Last weekend hundreds of thousands of people gathered for what was one of the largest youth-led protests since Vietnam. In Washington D.C. alone there were at least 200,000 protestors (though estimates vary — some put the number as high as 800,000), and this protest was joined by students and allies in every major city in all 50 states.
Uproxx’s Olivia Harewood was on site in Los Angeles to talk to teens about why they marched. She spoke with teens like Jack MacLeod, a Parkland survivor, who expressed his hope for the future as his peers rallied with him to demand stricter gun control measures.
“It’s been kind of a rollercoaster, I guess I would say,” MacLeod said. “A lot of grief, a lot of sadness, and then a lot of sublimating that into something productive. We know that we can make a change. This is a show of community and unity that we’re together under a single cause.”
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As Harewood talked to the teens who took the streets of Los Angeles on a Saturday, they opened up about their fears but also their conviction that this isn’t a problem with no solution. Over and over, they promised to be the generation who makes a difference. This has been met with an outpouring of support from communities around the nation as thousands of adults joined the teens in the protest, but make no mistake, this is the youth’s movement, and they plan to see it through.
“Us kids need to show that we’re the ones who are affected by this,” one young protester told Uproxx. “And we’re the ones who need to take charge.”
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