NYC 'March For Our Lives' Draws Thousands

NEW YORK CITY, NY — Thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets of Manhattan Saturday, joining millions across the country and the world, to protest gun violence and demand change to the country's gun control laws.

NYC's March For Our Lives at Columbus Circle on Central Park West started at 11 a.m. with an hour-long rally before the crowd of thousands marched east along Central Park South and down Sixth Avenue toward West 44th Street.

The NYC march - and countless others around the world - comes after 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz allegedly shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with an AR-15-style assault rifle on Feb. 14. Three students of the Florida school were in NYC to kick off the rally, reading off the names of the 13 students and 3 faculty members killed in the shooting and then leading the crowd in a moment of silence.

"I was 15 when I realized Nikolas Cruz wasn't okay," said MSD student Meghan Bonner. "The adults failed us and now 17 people are dead."

The rally also featured testimony from Sandy Hook survivor Mary Ann Jacob, who was working in the library when a gunman shot up the Connecticut elementary school, killing 20 children and six staff members.

"I had hoped that the deaths of 20 children and six of my coworkers would have been enough to enact change (to our gun laws), but it wasn't," Jacob said.

"If our elected leaders won't listen we will vote them out," she said, prompting the crowd to break out in chants of "vote them out."

More than 100 volunteers were stationed throughout the rally and march with clipboards in hand to get protesters registered to vote.

Also onstage to tell their stories were New Yorkers who have been personally affected by gun violence.

Julia Ghahramani, a first-year Columbia Law School student who helped organize the march, said although it was a school shooting that prompted this national outrage, the organizers wanted to call attention to the fact that gun violence is an issue that's been affecting people everywhere, especially people of color.

"You should care just as much about shootings in the south side of the Bronx and the south side of Chicago as you do about any other," said Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter's New York City chapter.

Other activist groups at the rally included Gays Against Guns, which formed after the shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. The group has 39 members present at the NYC rally, each of them dressed in white and carrying photos of the victims of shootings in Parkland, Orlando and Sandy Hook.

"My first priority is my students and the idea of giving up my life to protect them is incredibly humbling but also incredibly terrifying," Eric Branman, a teacher at LaGuardia High School who is with the group, told Patch.

Noah Matzo,16, was at the rally with his 9-year-old sister Kate.

“I’m here to stand with my peers and save some lives,” he said.

Jamie Motley, 18, was at the rally with his support dog Amanda and his aunty Cindy Finch who brought him to the rally.

"We had a long discussion before the walkout about all the things that are harder to do than going and buying an AR-15 in a lot of states," Finch told Patch. "He (Motley) has autism but because he's 18 he can go into a lot of stores and as long as he shows his ID and acts relatively normal he can buy an AR-15. It's disturbing."

Senate minority leader and U.S. Senator from New York Chuck Schumer also marched among the crowd.

"We're going to win this fight as long as we do it together," Schumer said.

As the crowd marched past Trump Tower and Trump Parc condominiums, they chanted "shame" and "lock him up." And as they walked past the Fox News building, the crowd pointed their middle fingers toward the building and yelled "shame."

But a small crowd of supporters also lined the gates by his hotel to defend the president, bearing signs such as "Trump 2020" and "Women For Trump."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas students began organizing the main March For Our Lives on Washington D.C. just days after the shooting. Its sister march in NYC was born from an impromptu Facebook invitation that Ghahramani's classmate, Alex Clavering, sent to about 30 friends after hearing about the students' march

"By the next day we had a thousand people," Ghahramani told Patch.

Initial estimates for the crowd were around 30,000, but by Saturday it had grown so big not even organizers could keep track. Those who couldn't join in the march lined the gate surrounding it, offering messages of support through chants and handmade signs.

Among the sea of faces and signs was Alesia Anderson, a student at the Hetrick-Martin Institute who planned to march despite being five months pregnant with her first child.

"I have a lot of family members that have experienced gun violence, so hearing about children getting killed from the same things that adults are getting killed by, it's hurtful," Anderson told Patch.

She said having a baby on the way when the Parkland shooting happened didn't so much scare her as it did motivate her to push for change.

"I've always been like that," she said. "But now I have a kid to worry about, and I don't want that happening to them."

Anderson said she'd like to see more marches like this in New York City to raise awareness of gun violence and other issues affecting America's young people.

"If we keep saying youth are the future but shutting them up, how are they going to be our future?"

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Photos by Danielle Woodward/Patch