As marchers moved down Pleasant Street in Concord on Saturday morning, Concord High School senior Oliver Spencer led the group chants.
“Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go,” he shouted.
Unable to join the hundreds of thousands who gathered in Washington, D.C, for the national “March for Our Lives” rally, area high schoolers made their way from Concord High School to the State House, where a large crowd greeted their arrival with applause.
Teenagers from around the Granite State from as far as Salem, Hanover, Exeter, Milford and ConVal Regional High Schools, marched together. They were joined by a few younger children and their parents, general supporters and U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan and her husband.
The rally that followed opened with a moment of silence as the bell at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church across the street tolled 17 times for those who lost their lives in last month’s high school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
ConVal Regional High School junior Daisy Young, 16, was one of the many student speakers that followed. She expressed her feelings and emotions in a poem she wrote titled “Too Young.”
In it she writes about growing up in a time when mass shootings frequent the news and being told not to worry because she is “too young.”
“Well, times have changed. It’s a cliche, but we have a voice and we have the weight, so stop listening when they say too young, because if we are old enough to be risked lives then we are old enough to strive,” she said.
Leeza Richter, a senior at Concord High School, read a letter to 14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg, one of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School victims. Richter was one of many Concord students who honored the Parkland victims during a school walkout earlier this month.
Tilton School student Samuel Alicea, 18, told the story of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager who was shot and killed in 2012.
In addition to support for victims, calls for new gun control legislation was a theme throughout the rally. Common chants included “vote them out” and “this is what democracy looks like.”
As organizers ended the rally, a chant broke out from the back half of the crowd where the greater gun control supporting community that rallied with the younger generation.
“Thank you students.”