They’ve staged massive walkouts from school. They’ve publicly called out the National Rifle Association and local lawmakers. Now, they’re taking their fight for stricter gun laws to their largest stage yet: the nation’s capital.
Hundreds of Minnesota students are traveling to Washington, D.C., this week to join a large wave of young activists planning to participate on Saturday in the mother of all student marches to protest gun violence. The March for Our Lives demonstration, organized by the Florida students who survived one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, is expected to draw 500,000 people, organizers say.
For the young Minnesotans going to D.C., the march offers a rare opportunity to make their voices heard on an issue they care deeply about.
“The American people have been very clear for years now,” said the Rev. Nancy Nord Bence, executive director of Protect Minnesota, a gun violence prevention group that has chartered a bus to transport more than 200 kids from several schools around the metro area to Washington, D.C. “We want background checks, we want to be able to remove guns from those who are dangerous, and yet our politicians haven’t chosen to pay attention to that. [Now] they have to pay attention to these kids. These kids, they’re not going away.”
Protect Minnesota and two other local organizations — #MNeverAgain and the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) — have raised $23,000 to send students from North High and Patrick Henry High in Minneapolis, along with Sibley High School in Mendota Heights.
As they prepared to depart earlier this week, organizers worked quickly to secure permission slips from parents, book hotels and transportation, pay travel insurance costs for all students, and order background checks for adults chaperoning.
During their visit to D.C., the students planned to tour Howard University and the new Smithsonian Museum on Friday to learn about African-American history, culture and the civil rights movement. Putting kids on a bus for 20 hours for just a march, Bence said, would not have been a complete teachable moment. “We really wanted them to have an opportunity to benefit from this as well,” she said.
NAZ scholars Andre Broadnax, 16, and Antiqua Flint, 15, who are among those marching in Washington, D.C., said gun violence has been a widespread issue in their neighborhood and they feel that their plea for help has long been ignored.
Broadnax and Flint said they are marching to find justice for gun violence victims and to find a solution.
“We need a compromise and there should be some type of impact that shows they [lawmakers] are actually taking care of us,” said Flint, a Minneapolis South High sophomore.
Added Broadnax: “I take it very personal that something needs to happen. I’m marching to the streets from the streets.”
Niema Broadnax, the mother of Andre Broadnax, said it has been a
