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    Thousands join March for Our Lives events to protest gun violence across Southern California – Press Enterprise

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    When Sara Hardyman begins her junior year of high school in the fall, the first thing she plans to do is find the best exits and hiding spots.

    “I am scared. We are scared,” the 16-year-old from Newport Beach said. “Only in America do we teach our children that they are less valuable than a gun.”

    Hardyman was just one of the thousands of people who participated in a March for Our Lives demonstration this weekend, a national movement demanding lawmakers do more to stop gun violence.

    An estimated 450 marches took place all across the country Saturday, June 11, in the wake of an ever-growing list of mass shootings, from an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas to a grocery store in Buffalo, New York to a church in Laguna Woods.

    In Southern California, large crowds gathered at Grand Park in Los Angeles, Harvey Milk Park in Long Beach, and Main Beach in Laguna Beach. They waved signs around the Galleria at Tyler in Riverside, out front of Pasadena City College, and along the Manhattan Beach Pier.

    Their plea, reverberating across Southern California and throughout the nation: “This time has to be different.”

    Many clad in bright blue or vivid orange shirts, demonstrators held handmade signs that listed the names of the 19 students and two teachers who recently lost their lives during the shooting at their elementary school in Uvalde. Others demanded specific politicians be removed from office or decried the National Rifle Association; still others detailed their fears for their own family.

    “Our kids should be writing essays not eulogies,” one sign hoisted by a demonstrator in Anaheim said.

    “Which of my students do I shield with my body,” read a sign in Los Angeles.

    Some held pictures of green Converse shoes. A doctor who responded to the Uvalde shooting has said some of the young children could only be identifiable by their clothes and shoes, and speaking from the White House earlier this week, actor Matthew McConaughey, who is from Uvalde, said 10-year-old Maite Rodriguez’s green high-top shoes, with a heart drawn over the right toe, were used to identify her body.

    Marchers demonstrated for hours as the sun beat down. Passing cars honked in solidarity.

    Emotions vacillated between anger and laughter, tears and hope.

    Behind the movement

    As in 2018, Saturday’s local marches were held in conjunction with the organization’s main event in Washington, D.C., which attracted approximately 40,000 people, according to organizers, around the Washington Monument.

    A group of student survivors, including David Hogg and X Gonzalez, formed March for Our Lives in the wake of the February 2018 shooting at their high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead. A month later, the fledgling organization managed to organize what’s been deemed the largest youth-led protest since the Vietnam War. Upwards of half a million people descended on the U.S. Capitol on March 24, 2018, while hundreds of thousands more joined sister demonstrations in communities across the country.

    Four years later, as a fresh wave of mass shootings and gun violence has swept the country, organizers decided it was “time to March for Our Lives, again.”

    Why people marched

    While activists say it’s hard not to get discouraged at the lack of action on national gun reform since the last time they marched, Hogg, who’s become a key facet of the movement, has been citing the crowds at recent events, the level of corporate involvement and other positive signs as he repeats one phrase:

    “This time is different.”

    Lacey Tygenhof, 38, of Fullerton hopes that’s true.

    Tygenhof has participated in a number of active shooter drills over the decade she’s worked as a therapist in Southern California school districts. She recalled one, at a local elementary school, where teachers and staff tried to avoid scaring kids by being too specific about the scenario they were acting out together.

    “But all the kids knew,” Tygenhof said. “The third-grade boys said, ‘This is for a shooter!’”

    Tygenhof heard about a day of action around gun violence on June 11. She attended a local version of the original March for Our Lives event in 2018 and participated in other political protests, though she’d never thought about organizing one herself.

    But the faces of the children killed in Uvalde looked too much like those of children she knows and loves, both at her job and among her 21 nieces and nephews. And Tygenhof realized the faces of volunteers organizing these marches around the country looked like “normal people,” just like her. So she said, “I guess I can just do it, right?”

    Tygenhof and fellow supporters gathered at the busy intersection of Harbor and Brea boulevards, waving signs as cars passed.

    A few miles down the road, what appeared to be the largest of several events planned in Orange County kicked off at Anaheim’s Pearson Park. About 500 people marched from the park to Anaheim City Hall, where they opened up a microphone for demonstrators to call for action.

    “I’m 23,” said Carolina Mendez, who orchestrated the Anaheim event. “I was born one week before Columbine. Active shooter drills were the norm for my generation from the second we stepped into our kindergarten classrooms. Nearly all of the over 400 marches you see taking place nationwide today were organized by us, ‘Generation Lockdown,’ because we’re tired of seeing these preventable tragedies continue to dominate the headlines.”

