Thousands of New Jersey's young people, joined by their parents, teachers, clergy members and neighbors, will take to the streets on March 24, 2018, as part of the national March for Our Lives movement. Watch video
One paragraph in the mission statement of March for Our Lives stands out for its sheer horror.
“Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear.”
Thousands of New Jersey’s young people, joined by their parents, teachers, clergy members and neighbors, will take to the streets Saturday in a desperate attempt to make that fear go away.
They will be marching for their lives – for all of our lives – to convince the adults in Congress to put an end to the gun violence that has become the equivalent of an extra-curricular activity in our nation’s schools.
Residents in close to two dozen Garden State communities are planning sister events to the main march in Washington, D.C. organized by the students of Parkland, Florida, who lived through one of the most terrifying days of their lives on Valentine’s Day.
Princeton, Audubon, Asbury Park, Red Bank, Englewood, Montclair and Morristown are among venues where the protests will take place.
Thinking of taking your kid to the March for Our Lives?
Gov. Phil Murphy is slated to speak at the march in Newark, joined by the mother of Newark’s Mayor Ras Baraka. Amina Baraka lost a daughter in a domestic violence incident almost 15 years ago.
New Jersey’s first lady, Tammy Murphy, and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th District) are expected to be among the protesters in Hackensack.
The marches, nearly 900 of them throughout the world, are part of a grass-roots movement steadily gathering strength after a gunman with an AR-15 weapon murdered 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Baby Boomers grew up convinced they were going to save the world, and in some respects, they succeeded.
They organized massive protests that eventually ended the war in Vietnam, they helped move the country in the right direction when it came to women’s rights and civil rights, they made discoveries to conquer or at least control AIDS and cancer.
But now it’s falling to a new generation to attack the deadly plague of gun violence that the adults in the room have not been able – or willing — to contain.
Held hostage by a lobby whose sole reason to exist is to sell more guns, legislators have memorized a playbook of thoughts and prayers to use after a gun-wielding sociopath rampages through a shopping mall, an outdoor concert, a nightclub or a school.
With youths’ clear-eyed vision, these committed organizers see right through the hypocrisy. They’re demanding that their lawmaker care more about the children in their districts than about the dollars in their campaign chests.
They may be novices at pulling together marches and planning rallies, these students of today. But they are driven by a fear that goes bone deep. We pray Congress hears them.
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