CHICAGO _ Pumping their fists and chanting "student power," thousands of young activists swarmed Union Park Saturday, joining a nationwide cry for gun reform while using the spotlight to also demand solutions for everyday violence on Chicago's streets.
"I don't have anything to lose _ not a paycheck, not an endorsement or a fancy beach house," said Caitlyn Smith, a 12-year-old Chicago Heights girl who was chosen by her peers to address a March for Our Lives Chicago crowd so large it spilled outside the park boundaries and blocked traffic nearby.
Smith described how she became determined to end Chicago violence after her older brother was shot in the head outside her family's former Englewood home seven years ago. The crowed erupted into cheers when the seventh-grader warned politicians that their days would be numbered if they refused to make changes in gun legislation.
"I think it's time that we make this right, and you start to fear me," she said.
March for Our Lives Chicago, organized by a group of about 20 high school and college students from the city and suburbs, came to life as hundreds of thousands of young people across the country rallied for changes in gun laws. The movement was started by survivors of the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who, days after the Feb. 14 massacre in which 17 people were killed, announced plans for a national March for Our Lives in Washington.
At Union Park, activists came from both bullet-riddled city neighborhoods and off packed trains from the suburbs. They were high school students, adults who wanted to support them and people who held up photos of loved ones killed by gunfire. Carrying posters that read "Good Kids, Mad City," "2020 voter," and "Enough is enough." the crowd watched a lineup of spoken word artists, dancers and emotional speakers _ all under 21 _ on a stage flanked by giant video screens.
Danielle Bass was one of about 80 alumni of Majory Stoneman Douglas at the Union Park event Saturday. The group, which came together after the Parkland shooting, has organized fundraisers and events to engage the community in their anti-violence campaign.
But in Chicago, where they've settled, the campaign is additionally important, Bass said.
"It's that much more important that we're here today," said Bass, who graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1996.
Jessica Janicki of Chicago said she felt compelled to attend Saturday's march as a survivor of a mass shooting with an assault weapon. In May 2003, Janicki was one of almost 100 people held hostage at Case Western Reserve University by a disgruntled former student at the Cleveland school, she said.
Janicki, who worked at the University and was pregnant at the time, is still haunted by the trauma of having to drop to the ground on her stomach in a haste to dodge flying bullets.
"It's hard. I've had PTSD, I've done a lot of therapy. ... You feel a sense of understanding for suffering."
Dozens of Chicago-area pediatricians, nurses, medical students and pharmacists wearing white lab coats were also at the march.
"Gun violence in America is a public health crisis _ it's an epidemic," said Deanna Behrens, a pediatrician who works in the pediatric intensive care unit at Advocate Children's Hospital.
Tommy Malouf, a suburban art teacher, attended the march carrying a piece of cardboard with his message scrawled in black marker: "Teacher who thinks teachers having guns is a bad idea."
"It seems like a totally ridiculous thing that that proposal is even an option on the table," the ninth-grade teacher said. "We're trying to teach kids to be functional and giving citizens. To be armed feels like a total contradiction of that idea."
Crowds surrounding the park were so thick that when it came time for demonstrators to march to the West Loop, a line of volunteers had to clear the streets one block at a time to make them a path. The sight brought a proud smile to the face of Isabel Paredes, 17-year-old senior at Plainfield South High School and one March of Our Lives Chicago organizers who had been planning the event for weeks.
"It felt surreal and now it's here and it's huge!" said a beaming Paredes, who, along with other organizers, led the massive crowds down the street.
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(Kim Janssen contributed to this report.)
