Redondo Union High School archivist and retired teacher Terry Martinez joined the family from Virginia at the March 24 March For Our Lives protests, advocating for gun reform, in Washington D.C.
“I felt really inspired by what the kids have done, in the face of their own shock and grief,” Martinez said. “I think this is a cultural shift, and it’s what we might need.”
Martinez and her family were among 800,000 attendees at the protest.
“It was like you were in a canyon…the spontaneous ‘vote them out chants’ rippled behind us,” Martinez said. “That’s when it got you in your bones.”
Martinez is no stranger to activism and was deeply affected by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. She believes that the semiautomatic weapons used by mass shooters, such as the killer of 17 people in Parkland, Fla. in February, should not be in the hands “of just anyone.”
“When you’re in a place like Washington, D.C., it makes you feel like you’re living in the greatest country on earth, and the greatest country on earth can do better than this for the future of these young people.”
