Saturday March 24, 1 p.m., Eastsound Village Green
— from Leslie Hutchinson, Liane Olsan, and Julia Turney, updated March 23 at 2 p.m. —
March For Our Lives parade route on Orcas Island.
On Saturday, March 24, Orcas Islanders will gather for a “sibling march” as part of the March For Our Lives movement. The march is one of hundreds happening around the country planned by students and survivors of gun violence in communities big and small, in Washington DC and in all 50 states, continuing the movement begun with the school walkouts on March 14. The national day of action on March 24 will focus on calling for lawmakers to make students’ lives and safety a priority and to pass common-sense gun safety legislation.
Concerned Islanders will meet at 1 p.m. at the Eastsound Village Green and march peacefully through Eastsound: up North Beach Rd. to School Street, past Orcas School, down Madrona St. to Rose Street, along Rose St. to Prune Alley, down Prune Alley to Main St., and back up North Beach Rd. to the Eastsound Village Green, where they will hear from San Juan County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Amy Vira and other speakers, with an opportunity for exchange of ideas.
Community members are encouraged to carry signs expressing their views on gun violence and their concern for children’s lives and safety. For more information on the marches nationwide, go to
MarchForOurLives.com.
Join a local environmental society, but see to it that it does not waste time on superficial purposes… Don’t think it is enough to attend meetings and sit there like a lump…. It is better to address envelopes than to attend foolish meetings. It is better to study than act too quickly; but it is best to be ready to act intelligently when the appropriate opportunity arises…
Speak up. Learn to talk clearly and forcefully in public. Speak simply and not too long at a time, without over-emotion, always from sound preparation and knowledge. Be a nuisance where it counts, but don’t be a bore at any time… Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action….
Be depressed, discouraged and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics — but never give up.
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“March For Our Lives” seems a bit fear-mongering to me. Like a pun on “Run For Your Lives”….
Well spotted. The children are trying to tell us they are in fear of their lives at school. Not a pun…a reference.
Let’s see….200 gun attacks since Columbine in 1999, with a 138 deaths, not to mention injuries, mostly aimed at students in schools, although there have been attacks in malls, concerts and churches. It’s no wonder students are concerned, and afraid. As a caring citizen of the US, a parent of adult children, a grandparent and a great grand parent, I am certainly concerned and afraid for our children.
As a daughter who grew up bird hunting with her father, knowing guns were in our home, the right to bear arms is not the issue, sensible gun laws are.
When thinking about the letter I wrote earlier, noted above, I realized that I was not fully explicit. My father had a great respect for all life, human, animals and birds. When hunting, we only hunted for birds we would bring home to eat. Based on areas nearby, within an hour or two of where we lived, bird hunting meant duck hunting in season, and, occasionally, dove hunting.
As previously stated, we cannot ignore what has been happening for almost twenty years to innocent people, sensible gun laws are past due, and needed.
Students have a right to attend school in safety- it’s time to stop the violence and stop the easy access to guns of war. Enough is enough!
The Parkland FL students have started a movement that may actually be the tipping point in ending the hold the NRA and other gun lobbies have on our country. Who would have thought Florida, the Gunshine State, would ever pass a somewhat restrictive gun law? And the sporting goods retailers that are putting restrictions on gun sales. These kids are amazing so get out there and march in support and solidarity!
iIt is time for the young people to take charge of their future and demand stricter laws for guns ownership.
Their lives and future are at risk. I never had to worry about being killed at school 60 years ago !
Go for it and demand better laws Now !
If we could figure out exactly what real good this march might accomplish, Jean and I would join it.
But to our eyes, marches like this accomplish exactly nothing.
It does no good to demand that criminals and the insane not visit violence upon us, because, by definition, neither criminals nor the insane are moved by any of the the needs, the wills, or the pleas of society.
It does no good to demand an end to gun violence, because the actual problem, violence, is not being addressed. The focus is solely upon one of the tools used by violent people.
Indeed, a focus on guns stands in the way of placing the focus upon asocial, violent people and the violence that they cause.
The real truth is that marches like this one do absolutely nothing about the problem.
Instead, they serve only to make the marchers feel as if they are doing something, and to let them feel good about themselves.
Instead of marching in futility, they might use the same energy to help in actually finding and applying real solutions to the problems of criminality and social alienation.
In response to the above comment, and respectfully so, I want my children to know that marches like these can, and often do make a difference., Civil rights marches, women’s equality marches, workers rights marches all made a difference. Imagine if someone had told Martin Luther King, or the suffragettes “all those marches and sit ins won’t make a difference”. They do. Change may not be immediate, but over time often lead to a better existence.
Steve, at the very least it shows those making the laws how many of us want those laws changed! It also shows them who is the next generation of voters (many who will be voting within a year)!!! I am truly amazed to hear you diss these students who have already started working hard for long overdue changes!!!
