The Trace: March For Our Lives — Student-Led Protests Against Gun Violence Draw Hundreds of Thousands

WASHINGTON — “I feel very hopeful”

For many of the students who descended on the National Mall, the protests started before Saturday.

“I participated in one of the walkouts,” Stella Shipman, a student at Easton High School in Pennsylvania who traveled to D.C. for the march, told The Trace. “We shouldn’t have to feel unsafe in our schools, it’s just a really bad thing to feel. It’s a place of safety. That’s what it should be.”

Angela Malley graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2006, and now lives in Baltimore.

“A lot of our alumni, they all rallied right after the massacre happened,” Malley said. “We all got together. We have a group of almost 12,000 alumni that have organized all around the world. So, it just shows the strength of our community, and we’re also just so grateful be supported by the entire world.”

Doug Edwards is a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School parent who’s had three children graduate from the school, and a daughter who was a teacher there.

“This is very personal,” he said.

Edwards said his generation knows protests, but they’re being inspired anew by the teen-led movement to enact gun-reform measures.

“Hopeful,” Edwards said. “I grew up in the sixties, and I remember protesting Vietnam and Nixon and all of the things that were the woes of the time. For a long time, I felt a lack of hope, and now with these kids, I feel very hopeful.”

— Matt Laslo

DIVE DEEPER: March for Our Lives coverage from The Trace.