Five weeks after they cowered under desks and hid in closets as a gunman roamed the hallways of their school with an AR-15, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students overwhelmed the streets of the nation’s capital along with hundreds of thousands of supporters from across the country.
A sea of people stretched for blocks on Saturday afternoon, chanting and cheering as student activists and pop stars took the stage with the Capitol dome rising behind them. What had been advertised as a student-led march for gun control turned into a massive rally that was part pop concert, part call to action.
But for the hundreds of Stoneman Douglas students who had traveled to Washington, D.C., for the March For Our Lives, the emotion was still raw. When the giant screens flanking the stage flashed images of the 17 victims and news footage from the day of the shooting, some of the students flinched. Others started crying.
Read more from our news partner, the Miami Herald.