Google ‘Steve Henigson’ and scroll down to USConcealedCarry.com and you’ll get a sense of where he is coming from.
Steve — Each one of us can do something if we really believe that change is needed. If you don’t want to march, stay home. Don’t denigrate those who are exercising their first amendment rights, especially our youth who you, as a senior, are going to be depending on soon enough. Perhaps a better use of your time today would be to use your writing talents to implore the NRA (especially if you are a card-carrying member) to stop blocking every single common-sense measure to increase gun safety. Very few people want to take your guns away. But there is a need make changes starting with two simple changes: ban bump stocks and institute iron-clad waiting periods nationally. That’s how you can “use the same energy to help in actually finding and applying real solutions to the problems of criminality and social alienation.”
Steve,
We have very different opinions on many topics, but you are dead on with this one.
Feel good “marches” accomplish exactly nothing. As a tactic they have become an impotent simulation, and worse, at the end of the day the participants go home feeling virtuous while the core problems remain untouched.
It’s not “dissing” these students be honest with them.
If they really want to be a driving force in change, they are going to need to truly understand the landscape.
Adrienne,
Unfortunately the tactics that worked in the 1950-60’s have been fully and totally recuperated.
You would be hard pressed to find a single situation post millennium of real widespread political change driven by sit-in’s and marches in the US.
‘…..marches like this accomplish exactly nothing’. I beg to differ with Mr Henigson. People of my generation can well remember hitting the streets protesting the immoral and illegal war with Vietnam. In the beginning we were mostly young students and veterans. The movement soon spread. The protests awakened the public to what was happening in SEA. The students have been reawakened and make no mistake; they will be voters before too long. They don’t want to go to school in fear and they are being heard.
There you go again, Steve.
If you don’t think marching works or at least helps, let me ask you two questions:
Where were you hiding during the 1960s?
What are YOU going to do about the abominable rash of school shootings?
Perhaps you could encourage your NRA friends to allow some laws to pass, like a ban on military style assault weapons.
Thank you, Michael!
Michael Riordan; I hope you are addressing your comments above to Steve Henigson. I should have signed my last post Steven Jehly. I wasn’t hiding anywhere in 1968; I was on the streets protesting that thing going on in Vietnam. I think what today’s students are doing is very admirable and should not be disrespected by anybody. Just wanted to clarify things a bit.
This letter chain certainly illustrates the cultural divide over gun control in this country. On the one hand, you have the majority, who are sick of the slaughter that guns perpetrate in the USA. On the other hand, you have (proud) gun owners who have totally bought into the propaganda from the NRA/gun industry and the Republican party, that the gruesome tally of gun massacres is due to the “mental illness” factor. Of course, an advantage of believing this lie is that they then can ignore such troublesome things like facts and research.
Of course maybe there are some who really believe that Americans are somehow more mentally unstable, emotionally disturbed than the people living in other democratic countries like Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, France, etc. And that would explain why it is only in this country that we are witness to this plague of gun deaths unknown in those countries….Do you really believe that?
I, for one, am tired of handing over the Bill of Rights that protect my pursuits of life, liberty and happiness to corporate interests, like weapons manufacturers. Surely, we can do better by our children.
I apologize for the confusion, Steven Jehly. I wrote my comment after viewing only the first few comments in this thread and did not see yours. I, too, was on the streets in the 1960s — and early 1970s, for that matter. I applaud the students of today who have taken to the streets — along with concerned adults, as in those days — to voice their objections to the status quo. Mea culpa.
I understand the comments that say that marches do no good. I marched and did not believe in it for exactly the reasons posted. what i want to see, and fail to see, is COMMITTED, CONSISTENT activism by the majority of us; not a bunch of kumbayah! But i can say this, having been there; many if not most of the people i saw there ARE these committed, consistent activists; they march for our kids’ future on guns, fossil fuel pollution, navy sonar killing our cetaceans, greedy banksters causing people to lose their homes – etc. And they do a lot more behind the scenes – as the Henigsons do; as you may know, Jean has been involved in reproductive rights for years. I don’t agree with Steve’s gun stance but I understand the thoughts behind it because the issues are complex.
One thing you can’t argue with, though, are the facts: that in countries where guns are banned, there simply are not mass shootings. Also, our constitution doesn’t support safety except by the 2nd amendment – the right to bear arms. So we need to look back to the Declaration, as one young woman who spoke pointed out – and amend what’s broken about a system built on violence and greed.
Our country is founded on violence, starting with when our (immigrant!) ancestors came here and took these lands away from Native peoples who knew how to steward the place and take care of the earth. Greed came over on those ships in the form of big-money dynasties and bloodthirsty mercenaries, and greed has remained; just look at our military and “banking” record. This is about way more than just guns – it’s about everything that we need to sustain life on the planet – lest we forget.