MIAMI (WSVN) - South Florida communities have gathered to remember the victims of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
A vigil was held in front of the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, Tuesday night.
Florida State Sen. Annette Joan Taddeo, who attended the memorial, expressed her frustrations while speaking to the crowd.
“It’s outrageous, so we’re here to say, ‘No more. Ya basta,‘” Taddeo said.
The vigil’s attendees made a passionate plea for lawmakers in Washington to take action on gun control.
“I can’t tell you what it was like to go to bed knowing that so many people were murdered in El Paso and waking up to the confusion of listening to a story about Dayton,” Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins said.
Days after the two mass shootings, dozens of local activists, politicians, parents and students gathered to grieve and voice their frustrations during the memorial.
“There’s a lot of talk about mental health,” Taddeo said. “Absolutely, there’s mental health, but guess what? There’s mental health in other countries and all kinds of other issues. What’s the difference?”
“It has been a year and a half since the tragedy at Parkland, and there has been zero progress,” an attendee said.
For Emily Gonzales and her mom, Mayra Flores, hearing news of the shooting in El Paso caused panic.
“El Paso has always been a community. It’s always been a family,” Gonzales said. “My dad’s sister in law, she was in Walmart, and she got shot in the leg.”
“It’s a shock. It’s a shock,” Flores added. “You never in a million years think it’s going to happen in your hometown.”
However, Gonzales and Flores are not the only ones with the weekend tragedies on their minds.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., and several local leaders met at Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church to honor the lives lost over to gun violence in the mass shootings over the weekend and in South Florida.
“I hope that one day in our blessed country we can erase and stop the gun violence that’s affecting our communities,” Mucarsel-Powell said.
Many of the memorial’s attendees called out U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and urged them to return from recess and push for a vote on the universal background check bill in the Senate.
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