Invigorating, hopeful day!
News sources placed the attendance at around 20,000! Friends and I arrived early and got an almost front row place in front of the stage. The energy in the crowd was amazing. A major goal of the event was to register folks to vote - especially those young people who will turn 18 before the mid-term elections. I will be interested to hear how many registrations they got.
We listened to a lot of short speeches before the actual march. The speakers established the initiating issue of school shootings within the greater social context of gun violence in the US - gang, domestic violence, police bias in violence, the links to poverty and racism, etc. The statistics as always, are truly shocking. One speaker, disabled by gun violence, brought home the fact that, as shocking as the statistics on deaths by guns is, it does not include the much larger numbers of people who are disabled by gun violence and the even larger number of people deeply affected by gun violence (families, friends, etc).
I liked the signs and there were an awful lot of very good ones. Here are just a few of my favorites. The link between gun violence and firearms as big business was not lost on these young people.
My favorite sign was one I saw on FB from another march.
The march was very well organized - there were pallets of cases of water at almost every corner. I was asked by multiple people if I was registered to vote; directions to the event, event parking, porta-potties, etc - a far cry from some of the protest rallies I attended in the 70's!!
And, the day ended on a lovely note as usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We Love Comments!!