WASHINGTON, March 25 (TNS): Bundled against the cold but fired up with passion after a Florida high school massacre, crowds gathered in Washington on Saturday for what is expected to be the biggest US gun control protest in a generation, with hundreds of thousands attending.
The student-organized protest is to feature rallies from coast to coast, with the main event in Washington within sight of the US Capitol whose lawmakers the protesters hope to influence. Let our votes be our best weaponry,” said one of the many signs carried by early protesters, who arrived more than three hours before the event’s official mid-day start. Thousands of demonstrators poured out of the city’s subway and had already filled Constitution Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, which links the White House with the Capitol, making it difficult to get close to the main stage.
The area was closed to traffic in order to hold the half-million protesters squeezing into streets flanked by giant video screens proclaiming their slogan, “March for Our Lives. Lauren Tilley, 17, told AFP she arrived from the other side of the country in El Dorado County, California, with seven other teens and three adults. We came here through an essay contest. They raised the money in order for us to fly here for the march,” Tilley said, holding a sign calling for the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, to itself be amended. We are the people who are scared to go to school every day because we don’t know if we are next,” she said. Our main message is we are not going to be quiet, we will keep fighting. I don’t care how much money you have, your money can’t drown out the sounds of our voices. We will be voting in 2020. Our generation wants change.
