C6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022
since she was a college student.
In her hand, she held a sign
saying: “... This teacher has had
ENOUGH!”
Shortly after the Texas shoot-
ing, Holloway said, her mother
called her and told her how she
couldn’t stop worrying about Hol-
loway’s kids — two 12-year-old
boys, and Holloway herself, who is
a second-grade teacher.
They decided to book a hotel in
D.C. and attend the rally.
“I teach my kids that you can do
anything and change anything in
the world if you try,” Holloway
said. “So this is me and us doing
something, because this whole sit-
uation needs to change. The fact
that we can’t send our kids to
school without worrying what
might happen to them is crazy.
This doesn’t happen in any other
country in the world.”
After the Parkland shooting,
the teenage survivors sparked a
political movement to demand an
end to school shootings and every-
day gun violence. Students be-
came activists and parents
launched nonprofit organiza-
tions, lobbied lawmakers and ran
for local school boards.
Still, since the Parkland shoot-
ing, more than 115,000 students
have been exposed to gun violence
on K-12 campuses during regular
hours, according to a Washington
Post database.
Leaders of March for Our Lives
have spent the days leading up to
the rally in more than 60 meetings
on Capitol Hill, talking with law-
makers and their staffs to advo-
cate for gun-control measures.
The House on Wednesday
passed legislation that would raise
the minimum age for the purchase
of most semiautomatic rifles to 21
and ban high-capacity ammuni-
tion magazines, among other
measures, just hours after a com-
mittee heard testimony from a
young survivor of the Uvalde
shooting. However, that vote is
unlikely to amount to much be-
cause of Senate Republican oppo-
sition to substantial new gun re-
strictions.
To some at the Washington ral-
ly, the moments of panic over a
possible threat demonstrated the
underlying fear among those at-
tending public events in these
times.
Killian Goodale-Porter, 18, and
her parents ran with the crowd.
She saw teenagers crying and
heard the voice of a young child
screaming, “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know how to feel be-
cause I think it’s important to
come here and be a part of why
things change, but I don’t want to
have to put my life on my line like
that,” said Goodale-Porter, a rising
sophomore at Virginia Common-
wealth University studying com-
munication arts. “I know this is
most likely a scare, but we live in a
country where people can just get
guns and we don’t address it.”Mark Shavin in Atlanta, Richard
Webner in Austin, Trevor Bach in Los
Angeles, Jack Wright in New York City,
Dan Simmons in Milwaukee and Peter
Hermann in Washington contributed
to this report.of the 2018 mass shooting at a high
school in Parkland, Fla.
With the White House as a
backdrop, speaker after speaker
took to the stage to criticize gov-
ernment’s failure to stop the gun
carnage that continues to afflict
the country and expressed out-
rage at Congress. The rally was one
of many held across the country to
demand that lawmakers do more.
“I’m sorry,” said David Hogg, a
survivor of the 2018 massacre at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in Parkland, a nd a founder
of March for Our Lives. “I’m so
angry.”
“As we gather here, the next
shooter is plotting his attack,” he
said.
The rally was marred by a panic
that broke out when a man yelled
something during a moment of
silence, and some in the crowd
said they heard the word “gun.”
People fled from the stage area. It
was not clear what was said, police
reported. No firearms or weapons
were found, police said, and the
person was detained by officers.
“The area is safe,” a police
spokesman said afterward. “ There
are no outstanding concerns.”
But the incident spooked many
in the crowd, especially those with
children, and they began leaving
the rally.
One woman rushing off the
Mall carried a small boy in her
arms as he cried, “Mommy I’m
scared.”
Halea Kerr-Layton, 25, said she
was near the center of the crowd
when people started running in
fear. “It was freaky, scary,” she said.
She and her friends decided to
leave on the spot.
Although the crowed seemed
smaller than the 50,000 that orga-
nizers estimated on a permit is-
sued by the National Park Service,
there was tension and frustration
at the state of the country’s im-
passe over guns.
Jamie Abrams, 42, who had
come with her husband and four
children from Charlotte to attend
the rally, said they were near the
stage when she heard a muffled
shout about a gun.
“Everybody just laid down on
the ground,” Abrams said, as one
of her children wiped away tears.
Seconds later, she recalled, a
mass of the crowd began running,
starting a stampede that lasted
about 15 seconds and rippled
through at least two-thirds the
depth of the crowd before a speak-
er onstage shouted to stop run-
ning. “It was too much for the little
ones,” she said.
A former teacher, Abrams
home-schools her children, ages 6
to 11. She said the possibility of a
mass shooting and the emotional
toll of active shooter drills was
“one of our major reasons” for
home schooling.
Erik Abrams, 45, said the family
came to the rally to show their
children they can take action.
“We’re trying to fight for their
lives,” he said.
Washington Mayor Muriel E.
Bowser (D) told the crowd: “We’ve
been here before, and we have
MARCH FROM C1
“I teach my kids that you can do anything andchange anything in the world if you try. So this isme and us doing something, because this wholesituation needs to change.”
Katie Holloway, an elementary school teacher f rom New JerseyMICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POSTThousands gather for rally as gunviolence weighs heavy on nationAMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTter that a disgruntled employee
killed 12 people at a municipal
building in Virginia Beach.
Calls for change again were
heightened after last month’s kill-
ing of 19 children and two teachers
at the elementary school in Texas,
and the killings of 10 African
Americans at a Buffalo grocery 10
days earlier. Locally, three workers
were fatally shot by a fellow em-
ployee Thursday in a concrete
molding company near Hagers-
town, Md.
