Boston high school student leaders: Why we march
Tomorrow’s March For Our Lives starts at 11am at Madison Park High School. Demonstrators will march to the Boston Common where a rally is scheduled for 2pm.
Here’s what two Boston organizers of tomorrow’s march said at the start of the March 14 rally at Gardner Auditorium in the State House. [Read a third Boston student leader’s speech at Gardner here.]
Vikiana Petit-Homme:
I want to commend you all today for making it despite the weather. I want to commend you because you see injustice and and will not stay silent. I want to commend you because I truly believe you are the future.
In Boston — in Massachusetts — we have the toughest gun laws in the nation, and in turn we have the lowest death rate due to guns in the nation. We are a clear example that strict gun laws lead to less death. But the fight is not over. The fight is ever going on in Mattapan, in Dorchester, in Roxbury, and other communities of color. As long as people are being killed with guns, then we are not doing enough.
Massachusetts is not doing enough. We should not compare ourselves with the rest of the nation — a nation in which guns are a central part of its culture — but with the rest of the world.
Japan had six firearm mortalities in 2014. Massachusetts had 226 firearm mortalities. In contrast to the other states, Massachusetts is doing well, but those 226 people in 2014 deserved more. We can’t be satisfied.
But Massachusetts can’t simply worry about Massachusetts, because most of the guns in our communities of color are illegal, coming from the states around us with much laxer gun laws. Our lawmakers must work together. Massachusetts lawmakers must work with surrounding officials to stop the iron pipeline that bring these illegal guns to our neighborhoods.
I believe that we, the students, have the power to force these lawmakers to act in our favor, to act in favor of our lives.
Michael Martinez:
My name is Michael Martinez, I’m one of the student organizers and I’m a young person from Roxbury.
Today, across the country, young people like us are coming together to bring attention to an issue that has gone on for too long without being addressed.
We gather, angry at the injustice that is the lack of gun reform by our legislators, but also optimistic for the future, optimistic that we will not inherit a world of senseless killings and unjust acts of gun violence, but instead one of peace.
We gather, understanding the urgency in reckoning with gun violence in the State of Massachusetts. Massachusetts lawmakers feel fit to talk “gun sense” and “gun safety” to other states, believing that our state is doing well when it comes to gun violence. They believe that our state should be an example to states around the country.
The costs of their ignorance and the costs of their simplification of this issue are the lives of many young men, women, and children.
While statistics say Massachusetts has the best gun regulations in the nation, there are still guns in the hands of people who are not fit to wield them. There are still young men and women in many of our communities who are losing their lives to a bullet.
Statistics do not speak for those who have lost their lives. Those people were silenced by a gun. We gather today to advocate for safer gun laws on their behalf and for our own future — so that no parent has to grieve the loss of a child, so that no person’s life is taken unnaturally.
We gather today, in the State House, in our house, because our generation has chosen to fight. Our generation has chosen to demand action. Our generation will not sit idly by, nor will we sit still.
Our generation has chosen to take on wealthy institutions. We have chosen to take on those who believe that their Second Amendment right is more valuable than the lives and well-being of young people.
We fight with the hope of inheriting a Massachusetts where we can live free of any fear to leave our homes, with the hope to live in a Massachusetts where we can feel safe to go to school. With the hope to live in a Massachusetts where we can feel free to see a movie at a theatre, with the hope to live in a Massachusetts where we feel safe to walk the streets of our neighborhoods.
And we will continue fighting — until the issue is nonexistent. We will continue speaking up, on behalf of communities of color, which are so often overlooked in the creation of gun legislation. We will persist in our advocacy until the sounds of gunshots in urban communities are replaced by the sounds of children playing, parents laughing, and people living.
So, let us hold fast to that vision of a state free of gun violence, because we have a right to safety and security.
