March for Our Lives

This is the shirt that’s I wore while marching along with my fellow Americans down Wabasha Street in St. Paul to the capital building. Those of us in this country have been living with gun violence for too long. We are standing up for change, we are saying to our political leaders that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We need to protect our schools, we need to protect the children already in this world.

The second half of the text on my shirt comes from a quote from “Welcome to Night Vale,” a podcast series that I have listened to for several years now. The reason I amended this quote was to showcase the ridiculous justifications that conservatives use to fight against gun control. While many conservatives have seen the dangers of having assault rifles and loose gun control, such as at the Los Vegas Massacre and the Parkland Massacre, there are still many people in the Republican Party who still support the NRA.

For a group that claims to be pro-life, they are surprisingly pro-death and pro-oppression. Just yesterday, I learned that Trump is trying to prevent people who are trans from serving and protecting our country. If Republicans want to be pro-life, they need to be pro-all-life, which includes black lives, trans lives, LGBT+ lives, immigrant’s lives, children’s lives. Fetuses are important, but aren’t the lives of the children who are already born—the children who are being killed during their school hours—not more important? One of the tag lines for the pro-life movement is “protect those who have no voice.” But then they intentionally try to silence those fighting for justice, dismissing them as “just kids, just children, just teenagers.” IF REPUBLICANS WANT TO BE PRO-LIFE, THEY NEED TO BE PRO-ALL-LIFE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.