CINCINNATI (AP) - Thousands of people gathered Saturday in communities across Ohio at March For Our Lives rallies advocating for stronger gun laws in a movement led by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed in a February shooting.
In Cincinnati, Young Feminists Coalition leader Rasleen Krupp, 17, told a crowd of thousands of people that “our voices are being stifled,” The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
“At the end of this movement, we will be saving our own lives,” Krupp said. “But this is only the first mile.”
A crowd of more than several thousand young people and adults gathered first in Cleveland’s Public Square and then marched through downtown.
Mentor High School student Eliana Taub told Cleveland.com she has been passionate about stricter gun laws since the Chardon high school shooting in 2012. Both Mentor and Chardon are cities east of Cleveland.
“I want my generation to be the face of change for this cause,” she said. “This movement is really being headed by my generation. I want congress to pass legislation for gun control. I believe my life matters more than guns.”
And in Columbus, a rally began near a downtown museum and then wound its way to the Ohio Statehouse with people chanting: “The NRA has got to go” and “No justice, no peace,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.
More than 800 marches were planned across the U.S.
The planned March for Our Lives events in Ohio included all of the state’s largest metropolitan areas, as well as college campus communities and a dozen smaller cities. One sister event in Zanesville was billed as a 5-kilometer run and walk.
Krupp, a Wyoming High School junior, helped organize the Cincinnati march.
“This march is purely the Parkland students,” she said in an interview earlier this week. “This is them leading this, them on the front lines, and I think that’s important because we’re carrying out their message.”
The Stoneman Douglas teens already proved their mettle, she said.
“These Parkland students are really showing us they have what it takes and they want change, and they’re going to fight for the change,” Krupp said.
She said the Cincinnati event would advocate for increased gun control and better school-safety measures. Organizers also planned to incorporate voter-registration efforts aimed especially at the youngest potential voters.
“If we get everyone registered, and we get everyone to the polls, we can elect anyone out of office who doesn’t give us what we want,” Krupp said, noting that it’s a midterm election year.
The demonstrations come 10 days after students honored the Florida victims and, in some cases, called for changes in gun-control laws during walkouts at schools around the U.S.
Saturday’s events differ from the walkouts because they’re more public and allow parents and other adults to stand alongside the students raising their voices, said Kanyinsola Oye, a 17-year-old senior at Columbus Alternative High School helping to organize a march aiming to draw thousands in the state capital.
“Students are, even through their fear, advocating for the issues and continuing to say that we will not stop until something happens and change occurs,” Oye said.
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