The rain stayed away for the two hours that high school students spoke about their experiences growing up in a culture of school shootings.
The March for Our Lives: Road to Change tour made its only North Carolina stop in Greensboro last night. Organizers from the national and local movement urged people to "vote out" lawmakers who they think haven't done anything to change gun laws in the country.
Survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, took to the stage at LeBauer Park to motivate people to take action.
Students like Kyrah Simon, Lauren Hogg, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez were all in attendance to show their support for the Greensboro chapter of March for Our Lives.
Simon spoke about the Greensboro Four in relation to how they made change happen. The Greensboro Four were a group of four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University students who held a sit-in at Woolworth department store, which sparked as a catalyst to future sit-in movements across the nation during the 1960s.
“Their resilience, their motivation transcends time and it’s still with us,” Simon said. “The resilience of the Greensboro Four and the 75,000 that joined them fuels the resilience of the activists that have risen from my school.”
Weaver Academy sophomore Sophie McKinney cried as she listed the various school shootings that have happened across the nation this year.
“That could've been me that was shot, that could've been your son, your daughter, your grandchild,” she said. “That could've been any of us. So please for my sake and for all of my classmates, please make a change.”
The March for Our Lives movement advocates for stricter gun law and universal background checks.
In the crowd, there were people of all ages, including 22-year-old Olivia Stalvey.
Stalvey said she remains optimistic that movements like March for Our Lives will lead to a change. The first shooting she remembers as a high school student was the Virginia Tech mass shooting in 2007.
“Growing up with so many mass tragedies, it's gotten to the point where the country is almost numb to the amount of people who have been killed by gun violence and I'm sick of it,” Stalvey said.
