In Philly, March For Our Lives Takes the Long View

By James Meadows

SafeKidsStories
Safe Kids Stories
Published in
2 min readOct 30, 2018

(source)

March For Our Lives has become a cultural phenomenon. In less than a year, the gun-control movement — and the fiery high-schoolers that lead it — have become the epicenter of the debate surrounding firearms. In recent months, the movement here in Philadelphia and its many chapters across the nation have their sights set firmly on the midterms. But Philly Marchers are looking toward the more distant future, too.

The Philadelphia chapter has its roots in approximately six or seven high schools and universities in Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey area, and for the past several weeks it has been holding “Turnout Tuesdays” to get its members to promote the upcoming midterms. The first set of Tuesdays worked to get people registered to vote, and now they are focusing on canvassing to tell people to head to the polls.

While the national March For Our Lives movement is known to call out candidates with high ratings from the National Rifle Association, Serita Lewis, the Community Outreach Director for March for Our Lives Philadelphia, urges a different approach:

“We do not endorse any candidate,” Lewis said. “We are totally non-partisan. We talk about issues only.”

The organization is looking for longer-term voting initiatives. Following election night, Lewis said that March For Our Lives Philadelphia plans to host a town hall inviting some of the elected candidates so that citizens can come and ask them questions about their platform and policies. In the near future, it also hopes to bring together a five-person “research team” to look into voter activity and engagement.

“We are starting to look at the [next] primaries already,” said Lewis. “We can’t effect change if we just have something that happens for a moment.”

James Meadows is a senior from the University of Pennsylvania studying communications and journalistic-writing, as well as reporting for The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, but proudly bred in Philadelphia. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Philadelphia Citizen.

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Published in Safe Kids Stories

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