    In Los Angeles, several thousand people marched downtown and around City Hall.

    Joseline Garcia, speaking at the demonstration, recalled checking her phone on March 23, 2014, after working a late shift at an In-N-Out restaurant.

    “Joseline, are you alive?” “Joseline, please respond.” “Joseline, stay safe.”

    It wasn’t until later Garcia would learn six people had been killed and more than a dozen injured by a man who terrorized the Isla Vista and University of California, Santa Barbara community that spring day.

    “I felt an extremely intense pressure on my chest,” she recalled. “I was forcing myself to be numb, mainly because I knew I had to be a rock for my family and friends.”

    Liz Day, 41, of North Hills, is a new parent, and her husband is a teacher. The Uvalde shooting, she said, “could happen to us.”

    In the South Bay region, a few thousand people marched Saturday, organizer Lance Dominguez said. Meanwhile, in Long Beach, about 300 gathered.

    “I’m feeling really proud of Long Beach,” Tal Minear, the 27-year-old who organized the event, said. “It’s heartening to know I’m not alone in my rage and that there are others with me fighting to end gun violence.”

    Asked about the specific changes they’d like to see, many organizers and protestors said they did not want to strip gun rights from law-abiding individuals. Instead, they said, they want more safety measures in place, such as raising the age to purchase firearms or implementing more in-depth background checks.

    “If we could just put some restrictions on it, make it tougher for those who want the weapons for the wrong reasons, that’s all we’re asking,” Christel Reyna, the coordinator of the Riverside march that drew about 350 people, said.

    “This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights. It’s about protecting our kids and giving them better than a childhood of bulletproof backpacks and door blockades made out of desks,” Mendez said.

    “This shouldn’t be a Republicans versus Democrats issue, gun regulation versus no gun regulation,” Dominguez said. “We should all want people to be safe.”

    Protesters also said they largely agree with the platform adopted by March for Our Lives, which starts with a call to tackle cultural issues such as glorifying guns and political apathy.

    The organization, headquartered in New York, wants the Biden administration to create a Director of Gun Violence Prevention position and to declare gun violence a national public health emergency. That would open up funding for federal research and investments in programs that tackle root causes of gun violence, such as mental health, poverty, and domestic violence prevention, supporters say.

    President Joe Biden, in a social media post early Saturday morning, urged Congress to “do something” about gun safety legislation.

    The organization also calls for reexamining laws that make it tough to hold the gun lobby and industry accountable.

    Most notably, the March for Our Lives platform asks politicians to “raise the national standards for gun ownership” by creating a national licensing and registry system, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, supporting policies such as red flag laws to disarm gun owners who pose a risk of harm, and creating a national gun buy-back program to “reduce the estimated 265–393 million firearms in circulation by at least 30%.”

    The House on Wednesday passed a wide-ranging gun control bill that included several of the changes Saturday’s protesters demanded. All of Southern California’s Democratic representatives supported the Protecting Our Kids Act. No local Republicans, and only five nationwide, voted for the bill.

    The bill is expected to die in the Senate, where 10 Republicans would need to back the legislation for it to hit the 60-vote threshold needed to defeat the filibuster.

    From anger to activism

    While the marches were prompted by tragedies, and their mission remains daunting, protesters said it helped a bit to funnel their frustrations into activism.

    Earlier this week, Dayna Springfield cried in the aisle of a local thrift store as she painstakingly picked out 19 small pairs of kids’ shoes and two gently used purses.

    Saturday morning, Springfield and seven girlfriends placed those items along 21 blocks surrounding Downtown Redlands. With each pair of shoes was a photo of one of the children murdered in the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. The purses were paired with pictures of the two female teachers also killed in the attack.

    The items marked the 21-block route for Redlands’ March for Our Lives demonstration.

    “It’s very easy for me to feel hopeless,” said Springfield, who organized the Redlands event in the clubhouse of her condo complex. “But it’s really nice to see how much of the community is like-minded.”

    Mendez, too, remains hopeful.

    “In the aftermath of Uvalde, culturally, there’s been a shift,” she said. “Across the country and right here at home, this time feels different. It has to be different.”

    In cloudy Washington, countless people gathered on the National Mall. Thousands traversed across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. In Missouri, protestors rallied in front of the Gateway Arch.

    With the national monuments standing sentry in the midst of the demonstrations, marchers appealed for change so mass shootings and gun violence do not join the ranks of America’s symbols.

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