Highland Park March For Our Lives Demands Future Free Of Gun Violence

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Local activists are set to march through downtown Highland Park Saturday afternoon to demand action from lawmakers in the wake of recent mass shootings.

The anti-gun violence rally is one of about 450 planned across the country in conjunction with the March For Our Lives, a group founded by survivors of a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The Highland Park march is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. at Sunset Woods Park, 1801 Sunset Road, and head around the city's central business district before returning to the park for a speaking program slated to begin at 3:15 p.m.:

According to organizers, speakers are set to include:

• Sara Knizhnik, who chairs the Gun Violence Prevention Initiative of the Lake County State's Attorney's Office. She has previously served as the director of community engagement for Newtown Action Alliance and organizers of the Illinois Gun Violence Prevention Commission.
• Vernice Wright, of Waukegan, founder of Truth Youth and Family Services and a licensed clinical therapist, who lost two sons to gun violence nearly three decades after one another.
• Trey Baker, special advisor for the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance and MBK Chicago Action, is chairman of Lake County’s Juvenile Justice Youth Committee and coordinator of the Lake County Juvenile Justice Council.
• Dr. Halleh Akbarnia, an emergency medicine physician working mainly in trauma centers who has some personal experience with gun violence, is active in the group Moms Demand Action and the gun violence prevention committee of Doctors for America.
• Marcus McAllister, who spent 15 years as national training director and implementation specialized for the community violence intervention organization Cure Violence Global, is currently a board member of the Black & Brown Peace Consortium.
• Leah Kirschner, a Deerfield elementary school teachers, is a volunteer with Moms Demand Action who became passionate about preventing gun violence after witnessing a 2014 shooting.