This article originally appeared in the NYR Daily. Photos by Kenton Jakub.
Yesterday’s event on Pennsylvania Avenue should have been called Rally for Our Lives—it was by turns high school variety show, pop concert, and memorial tribute, but there was not much walking involved, except to stretch legs after standing in the street for four hours. At the D.C. Women’s March in 2017, the rally was effectively invisible and inaudible to most of the crowd, which was antsy to go somewhere and yell at somebody. The organizers of the March for Our Lives knew that what the people want now, above all, are the kids. We came to listen and to look them in the eyes.
While March for Our Lives was about gun violence, there were a few stray pussy hats in the crowd, and signs with slogans like “Guns have more rights than my vagina.” But unlike the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink politics of the Women’s March, the attendees at MFOL were resolutely on message. The only thing easier to buy than a gun in America is a Republican. Pack Lunch, Not Heat. Books not bullets. Art not artillery. Trump’s name was sparingly invoked: whenever anybody wanted to shame the government, they pointed angrily over their shoulders at the Capitol building, the stoic backdrop to the rally stage.
A group of high schoolers, stuck in the shade of a bedsheet spray-painted with TRUMP IS AFRAID OF THE NRA, formed a human pyramid in an attempt to see the stage. The woman next to me had brought her middle-school children, George and Ava, from Denver. “Do you think Emma Gonzáles is going to speak?” she asked them with the trepidation of a mom. “I wonder if she’s nervous. Imagine speaking in front of 500,000 people.”
“Let’s get this bitch started,” said an impatient girl with a nose ring.
From gigantic video screens and booming speakers funded by liberal donors such as Oprah and the Clooneys, the voices on stage reached everyone on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Parkland students were joined by student activists from across the country, all of whom had either lost a sibling, classmate, or friend to gun violence, or stared down the barrel of a gun themselves. Their stories were harrowing, their metaphors fresh, and all are worth watching. But in the spirit of yearbook superlatives, here are some highlights. Best Comeback: Samantha Fuentes, vomiting onstage in the middle of her poem. (Nose ring:“That’s gotta suck.”) The cameras panned politely away, onto the anxious crowd. We needn’t have worried. “I JUST THREW UP ON INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION,” screamed Samantha, “AND IT FEELS GREAT!” Best Throwback: Alex Wind, who reminded us, “When Joan of Arc fought back English forces, she was seventeen years old!” Best Reveal: Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter Yolanda King, brought out to lead a call and response.
The astonishingly poised eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler paid tribute to “the African American women who are victims of gun violence, who are simply statistics, instead of vibrant, beautiful girls full of potential.” Christopher Underwood, also eleven, reminded everyone that MLK was killed by a gunman. Edna Chavez from South Los Angeles greeted the crowd in Spanish, and made thousands weep with her speech honoring her late brother Ricardo and her community.
After two hours of tears and sunburn, the crowd was starting to wilt. “Where’s Emma?” people muttered. When Emma González finally took the stage, it was to deafening cheers; her no-bullshit anger seems to have sanctified her, and like Malala Yousafzai, who gave the march her blessing over video, González inspires a special kind of awe. So when she engaged the masses in a six-minute staring contest, everyone fell dead silent and stared back. Even the guy shouting “VOTE THEM OUT!” was hushed.
By the time Jennifer Hudson, who lost her mother, a brother, and a nephew to gun violence, finished “The Times They Are A’ Changin,” it became clear that nobody would be expected to march anywhere. A disembodied voice declared the event over and asked the crowds to disperse. Thousands milled. Cell service returned; separated friends found each other. Three women danced for a circle of cameras. A lanky man with fake blood dripping down his face and clothes posed for photos, directing press to his Instagram.
A group of women walked by with a gutsy sign: “SENATOR RUBIO IS AN NRA WHORE.” They were Stoneman Douglas alums, class of ’11. They were too old to know the Parkland organizers, but had come from Boston and Chicago to be at the rally. They told me about their hometown, a place I’d once stumbled through during a spring break trip and remembered as a landscape of canals and golf greens.
“It’s a good school,” Nicole Rudd said of Stoneman Douglas. “People move there for the schools, property taxes are outrageous.” Veronica Little was blunter: “Parkland is a rich-ass town… They’re privileged kids, who come from really supportive families—powerful families—with connections, who can make a March for Our Lives, overnight.” They were glad that the Parkland students had called out that privilege on stage, and used it to elevate the voices of activists from Chicago and South LA.
Three young friends, armored in plastic buttons, chatted on the curb. They were D.C. locals; I asked if protesting had become a hobby for them. Laughter and a chorus of Oh, yeah. They showed me their F is for Feminist, Black Lives Matter, and FUCK TRUMP badges. “I’m the pin goddess,” confessed Maya, fourteen.
The young people in attendance, conspicuously, were mostly girls. So when I saw a band of guys in green-and-gold lacrosse jackets, I made a beeline for them. I didn’t recognize the colors of Great Mills High, the school an hour and a half south of D.C. where a student shot sixteen-year-old Jaelynn Willey on Tuesday, just six days after the school’s walkout in solidarity with Parkland. She died in a hospital on Thursday. The boys were somber and perhaps a bit dazed, but spoke about how their school and community had come together after the shooting. They estimated over three hundred people from Great Mills were in D.C. “I’m proud of our community for coming out here and being able to show our support,” said Richard Britos. “Coming here is a big deal for us to, you know, heal,” said Jonathan Feid.
Volunteers with clipboards harassed every marcher: “Are you registered to vote in the state where you live?” The digits 227, the number of days until the midterm elections, were plastered on hats and telephone poles. The day’s mantra, chanted between speeches, gathering in waves down the avenue and ricochetting off the dome of the Capitol, was short and to the point: Vote them out. Vote them out. It was loud enough that they must have heard.
