Parkland Activists Announce Nationwide Tour To Get Young People Registered To Vote
June 4, 2018School's out for summer, but for the students and recent graduates of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the real work begins now. On Monday (June 4), the teen March For Our Lives organizers announced the next phase in their plan toward gun law reform: a 60-day nationwide summer bus tour to register young people to vote ahead of the midterm elections this November.
During a local press conference in Parkland, Florida, March For Our Lives co-founder and newly minted MSD senior Cameron Kasky highlighted the legislative progress the student-led organization has made since their historic march on Washington, D.C. "We called our representatives, we started to hold people accountable for things that had often been shrugged off as the price of our democracy," he said with Emma González and David Hogg at his side.
Despite all of the positive change that's been made so far, Kasky said, there's still more to be done. After looking at the turnout rates in the last midterm elections — the lowest since World War II — they realized "just how in trouble our political system will be if people don't understand the power, meaning, and importance of their vote."
March For Our Lives organizers and MSD students Kasky, Alex Wind, González, Hogg, and Jaclyn Corin
So this summer, Kasky, González, and the rest of the March For Our Lives activists will embark on a U.S. tour to register young people to vote, educate communities on gun reform, and ultimately, to "harness the energy and passion we witnessed on March 24 and turn it into action."
The Road To Change tour will kick off on June 15 at the Peace March in Chicago and will go on to make 50 stops around the country over the next two months — including Texas, the conservative state where 10 people were killed at Santa Fe High School just last month. In addition, March For Our Lives also announced a separate, local tour that will go to all 27 of Florida's congressional districts, according to Rolling Stone.
"At the end of the day, real change is brought from voting," Kasky said, before making an impassioned call to action to the four million teens who turn 18 this year. "If every single one of those people votes [and] encourages their friends to vote, we can make real change in this country."
Text CHANGE to 977-79 or visit March For Our Lives to join the movement.