They were still building the stage yesterday evening as the sun went down on Washington.
But today hundreds of thousands of students and their supporters will be there taking part in the March for Our Lives.
Their message for the politicians couldn't be clearer.
Enough of the gun violence that has claimed so many lives.
And the journey those young Americans are beginning, could mark the beginning of a generational uprising.
“They are in it to change the face of politics, and they know that they’ve got the power and the leverage to do it,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a 41-year-old freshman House member who represents Silicon Valley, told ABC News.
“They’ve been touched by this sense of history, a sense of patriotism – that this is their moment,” said Khanna, who has hosted events with Parkland survivors in recent weeks and has helped draw attention to the march via social media. “Their sense that they’re in charge – that they are leading.”
An uprising where the larger message is, don't just protest, VOTE.
And if the old hacks in Congress keep selling you out to the NRA...
Fire them, fire them all.
The cowardly dotard Donald Trump left Washington in a hurry last night before the students began arriving.
But he will not escape the wrath of this new generation, who when the next election arrives will help destroy him.
A month ago the Parkland survivors were singing for their dead friends...
Now they are marching for them, and along with hundreds of thousands of others they are sending out a message of hope for all the world to hear.
And you can march with them right here in Canada.
The kids are
And the future belongs to us...
The NRA is reacting to the march with its normal dignified reserve.
ReplyDeletethe March For Our Lives taking place in Washington and in cities and communities nationwide, is a ploy to destroy the Second Amendment. On NRATV, host Grant Stinchfield said he is "committed to exposing the violent, even deadly history of these people behind this weekend’s March For Our Lives, anti-gun fraud of a protest."
March For Our Lives is backed by radicals with a history of violent threats, language and actions," Stinchfield said March 21.
I am not sure to be more alarmed at the thought the NRA executive is a bunch of grifters battening on the fears of many Americans or that they really believe these delusions.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/mar/23/national-rifle-association/nra-says-violent-radicals-are-behind-march-our-liv/
I think I saw even crazier statements quoted yesterday. The NRA executive are very dangerous loonies.
Hi jrkrideau...yes, some of the statements coming from the NRA have to be seen to be believed. Those teenagers have really riled them up, and they don't know how to deal with it, so naturally they are claiming "they're trying to take our guns away !!!!!"
DeleteThey are as you say, very dangerous loonies...
Perhaps the gun law demonstration was very early here in Montréal as there is another demonstration today against the (absurd) pay increases for medical specialists here in Québec and for the defence of the public health system in general.
ReplyDeleteSome Polytechnique massacre survivors - and their children - are heading down to the central rally.
We must also remember the mass movement throughout Latin America against femicide, from Argentina to Mexico, http://niunamenos.com.ar/
This new spring is the 50th anniversary of the global wave of youth protest in 1968. Not only France and the US, but Mexico, Czechoslovakia, the Tet offensive in Vietnam, and many other places. This wave is different as history never repeats itself in full, but it does have long echoes.
hi lagatta...at a time when things look so bleak, the Parkland kids and their supporters all over the world have lifted my spirits a lot. I fought very hard to save the gun registry from Harper and his rednecks, and was very discouraged when it was destroyed, because I do and will always believe that it made the lives of police officers and paramedics safer. So even the slightest sign of progress in that regard is great. As I mentioned the other day, it took the massacre of children in the Scottish town of Dunblane to get the UK to impose serious gun control, and let's hope the same thing can happen in America....
DeleteThese kids are awesome! They are the future and the NRA knows it. What they don't seem to know is that fighting this movement will surely lead to their demise as well as their GOP enablers and that's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteWhat should have been ENOUGH after Columbine is building into an unstoppable force that will ensure the Parkland murders are not in vain.
It will take time but it will finally be ENOUGH!
JD
hi JD...yes they are awesome, and what a sight they were yesterday. I haven't seen anything so moving for a long long time. And as I said in this post, what I find most exciting is the way so many young Americans are vowing to vote for change in the next election. If they are able to do this, they could send one Republican candidate after the other down in flames. Glory, glory hallelujah...
DeleteHey Simon, I want to say congratulations to Canada and to Trudeau's Liberals for standing up to the merchants of murder by passing some new gun restrictions. I know Trudeau doesn't like "negative campaigning," but I don't think it's necessarily negative to point out that Scheer is a dangerous lapdog for the Canadian version of the NRA. "Daisy" worked for LBJ against Goldwater. Maybe a Canadian version of that is what it'll take to wake up the populace to the threat that Harper II: Bloodthirsty Boogaloo really is. People need to be made aware that a vote for the cons really is a vote for the gun lobby, and a vote for sacrificing innocent kids to Mammon and Moloch.
ReplyDeleteI mean, the kids are all right. They're in JT's camp, the club that supports feminism and equality and compassion rather than divisiveness and hatred and bigotry. The Conservative/Republican brand is deader to them than, well, Facebook at this point. As for the brownshirts of all stripes and brown Schmears on their white sheets... they need to be absolutely crushed in this upcoming election so that a brighter future for everyone really can be realized. The world needs more Canada. Pierre Trudeau's Just Society... now Justin's Society too.
In the war between the schoolteacher and the hate preacher, support the schoolteacher. Keep Canada safe by keeping guns and the government out of the hands of crazies. The only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a Liberal majority government.
And we Americans are going to need our own Blue Wave to match it and drown the cons out.
your wave in Congress has been co opted by the deep state. Over 100 fromer military and alphabet agency people running for congress as Democrats.
Deletehi Jackie...yes, I am happy the Trudeau government is tightening our gun laws. And it makes a nice contrast with Scheer's Cons who are sounding like NRA puppets, screaming the usual nonsense about losing their precious guns. And yes, I went back and changed the line "the kids are alright" to "the kids are great." For as you point out, they are the biggest threat to the Conservative/Republican brand on so many fronts. Out of the darkness will come the light...
DeleteNo, Jackie. In just about every country other than the US, red, rose and variations thereof are symbols of parties of the left and centre-left, and various shades of blue parties of the right and centre-right.
DeleteSince red is taken by the Liberals, parties to their left; the NDP and here in Québec, Québec solidaire use different shades of orange.
A blue lighter than the Conservative blue, taken from the Québec flag, also represents Québec nationalism or independentism. But there is also the Patriotes flag, which is green, white and red, like the Hungarian flag upside-down and similar to the Italian flag.
I certainly stand in solidarity with these young people in the US (as with women fighting femicide further south in America), but have no intention of adopting USian imagery and colour coding.
You can argue flat or round. The fact is in America people are killed with guns at a rate way more than any other so called civilization. I applaud these kids and hope they can carry through the political process. A process which has been designed to make sure they fail.
ReplyDeletehi Steve...the Republicans can do what they can to try to make it harder for young people to vote. But if you remember, the Harper Cons did the same thing, and it didn't work. And that was before the millennials became the biggest voting bloc, as they will be in the next elections in Canada and the U.S....
Delete