On Saturday, March 24 hundreds of activists marched throughout downtown Ventura, in support of a nationwide movement started by students, in efforts to combat
gun violence.
March for Our Lives is a movement spearheaded by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the school affected by the Parkland shooting. This movement started due to student and teachers opposition towards the United States legislators, who are not doing anything to change the current gun laws after every school shooting.
A few of these students from the VHS community are juniors Samantha Pedersen, Micah Wilcox, Samuel Coats and sophomore India Hill. These students helped organize the march for Ventura County.
When asked what prompted her to organize the march Pedersen said, “I was persuaded to begin organizing the march because of the very real possibility that an act of gun violence could happen at a school in Ventura.”
The students also organized a rally which included a speech from junior Isabella Mercado, as well as speeches from Congresswoman Julia Brownley, Coats, Hill and Wilcox.
Coats, on his experience with the speech, said, “Speaking in front of [approximately] 2000 people was a remarkable experience, and one that very few people get. I was very glad to have the opportunity. Same goes for meeting Congresswoman Brownley, who was super nice and unexpectedly helpful with various logistical things.”
As Coats said, there was a crowd of about 2,000 people at this event, protesting the U.S’s current lack of gun regulations. Hill commented, “Seeing the march in action was one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced throughout my life. After these many weeks of working on this march, seeing it actually together was just overall amazing.”
As for the future, VHS students can expect to continue this movement: “Moving forward, I think that we need to keep this energy up to continue to inform people about gun violence as an election issue so that people vote in 2018 for candidates that will back common sense gun regulation,” Wilcox said.
