On Saturday, March 24, thousands of people flooded the streets of Washington, D.C., to march for their lives, to march for their children’s lives, and to march for the lives of students all across the nation.

The world saw young citizens like Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, and Cameron Kasky take the stage to lead the country in protest of pro-gun laws. Children such as Yolanda Renee King–Martin Luther King’s granddaughter, age nine, –and Naomi Wadler, age eleven, rose up.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue with signs and the utmost determination to receive stricter gun control laws in the United States, which has become a hot button topic of political conversation sparked by the mass shooting that occurred in Parkland, Florida on February 14.

They marched through the streets, their heads held high, carrying signs with messages such as, “This is not a moment. This is a movement.” and “Protect kids, not guns.”

While the event in DC was funded by high-profile celebrities such as talk show host Oprah Winfrey, the entirety of the movement has been led by the student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting. Through their actions–organizing protests, confronting senators and NRA spokespeople, demanding more of our government–these teens have made it clear that they will not give up until gun reform laws are put in place. With the amount of media coverage they are receiving, it is sure to be a key topic in the upcoming midterm elections.

These students, and students all around the country, have made it clear that their voices will not be silenced.

“I have a dream that enough is enough,” Yolanda Renee King proclaimed as she referenced her grandfather’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

When Emma Gonzalez took the stage, she began her speech by talking about those who were killed in the Parkland shooting. After listing them all off by name, she stood there silent, tears cascading down her face, leading the crowd in a moment of silence that lasted until she was six minutes and twenty seconds into her speech, representing the amount of time it took to kill 14 students and three faculty members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Edna Chavez, a teen from Los Angeles who lost her brother to gun violence, told the fired-up crowd, “I have learned to duck from bullets before I learned to read.”

Several prominent  figures, including former president Barack Obama and acclaimed filmmaker Michael Moore, have expressed their awe on the way the young people of our country are coming forward to make the changes they want to see.

These marches took place throughout the entire world, making it apparent that something needs to be done. More than 846 marches had been organized all across America, taking place in big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, and even small ones in cities such as El Paso, Texas, and Wilmington, Delaware.

Many cities abroad held similar marches for gun reform laws in America. Students in London expressed their admiration for the students who are taking a stand. Citizens of Paris chanted, “Hey hey, NRA, how many kids were killed today?”

Of these 846 marches that took place on Saturday, one of them even took place here in Bowling Green. Bowling Green citizens marched through the streets of downtown in the cold and the rain, all in the name of advocating for stricter gun control laws.

As marchers made their way from Cherry Hall down to the Square, they chanted things such as, “What do we want? Gun control! When do we want it? Now!” and, “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”

“Every five minutes another life is taken by gun violence,” Murphy Burke said, right before she led the crowd in a moment of silence for those who had lost their lives while they had been marching down to Fountain Square Park.
“Thoughts and prayers are obviously not working,” Haley Parker-Rinehart, a mother of a 20-year-old man who was a victim of gun violence as a child, declared, a belief that many people in the United States are beginning to hold.