March for our Lives

This weekend, on March 24th, I got an incredible opportunity to travel with the NAACP to participate in the March for our Lives in Washington, DC. We traveled with a delegation, also from Chicago, and took a charter bus overnight to get there. We heard speeches from many of the strong and brave students from Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Chicago, and watched performances from Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson. The most powerful speech for me was Emma Gonzalez's, a survivor of the massacre at Stoneman Douglas. She listed the names of all of her friends who were slaughtered and described the horrifying experience, all while counting down the 6 minutes and 20 seconds it took for the shooter to kill, then escape.  The students of Stoneman Douglas also wrote and performed a powerful song about overcoming and continuing the fight. It felt amazing and a bit overwhelming to be a part of such a powerful and brave group of people, and I feel so lucky to have been able to travel there. I am so proud of my generation, most not even able to vote yet, but still promoting so much change and love in a country that definitely needs it right now.

Banners and Signs at the March for our Lives, Wikimedia (2018)

As part of my school's walkout day, which took place on March 14th, I wrote this piece about the largest mass murder of US history, the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL.

I remember exactly when I heard about the Pulse shooting in Orlando. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. Those were MY people, MY community that was senselessly killed by ignorance and apathy. I thought that could be the end of it. The largest shooting ever in the United States was committed by someone on the no-fly list, but someone who could still buy a gun? Those people that were killed spent years and years fighting for the rights to love, to live, to be equal, and all of that love in their hearts was killed in an instant. It’s terrifying to be alive in a country where any instant could be your last breath, at the hands of a cold metal weapon.