Students from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are leading efforts to organize the “March For Our Lives” this Saturday in W…
COLUMBUS (WMCH) – Students from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are leading efforts to organize the “March For Our Lives” this Saturday in Washington D. C.
Police and officials are preparing for nearly 500,000 people to descend on the nation’s capital. Students from Central Ohio are also making the trip out there to be a part of the march.
“This is my first trip to Washington D. C.,” said 15-year-old student Tyra Turner. “I’ve never really traveled at lot.”
Turner is a sophomore at the Academy for Urban Scholars in Columbus. She experiences a different kind of gun violence in her community than the mass shooting in Parkland, but believes a change needs to be made.
“I would really like to stop the gun violence in between my school, my neighborhood, my family, a lot, everything,” she said.
She’s lost friends to gun violence and looking forward to being a part of her first march, she feels empowered to make a difference.
“We’ve got to better our generation,” said Turner. “I hope it makes a change in my community because people in my community see that I’m trying to stop gun violence, hopefully they’ll try to follow.”
Her social studies teacher Torin Jacobs is one of the chaperones going on the trip.
“Their voice matters and it counts,” he said. “I want students to take that away from this as well, they don’t have to be adults in a political position to come up with rules and to make change and have a dialogue. They can do that right now.”
Behind the scenes, owner of RISE Travel Christian Tamte is getting everything ready for the trip to D. C. She said they have three buses, one leaving from Cleveland and two from Columbus. These buses are filled with mostly students.
“We’re well past the place where we should’ve done something,” said Tamte. “It’s amazing to see this younger generation coming up and they’re really hitting the ground running.”
Tamte said donations also helped buy tickets for some of the students to travel to the march in Washington. Their buses leave late Friday evening. NBC4 will be there on the road and in the nation’s capital for the duration of the “March for our Lives.”
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