Ocracoke to March in Solidarity

Sundae Horn
January 2017
January 2017

The March For Our Lives begins at noon on Saturday.

Ocracoke resident and business owner Anna Rucker is organizing the local event. The Facebook event page states:

Lets all MARCH FOR OUR LIVES in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in DC and all over the United States!! We will meet at The Sunglass Shop/Books to Be Red area at around 11:45/11:50 and march down to the light house and back WITHOUT stepping on park territory for pictures. Bring everyone, even dogs, and your posters. Let us all be united and uplifting in our fight, for our country has suffered too much and become too divided. Lets all come together to MARCH FOR OUR LIVES!!

Mickey Baker and Rowan Winslow at the Moral March
Mickey Baker and Rowan Winslow at the Moral March

Anna was also the organizer of the February 11th Moral March on Ocracoke, which showed support for the Women's March, Moral Monday, No Drill No Spill, #metoo, Unity, DACA – or pretty much any progressive cause the attendees wanted to champion. About twenty-five people (and eight dogs!) showed up and enjoyed the walk down lighthouse road and back. 

Anna says she organized the Moral March because she wants "to stand up for what is right and for people to know that these issues really do matter and affect us all."

Ocracokers also held their own Women's March last year on January 21st, which drew 104 participants. That's a big crowd for a tiny island during the winter. The Ocracoke event made the front page of the Washington news! The Washington, N.C. news, that is. Go, Ocracoke! 

Although the March For Our Lives is mostly student-led throughout the country (and the world -- there's officially at least one march on every continent), the Ocracoke School students who are concerned about gun control are marching in Washington, D.C. instead of at home. Eight students from Ocracoke's high school Beta Club, along with two teachers and one random chaperone (full disclosure: that's me) are on their way to join in the big March down Pennsylvania Ave. 

Lela Palacios at the Moral March
Lela Palacios at the Moral March
Ocracoke School also participated in the School Walkout Day on March 14th with a walk IN to the gym. (March weather is the worst...) 7th grader Katie Kinnion opened the ceremony with these words: "Today we honor the seventeen victims that died during the Feburary 14th shooting. Today we stand together as a school to show that we can make a change. We are the generation that can change the world. As a student, I want to feel safe going to school in the morning and we can make sure that happens. That is truely why we stand here today." Students in 6th-9th grade read out the names and some details about the seventeen victims, followed by seventeen minutes of silence. 

We will report about tomorrow's March – both the Ocracoke and D.C. versions. Please share photos from marches in your town in the comments. 

February 2018
February 2018

 

 

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