated in hundreds of cities and towns across the country and around the globe. The event was organized by Never Again MSD in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety. Protesters urged for universal background checks on all gun sales, raising the federal age of gun ownership and possession to 21, closing of the gun show loophole, a restoration of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines in the United States. Turnout was estimated to be between 1.2 to 2 million people in the United States, making it one of the largest protests in American history.

In Boston, as in other cities, the march was organized and led by student volunteers, many with direct connection to gun control advocacy, including Julian Diego Lopez-Leyva, Christine Sloss, Michael Martinez, Charlotte Lowell, Vikiana Petite-homme, Rebeca (Beca) Muñoz, Kim Hokanson and Leslie Chiu.

After the Facebook event for Boston’s march was created by Lopez-Leyva many of the volunteers would connect and meet in person in order to organize the march. Leslie Chiu, a MSD High School alumna, Beca Muñoz, Parkland native and sister to MSD High School shooting survivor Leonor Muñoz, and physics teacher at Rockland High School, Graciela Mohamedi met often in person to go over fundraising and to workshop the speeches they would each give during the event. Many of these meetings would take place in the afternoon in between their busy lives at school and work either at Mohamedi’s home, a cafe or the basement of a college dorm.

“We all meet every Saturday which includes all the separate committees to meet with student leadership and connect with the National DC organization. They presented us with a tool kit and reached out to us with resources,” Chiu said, in the basement of Northeastern’s Rubenstein Hall in a speech workshop meeting on a Monday afternoon, a week before the march would take place. “I would say this is like a second full time job, but it is totally worth it. It is very stressful organizing it but I know that when the day comes on Saturday I’m going to stand there proud that I did this. I am fighting for a reason and I know it’s making a change. I already see it.” - March for our Lives, Boston. March 24, 2018.