Joining their voices with those of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across the country, more than 300 people took part in Saturday’s student-led March for Our Lives in Cobleskill’s Centre Park.
Like its sister rallies, Cobleskill’s was inspired by the February 14 murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
But the dozen speakers mentioned other school students that had come before: Columbine and Sandy Hook.
“This is a complicated issue,” said Danyell Monko, a Canajoharie Central School student.
“This is a gun issue, This is a people issue. This is a mental health issue. This is a government issue. This is a school issue. This is an everything issue.”
Even a small group of a half-dozen guns-rights activists quietly counter-protesting under a SCOPE flag along Main Street didn’t disagree with some of that.
Walt Janczak of Sloansville, said violent movies and video games are responsible for much of the gun violence.
Mental health issues also play a role, he said, and both need to be addressed.
“It’s an emotional issue,” said 15-year-old Michael Ray of Sharon, also a gun-rights activist. “It shouldn’t be, but I understand that it is.”
(See page 9 for more on what they had to say.)
Saturday’s rally was organized by students from Schoharie, Otsego, and Montgomery Counties.
Many of them quoted the Constitution and the First and Second Amendments; others, like Emma Trahan of Canajoharie, spoke of no longer feeling safe at her school.
“I shouldn’t be having these thoughts…I should be going to school every day knowing I’m safe,” she said. “But I don’t know that.”
Alyssa Pacatte, a sophomore at Cobleskill-Richmondville, said her school’s been holding active-shooter drills.
“We say it can’t happen here, but it’s spilling over into our school,” she said. “And is there really any way a drill can simulate a real shooting?”
Surrounding the speakers, signs asked “Do You Love Your Guns More than We Love Our Kids?” declared “Books Not Bullets,” and “Everytown for Gun Safety,” and promised “We Won’t Be Next.”
Josie Horvis at Cooperstown Central School and another of the rally organizers, said she’s too young to vote—but not too young to call and put the pressure on her Congressman, John Faso.
“I’m counting on the rest of you to get John Faso out of office and elect someone who will value the lives of children…more than the NRA,” she said.
To those who said they were too young to have a voice, speakers pointed to the age of the Founding Fathers.
Madelyn Weiss quoted “Hamilton” and asked why the First Amendment can protect free speech—but not the right to yell fire in a crowded room.
“Why can’t the Second Amendment protect our right to bear arms” but also protect students from getting shot, she asked.
Reading a statement written by Middleburgh Central School classmate and fellow organizer classmate Sheridan Smith, Emily Fydenkevez and Sophia Soloveitchic asked the same question.
Thoughts and prayers are useless against guns, they said.
The rally’s final speaker, Kendra Gross, was there with friend Mia Iversen of Cooperstown.
Kendra lives in Florida—14 miles away from Stoneman Douglas—and though she doesn’t know any of the students there, a friend does.
“She can’t move on from this,” Kendra said.