WASHINGTON (WSVN) — They came to the nation’s capital from South Florida determined to make a difference, and now that the March for Our Lives rally is over, they said this was a journey worth making.
Students, alumni and teachers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School traveled about 1,000 miles to Washington, D.C., busing for a better future.
“I lost a good friend of mine, and I feel like I need to do her justice by being here,” said MSD student Jayden Broome.
“I didn’t care if it was 16 hours, 24 hours, how I got there,” said MSD alumnus Nick Longley. “I just had to be there to show that we’re all in this together.”
The trip was made possible by dedicated Stoneman Douglas alumni who raised over $25,000 in just a few short weeks.
“All of us, the 40,000 of us that have mobilized together, alumni from 1990 all the way up to 2017, we’ve been in communication, we’ve been talking, we’ve been meeting with our local representatives,” said MSD alumnus Daniel Zwilling. “This is a community that’s going to make changes.”
“I’m just really grateful that they provided this for us,” said MSD student Sabrina Yuen. “It’s really amazing to be able to go up there and fight for something we believe in and try to change stuff for the ones who couldn’t.”
The group sacrificed sleep to make their voices heard. They marched through Pennsylvania Avenue with one goal in mind: to stop gun violence.
“People can hear our voices, and we can actually make a change so Congress can hear us,” said an MSD student wearing a burgundy (hash)SDStrong T-shirt over a hoodie. “We’re young. We’re the voices, so we just need to make the change and come here.”
The South Florida group, calling themselves “Mobilizing MSD Alumni,” carried signs and banners as they joined nearly one million people rallying for change.
“It makes me happy, because all these people are just supporting us, and they want to see a change, and it’s gonna happen,” said the MSD student wearing the hoodie.
“The kids and the alumni of Stoneman Douglas High School are powerful,” said MSD alumnus Meredith Knowles-Abramson.
While the bus rides to D.C. and back, totaling about 30 hours, were much longer than the three hours they spent on Capitol Hill, these participants still want leaders to know that the road to reform is paved from Parkland.
“It’s amazing to see how many kids got on these buses for 16 hours, just to march up and down the street, then come back,” said Longley. “It shows we’re here for change, and we’re here together. We’re not going anywhere.”
By turning their grief into a grassroots movement, they have taken the country by storm.
“I’m so proud of my fellow students for starting the ‘Never Again’ movement,” said Broome. “I know that the 17 people we lost are up there, and they’re very proud of us, and we’re doing it all for them.”
Mobilizing MSD Alumni organizers have raised an additional $80,000 for the Parkland school’s students. They said that money will go toward special projects aiming to get their message heard.
“As alumni, we want to be part of the change,” said Knowles-Abramson, “so, like we’ve said so many times before, the adults couldn’t do it, and so we want to stand behind the kids as they make it happen.”
For many of the students that boarded the five buses, this was their only option to travel to the nation’s capital. Many of them were on waiting lists for flights but were unable to find a seat.
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