March for Our Lives

On Valentine’s Day, 2018, a nineteen year old male armed with an automatic weapon walked into Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and began shooting. When the carnage ended, 17 people were dead and 17 more were seriously injured.

After expressions of outrage and calls for reform by American citizens, and after the usual response of practiced impotence by their elected representatives, the young people who went to that school (most still defined legally as children) decided to take up the cause of gun control themselves. Having grown up during an era when mass shootings had become commonplace and the adults with the responsibility of protecting them could do nothing more than think and pray, it was clear to these young people that they needed to mobilize for action themselves. Despite having no authority, they nevertheless decided to take on the mantle of responsibility which their parents had abnegated. Their hope was to try to force a conversation about what could and should be done, and, contrary to prior experience, actually insist that it was done.

Numerous public gatherings ensued, including, on March 24, 2018 a march in Washington, D.C. which was called “March for Our Lives.”

I went to this march for two reasons. The first and more important reason was to lend my support for this movement. 

My second reason for going was to photograph the event. However, my goal was not to get 20 or 50 photos that gave a narrative of the events of the march as they unfolded. Rather, I wanted to get one quintessential photograph. I wanted to approach this march as a newspaper photographer might. Such an individual would know that she or he would likely get only one photograph printed, and the one chosen should should express the importance of that event, but, more importantly, encapsulate as much of the spirit of the event as possible. 

I wasn’t clear on what such a photograph would be. Perhaps a shot showing the gathering of the crowd as people walked to the staging areas would work. Or maybe a crowd photo, showing as many of the hundreds of thousands of people present that could fit into one frame. It might be possible to get close to the stage to capture the speakers as they courageously demanded to be heard, recording a moving image of their attempts to inspire action. In the back of my mind were three characteristics I thought the photograph should have: 1) a focus on the youth of the participants; 2) a reinforcement of the seriousness of what was going on; 3) an unequivocal American sensibility.   

The photograph that I chose from those I took that day was one I worked hard to get, and, in fact, was one I thought might yield what I was looking for even as I was snapping the shutter. I was in the middle of the crowd, several hundred yards from the speakers’ platform on Pennsylvania Avenue. I had been there two hours or so, and had managed to secure a spot on a pedestal of one of the large statues beside the route. Despite taking quite a few pictures, knew that I did not have the shot I wanted. At that time the crowd was still slowly moving, and as I looked down the street at the people coming my way, I saw her - a tiny young woman in her mid-teens wearing a hijab and carrying a sign. I thought at once that she might make an interesting subject. 

The current of the march was moving her in my direction but I knew at any time it could alter her course and pull her away from me. I was also at risk of her becoming obscured by the crowd, as she was quite small and the avenue was packed. So I waited with apprehension as she came closer.

As she came in and out of view moving down the street I could sometimes see her face, sometimes only her sign, and sometimes she vanished entirely. But as she pulled up close to where I was standing, she began a conversation with some fellow marchers who seemed to be reaching out to comfort her, and she was fully visible. However, it was when she raised her sign slightly, partially obscuring her face, that I got the shot I wanted. I had been rapidly snapping the shutter during the moments when she was in front of me, and could have chosen a photo that showed more of her. But somehow, I felt the anonymity provided by her raising of the sign with its deadly message added to the power of the photograph. At that moment she was more than one of our children, she was all of our children, expressing their fear of being shot to death in their school, hoping someone would listen.

Since that time, little has changed in terms of our gun laws and the risk to ourselves and our children from gun violence. But soon, this young woman and her colleagues will be voting, and perhaps they will have the courage and conviction  to protect their children better than we have protected ours.