Top Right: Former Ohio State Senator and current Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner speaks on gun violence at Akron’s March for Our Lives event on April 24. Bottom wLeft: Kody Cross — local organizer and member of the Akron chapter of March for Our Lives — speaks to the media during the March for Our Lives event.
Bottom: Kenyona Sunny Matthews — local organizer, educator and member of the Summit County Commission for Equality and Justice — speaks at Akron’s March for Our Lives event at the Highland Square Branch Library.
Above: Demonstrator Tony Collins-Sibley flies both the rainbow LGBTQ Pride flag and the American flag, sporting a hat in support of the Green New Deal.
“We are not powerless. We are powerful” Akron March for Our Lives demands end to gun violence Reporting and photos by H. L. Comeriato
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n April 24, the Akron chapter of March for Our Lives — founded by organizers Kody Cross, Allayna Stevens and Myriam Rosser — hosted a demonstration at the Highland Square Branch Library. The event was organized in collaboration with Gods Before Guns — a Cleveland-based, multifaith coalition working to reduce gun violence — and the recently-formed Summit County Commission for Equality and Justice. The event hosted several speakers, including Ward 5 Councilmember Tara Mosely Samples, Ward 8 Councilmember Shammas Malik,
local organizer Kenyona Sunny Matthews and former Ohio State Senator and current Democratic Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner. In 2018, the Akron chapter of March for Our Lives organized a march in solidarity with a national demonstration in Washington D.C. — which was organized by survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and attended by more than 1.2 million protestors. Over the last year, Akron communities have seen a devastating surge of gun violence. In 2020 alone, 8-year-old Mikayla Pickett, 6-year-old Mar’Viyah Jones, 14-year-old Ty’Leia Junius, 18-year-old Na’kia Crawford and 20-month-old Tyree Halsell were all killed by gunfire.
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“The last time we gathered together in this city to demand an end to gun violence in a March for Our Lives, it was three years and one month ago — March 24, 2018. You could also say 37 months ago. Or, you could say 1,127 days ago,” Cross said. “That is 1,127 days of continued inaction by our elected leaders.” “We are not powerless. We are powerful. We are kitchen table voters. We are the electorate.” Cross recounted a night when he and his mother narrowly avoided neighborhood gunfire on the walk home from work: “We were caught in the center of a back-and-forth gunfight as we were walking home. Luckily, one of the teenage boys — likely, a kid that I grew up with in that
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neighborhood that we’ve lived in for 10 years — warned us to get out of the way. We ran so fast. We were terrified.” “[Eliminating gun violence] is not going to happen just because we hope for it to happen. It’s going to happen because conscious-minded people, from all walks of life, put a little ‘extra’ on their ‘ordinary,’ — so their extraordinary can happen. It can happen, sisters and brothers. We are marching for our lives: our lives today, and the lives of generations yet unborn.” // H.L. Comeriato covers public health at The Devil Strip via Report for America. Reach them at HL@ thedevilstrip.com.
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