In response to the Parkland shooting, a group of students organized a branch of the national march for our lives
Five students with a dream to eliminate gun violence from America, have banned together to start a march at Winthrop University. The march, called March for Our Lives, is a sibling march to the main one happening in Washington D.C. on March 24. All of the marches are taking place on the same day and, according to the march for our lives website, each sibling march is student-led.
The students leading the march at Winthrop are Juliet Isaacs, Lauren Mueller, Sierra Massey, Amani Perry and Sarah Jackson, along with the help of graduate student Parker Quinlan.
Isaacs, the main organizer of the event, said, “I have always been very pro-gun control and stricter gun control, so when this past mass shooting happened, at the Parkland school, it really triggered something inside of me when I saw Emma González speak on CNN.”
Another inspiration for Isaacs to set up the march is her ailing aunt.
“I just found out that my aunt had two weeks left to live. She’s consciously brain dead which is very rare and the doctors don’t know how to help her,” Isaacs said. “But I remember her telling me every time I went to Maryland to visit her that she wanted me to make a difference, to start a movement. Guns were her biggest pet peeve, she doesn’t like gun violence at all. So I am doing this also for my aunt and all of the victims.”
Mueller was the first person Isaacs recruited. Mueller said she was glad she “was thrown into it,” by Isaacs who is her best friend.
The idea started with a text exchange between the two, and from there it took off.
“I was texting Lauren one night about how I had to do something about this, about how I can’t just continue to sit back and let the congress and the president just talk about it and give prayers and thoughts, that’s not going to do anything; you have got to take action. We put the page up on Feb. 22 and it has taken off much more than we expected, and it’s really overwhelming to know that so much is happening at once, but it is also really encouraging because we have support,” Isaacs said.
Jackson, one of the more recent additions to the team, was skeptical about joining the cause.
“It’s important that this isn’t just one little movement. I think that’s important because I was doubtful at first, because I was losing hope that a change could be made. But I saw the Parkland students really trying to make a difference, and the fact that
they were able to do that just days after such a traumatic event, is amazing and that was inspiring,” Jackson said.
The students have received some pushback on their plans, and they said they want people to know that just because they want gun control, doesn’t mean they want to get rid of the second amendment.
“This is about stopping shootings in our schools: that’s it,” Massey said, who has a long history with gun violence, growing up in a violent neighborhood where both she and a friend have been shot.
Perry herself is a gun owner, but said she still feels there needs to be regulations to prevent this from happening again.
“Some people think gun control means that we want to take all of your guns away, which it really doesn’t. I want more regulations. I want many processes that you have to go through to make sure that you can have a gun and know how to use it and know when to use it and know what is right and wrong. Believe me, I have guns and I love my guns but you don’t need an AR-15 for hunting,” Perry said.
Isaacs said the purpose of the march is to get people who don’t support gun control to reconsider. The march will start at campus green and end at Senator Lindsey Graham’s office in downtown Rock Hill to try and get his attention.
The organizers of the march also emphasized that the march was meant to be peaceful, and the only requirement for students to join the march is that they should want to make change in gun control laws, and that they must remain peaceful.
“We are protesting violence, we don’t want violence. It is fine to be passionate about it, but don’t come with fury,” Jackson said.
The march will take place on March 24. The students said they hope to prevent future gun violence by making people reconsider their stance on gun control.
“We shouldn’t wait until something happens in Rock Hill for Rock Hill to do something. The time is now,” Massey said.
