I almost missed the party at Itchifingers for this month's 5 in 5. Actually I did one series and wasn't thrilled with it, so I waited until today's March for Our Lives. Like many cities Rochester hosted a local march. A group from our church met in our parking lot and walked to the rally (followed by the march) at Washington Square Park. According to the news reports, about 5,000 attended. I took the photos just as the rally was getting underway.
One of my best friends and her daughter who created posters for the three of us.
My poster; I love the message. Emily found all of them on the internet.
There were a LOT of speeches by public officials, high school students, and college students. By far the most moving was a young lady who is a student at a local college. She grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut where 20 first graders and six teachers were gunned down in 2012. She has lived with this issue in a much more personal way than most of us. I thought for sure the Sandy Hook tragedy would prompt our Congress to act, but the NRA has been such an incredibly powerful lobby that still five and a half years later (and so many more mass shootings to say nothing of individual lives cut down by guns), nothing has been done. Preventing gun violence has to become a priority. One of the most effective things that can happen is to vote those Congressional representative and senators opposing gun violence legislation right out of office. Hopefully, the kids can do a better job of keeping this issue in the forefront of the news better than adults have been able to do.
