 -Mykal-Michele Longino It is almost impossible for me to put into words how powerful the March For Our Lives in Washington D.C was. I attended the event with a group called the Bucks County Youth Council, a teen group in bucks county affiliated with the Bucks County Links Incorporated dedicated to grooming teens into tomorrow's leaders today. Our day started off rough with the delay of our bus, but improved quickly when the bus arrived to JFK early, and our chaperones bought each us matching shirts to rep the cause. We made our signs, zipped our coats, and were finally ready to march. While on the metro I couldn’t help but think about the history cemented into the concrete of the capital, all the way from Martin’s March on Washington to the most recent Women's March in 2018, and I knew in that moment that we were going to be apart of history. Anytime a person or a group of people can bring a crowd together to unite around one a common goal is impressive--but when that group of people are high school students, who have picked themselves up from something so tragic and turned their story into more than just a statistic but a revolution. The students from Stoneman Douglas High School are an inspiration to kids like me and all over the world. The whole crowd could feel the passion in their voices when sharing their stories. You could literally see the tenacity in their cause by just the simple look on their faces. These kids aren’t joking, and they certainly aren’t afraid of a challenge. The issue of gun control in America is one that has crippled society since the authoring of the constitution itself, and while it is no longer 1787 Americans are still allowed the same freedom with weapons that they were when African-Americans were deemed ⅗ of a person.  And while in past years the issue of the second amendment was deemed a strictly political matter, the intellectuals that spoke at the march made it clear that this is no longer about politics, it’s a matter of life or death, it’s about the bigger picture. And while it makes me so happy to see students my age getting their voices heard on such a monumental level, I couldn’t help but think about the kids who have, and continue to live through vile acts of gun violence everyday, and these kids don’t get the same amount of likes and retweets, because of the zip code on their mailboxes, and the color of their skin.
But what was so admirable to me about the students of Stoneman Douglas, was that they got on that stage and said to the world that they know they did not start this fight, and that where they come from had a huge factor in the platform they were given--but they choose to share their stage. They said in their speeches that they are going to use their privilege to help the black and brown kids, and use their resources to speak the truths of the students who have been silenced. The crowd surrounding me was amazed. I heard someone in the crowd say “ wow, this is the generation that is going to do it,” and after hearing Martin Luther King’s granddaughter come out and say “I have a dream that enough is enough” I knew that this march was going to change things. This march made me proud to be 18 in 2018. I had always been invested into politics and dedicated to social justice, but this march sparked something different in me. It wasn’t that it inspired me to do more, because I know that there is always work to be done to better society, but this march showed me that there is no reason why I can’t make a difference in this world. 17 kids died because in America everyone has the right to bear arms. 17 mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers are without their loved ones because in America it is easier to get a gun then it is to obtain cold medicine. I am so proud to have stood with over 800,000 people in Washington D.C on March 24th, and I am so proud to be of the generation that gets congress to pay attention. We are the kids of America, and we will use our first amendment rights to make sure that guns are put into the hands of only those who are worthy of the responsibility.
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