Last week as a society we celebrated our yearly norms: Valentines Day and The Grammys. However, not everyone has been able to celebrate this past week because many lives have been impacted by Valentines Day, 17 lives were lost at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. I’m from Coral Springs, which is the neighborhood next to Parkland. I will never forget the mixture of emotions I felt that night, and trying to find out if my loved ones were okay. It also happened right after I came back ecstatic from seeing a free screening of the beautifully empowering Black Panther. I remember feeling so distraught and confused by the terrible news, especially because I knew people personally involved and affected by this tragedy. I vowed that night that I would do whatever I could to bring healing to my loved ones and my community.
It is for that reason I chose to attend the March for Our Lives event in Washington D.C. with a few of my friends. From that event I was able to do just that, and also find healing and hope through unexpected encounters. I met a women who won the Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines supporting students’ freedom of speech, a Cosmopolitan writer who interviewed my friend and I, and also with a man who was a former member of the NRA who left the organization after the shooting occurred. He told me that he had never seen so many people come together in unity to stand against the NRA, and he believed that these movements across the country had the momentum needed to bring the NRA down. His words and attending the March itself showed me two very important things: how far we have come and how far we have to go as a nation.
I say this because I saw the diversity and the thousands of people who came from around the world to support and stand with my home community. I felt immensely proud that we were the starting point of such monumental change for this country, and that so many people were standing with us to make it happen. However, I also became aware of the financial and social support being given to these students who generally come from home environments that are stable and successful socioeconomically. They represent the parts of America that are relatively untouched by violence, and now that they had been, the world was paying attention. I’m originally from St. Louis, and my hometown was also touched by violence of a similar nature, but was not given nearly the same support as this community of students for its marches against gun violence.
I realized from being at that march that overall we as Americans really do want positive changes to occur for the future generations, and for the all too common acts of violence to end. I pray and hope that we see some changes soon, and that they will trickle down to positively impact people of all races, genders, and socioeconomic statuses.