Some protesters came with
friends or tagged along with their
parents.
Mother-daughter duo Carly
and Lisa Aughenbaugh came from
Carroll County, Md., an hour and a
half north of Washington.
“This country is in — emergen-
cy seems like such a lame word to
use — we’re in a national crisis,”
said Lisa Aughenbaugh, 56. “We’re
approaching the time when there
will be no one left in the country
who hasn’t been affected by gun
violence.”
For Carly, 24, a substitute teach-
er studying at Hood College in
Frederick to become a school
counselor, the threat of gun vio-
lence follows her into every new
classroom, she said.
She said she is constantly mak-
ing sure the doors in each room
can lock. “If I ever die in my school,
I need you to make sure this never
happens again,” she remembers
telling her mom after the Uvalde
shooting. Now she wants lawmak-
ers to clamp down on assault
weapons.
“We need to make it harder for
the bad guys to get guns,” she said.
Katie Holloway, 41, an elemen-
tary teacher, drove from New Jer-
sey with her mother, Gretchen
Showell, 63, and her aunt Liz Bro-
phy, 59.
Holloway said she had not at-
tended a political rally or march“Hopefully we make a differ-
ence today,” Anid said. “Hopefully
we push our politicians to do what
they’re supposed to do, what the
majority of America wants them
to do when it comes to guns, and
protect us.”
Many in the crowd wore bright
blue shirts emblazoned with
words “March for Our Lives.” Most
appeared young — college and
high school students, along with a
few parents with younger chil-
dren. They spoke with excitement
as hit songs blared from the stag-
ing area — Harry Styles’s “As It
Was” and Ed Sheeran’s “Shivers.”
Near the National Museum of
African American History and
Culture, demonstrators were
greeted by a huge field of orange
and white artificial flowers that
represent gun violence deaths.
“Around 5,000 more people died
in 2020 than 2019,” a nearby sign
read. “The orange flowers symbol-
ize the increase in lost lives.”
The event came four years after
the organization held a huge rally
in Washington to plead for action
in the wake of the Parkland shoot-
ing that killed 17 people.
“Never again!” the crowd had
chanted then.
But seven months later, a heavi-
ly armed gunman killed 11 people
at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Two
weeks after that a gunman killed
11 people at a bar in Thousand
Oaks, Calif. And seven months af-Felicia Newberry, 55, of Atlanta,
attended the march with her
daughter, Alex Russo, 28, a teacher
in Cobb County. She carried a sign
that read “Save Our Children.
Mine Are Teachers.”
“I’m over it,” she said. “Some-
thing’s got to give.”
In Milwaukee, a few hundred
people in March for Our Lives
T-shirts gathered at the steps of
the Milwaukee County Court-
house.
Tess Murphy, a college student
and gun-control activist, told the
crowd she was frustrated and an-
gry. “But one thing I’m not is hope-
less,” she said. “When we fight, we
win.”
The rallies had the support of
President Biden, who tweeted Sat-
urday morning: “Today, young
people around the country once
again march with
@AMarch4OurLives to call on
Congress to pass commonsense
gun safety legislation supported
by the majority of Americans and
gun owners,” he said. “I join them
by repeating my call to Congress:
do something.”
In Washington, the crowd be-
gan forming on the north side of
Lincoln Memorial and mingled
amid the soggy grass and light
rain.
Ray Anid, 22, flew in from Or-
lando and donned a bright yellow
vest along with other volunteers at
the day’s march.been here before too many times.
We don’t have to live like this.”
Across the country, rallies were
held in Austin, Atlanta, New York
City and other places.
In sweltering Austin, Javier and
Jazmin Cazares, the father and
sister of Jackie Cazares, of one of
the victims of the May 24 school
massacre in Uvalde, Tex., spoke.
Jackie would have turned 10 on
Friday.
Jazmin, 17, told the crowd
through tears about how she usu-
ally said good morning to her sis-
ter while they brushed their teeth.
But she didn’t get a chance to on
the morning of the massacre be-
cause she woke up later than usu-
al. “I think that’s going to haunt
me for the rest of my life,” she said.
“I am unbelievably angry, but
I’m not going to turn my anger
into hate,” she told the crowd. “I’m
going to channel that anger. I’m
going to create some real change.”
“I have no way to express how I
feel, how hurt I feel, and the hurt
everybody in Uvalde feels,” she
said. “I’m doing this for you, sister.
If you can see me, I’m doing this
for you. You will be remembered. I
promise you.”
In New York City, more than
1,000 demonstrators marched
over the Brooklyn Bridge to Man-
hattan’s City Hall. They held signs
announcing, “when will they love
their kids more than they love
guns,” and, referring to the Na-
tional Rifle Association, they
chanted “Hey hey, NRA, how
many kids have you killed today?”
In Atlanta, thousands gathered
outside the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s historic Ebenezer Baptist
Church.
“Because of gun violence, our
children, our beloved, they live in
the ground, because they’ve been
murdered,” said the Right Rev.
Robert Wright, the bishop of the
Episcopal Church in Atlanta.TOP: Adrian Natzeder embraces his girlfriend, Leah Kindle, as they listen to speakers at the March for Our Lives rally Saturday near the
Washington Monument. ABOVE: Teacher Carol St. Amand comforts her daughter Katherine a fter a man shouted, sparking fear in the
crowd. After shootings in Texas, New York and elsewhere in the country, President Biden and many others have called for new gun laws.