'We cannot wait': Students, teachers rally for change at March for Our Lives in Wellsville
Emma Beardsley, a junior at Fillmore Central School, was among the more than 100 people who took to the streets in Wellsville Saturday for the March for Our Lives Walk and Rally.
Across the country, Mia Tretta, a family friend, took part in a similar event in Los Angeles as activists nationwide urged reform to gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 21, including 19 children, and another attack in Buffalo where 10 Black people were targeted in a grocery store.
Tretta survived a 2019 school shooting in Santa Clarita and recently spoke at the White House. Beardsley said her friend’s courage helped inspire her to get active in her community.
"She’s doing the work teenagers shouldn’t have to be doing. She is making a difference," said Beardsley. "We cannot wait for someone else to do something. We have to make a difference. We have to be the change."
Beardsley and classmate Sofia Pastorius were among a handful of speakers to address the crowd in Wellsville at the Fassett Greenspace after the group marched from Island Park to Main Street, carrying handmade signs while chanting slogans like "Stop the violence" and "Books not bullets."
Beardsley and Pastorius are members of Students Against Hate, a student-led organization that dresses social justice issues at Fillmore. Brock Mapes, a 2014 Genesee Valley graduate who now teaches in the district, recalled lockdown drills in elementary school and later game-planning for the best ways to survive a potential shooting with his high school classmates.
Mapes pushed back on the notion that mass shootings are part of the price of living in a free society.
"What type of freedom is that?" Mapes asked. "Are you seriously going to tell me that I have to choose between people being shot by the literal dozens, possibly myself and family included, and being free? If that’s freedom, the word is meaningless."
Mapes said the country has "applied Band-Aid after Band-Aid" in response to mass shootings and already turned "schools into fortresses" without addressing the root cause of the issue. Many on hand Saturday encouraged some type of changes to gun legislation, such as limiting access to AR-15-style weapons, raising the age to purchase such weapons or prohibiting high-capacity magazines.
Karen Patterson raised her family in the Alfred-Almond area and spent countless days hunting and shooting skeet. Patterson said she is not "anti-gun, but pro common sense."
"It has been so frustrating to me for years to try to have a conversation around gun responsibility laws with many members in my community," she said. “The immediate defensive reactions slam shut the door for meaningful discussion, but I’m here to say we have far more areas of agreement than the powerfully-funded gun manufacturing lobby would have us believe."
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Patterson cited polls that indicate broad public support for measures like enhanced background checks, Red Flag laws and limiting magazine capacity. Patterson said America’s right to bear arms comes with a responsibility to protect its civilians.
"It’s unclear to me why this right in particular should hold some special status of not requiring that responsibility,' she said. "There isn’t a single law-abiding gun owner I know who couldn’t pass a background check. There isn’t a single law-abiding gun owner I know who would be more than minorly inconvenienced by waiting a few days for such a check to happen. There isn’t a single responsible gun owner I know who would find it burdensome to reload after six shots, and there’s no legitimate civilian use for rapid-fire, high capacity weapons."
The March for Our Lives organization was founded by teens who survived the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida. That year, more than 1 million people rallied in Washington. About 40,000 people showed up in D.C. Saturday, according to organizers, and protests were also planned through the day in major cities including New York, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
"I wish that I didn’t have to worry about my nine-year-old brother being able to survive another nine years of school, but I do," said Beardsley. "I wish we could all catch our breaths before having to protest and fight for our safety, but we can’t."
Chris Potter can be reached at cpotter@gannett.com or on Twitter @ChrisPotter413. To get unlimited access to the latest news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Wellsville March for Our Lives: Students, teachers rally for change
