'Step Up or Get Out of the Way,' Say Organizers Ahead of June 11 March for Our Lives

Amid seemingly intractable legislative inertia after the latest of thousands of U.S. mass shootings, youth-led activists are set to reprise the 2018 March for Our Lives protest against gun violence and congressional inaction with events in Washington, D.C. and hundreds of cities and towns in the United States and abroad this Saturday, June 11.

"The 'solutions' of arming teachers, bulletproof doors, all that stuff: It's nonsense."

Swiftly organized in the wake of last month's mass murder of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and the racist massacre of 10 people at a Buffalo, New York supermarket, the second iteration of March for Our Lives is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including at least 50,000 to the main protest at the Washington Monument on the National Mall.

"We're putting our foot down, and we're saying we had enough of it. The 'solutions' of arming teachers, bulletproof doors, all that stuff: It's nonsense," March for Our Lives national coordinator Serena Rodrigues, 23, told The Washington Post. "It's time for lawmakers to step up or get out of the way."

Speakers at Saturday's Washington, D.C. demonstration will include March for Our Lives co-founders David Hogg and X González, who survived the 2018 massacre of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; the son of a victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting; Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.); American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten; and Yolanda King, the granddaughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., according to a statement from event organizers.

Now a student at Harvard University, Hogg—who's faced right-wing harassment, including by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who called Parkland and other mass shootings false-flag operations by gun-grabbing Democrats—said he's spending his college summer break meeting with lawmakers to press for gun law reform. 

"I'm tired of being here. I want to be a college student," he said during Wednesday's U.S. House Oversight Committee gun violence hearing. "I want to go out and have fun and do my job and be a young person that's enjoying my life and not having to be doing the job of what our senators should be doing right now."

In the four years since the first March for Our Lives, there have been more than 100 school shootings and over 170,000 firearm deaths in the United States.

It is estimated that at least one million people in the United States and around the world took part in the March 24, 2018 March For Our Lives, including up to 800,000 demonstrators who attended the main protest in Washington, D.C.

To find a nearby March for Our Lives, click here.