Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Emma Gonzalez demonstrated the power of silence during her speech

Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across the US to call for tighter gun control.

The March For Our Lives movement arose after 17 deaths in a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month.

Student leader and Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez gave a powerful speech at the main Washington DC event.

After listing the names of the victims, she stayed silent on stage for six minutes, 20 seconds - the time it took for them to be killed.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'Our message to the world is...'

More than 800 sister protests were planned nationwide and abroad, with solidarity events taking place in Edinburgh, London, Geneva, Sydney and Tokyo.

As events began to draw to a close on the US east coast, they continued on the west, including a major demonstration in Los Angeles.

What happened in Washington?

Huge crowds - including a high proportion of young people and children - gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue, with placards reading "Protect kids not guns" and "Am I next?".

Singers Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man behind hit musical Hamilton, performed on a stage erected in front of the US Capitol building.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Jennifer Hudson - who has lost her mother, brother and nephew to gun violence - sang Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin

The music was interspersed with speeches from impassioned youth leaders.

"We will continue to fight for our dead friends," said speaker Delaney Tarr, a Parkland student.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "He pulls out a silver pistol and points it in my face" - student Mya Middleton speaks of her chilling encounter with a gunman

Some came from children who are just 11 years old, including Naomi Wadler, from Virginia, who spoke "to represent African-American girls whose stories don't make the front page of every national newspaper".

'My lost soulmate'

By Marianna Brady, BBC News, Washington

The crowds started to gather in the early hours of the morning outside the US Capitol. Chants for "no more NRA" and "no more guns" erupt every few minutes at random.

"He was my soulmate," said Victoria Gonzalez, looking down at a sign of her boyfriend Joaquin Oliver.

Valentine's Day - 14 February - started off as a great day for Victoria. "Joaquin and I exchanged gifts in the morning and he walked me to class. I was so happy."

Later that day, she would learn that Joaquin was one of 17 people shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school.

"It wasn't real," she said, standing in a crowd of several thousand ahead of the march.

"It's taken a while for it to sink in. I'm here today so no-one ever has to face this again. It gives me a lot of hope seeing how many people are out here supporting us. It feels like the whole entire world is on our side," Victoria said.

Read on: 'It feels like the world is on our side'

How did the movement start?

The 14 February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland was one of a long line of school shootings in the US but the worst since Sandy Hook in 2012, when 26 people were killed.

Campaigning by Parkland students gained widespread support, with Ms Gonzalez one of the most outspoken figures, gaining more than a million Twitter followers in a matter of weeks.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption A tearful Emma Gonzalez during her minutes of silence

Survivors of other shootings have also joined the movement, alongside relatives of gun violence victims and anyone moved by their stories.

The students staged a nationwide school walk-out earlier this month.

They want to seize on public outrage to convince US politicians to take decisive action such as banning the sale of assault weapons.

On Thursday, 16-year-old Jaelynn Willey died, after being shot in the head by a classmate in Maryland earlier in the week. A second student was injured in the attack.

How much support do they have?

Although the turnout during Saturday's marches has been huge, the issue still divides Americans.

The right to bear arms is protected under the second amendment of the US constitution and the National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby remains highly influential.

On Saturday afternoon, the White House released a statement praising the "many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today".

It outlined steps the government is taking to tackle gun violence:

Banning bump stocks (devices which allow semi-automatic rifles to fire like machine-guns)

Enacting the STOP School Violence Act, which seeks to improve school security

Increasing training for students, staff and local law enforcement.

Improving criminal background records so gun buyers are properly vetted before making a purchase

Some protesters were disappointed that President Donald Trump, who is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for the weekend, did not personally tweet a message of support during the protests.

How did other cities join in?

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sandy Hook survivors march with Parkland

There were protests all across the nation, from New York and Los Angeles to Houston and Anchorage, Alaska.

A demonstration was also held in Parkland, with relatives of the victims speaking to crowds.

In Scotland, families affected by the 1996 school shooting in Dunblane held a solidarity gathering outside the US consulate in Edinburgh.

In London, several hundred people - a mix of US immigrants and allies - also met at the new US embassy in Vauxhall.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Protesters around the world are supporting stricter US gun laws

What other steps have been taken since Parkland?

The state of Florida passed a gun control law that raises the legal age for buying rifles but also allows the arming of school staff. The NRA sued the state, saying the law was unconstitutional

Several major companies cut ties with the NRA amid a #BoycottNRA campaign, while chains like Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods announced new restrictions on gun sales.

Some 69% of Americans think gun laws should be tightened, according to a new poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, up from 61% in October 2016.</s>Just days before massive gatherings affiliated with the student-led March for Our Lives are predicted to further focus the nation’s attention on stemming the tide of gun violence, Great Mills High School, about 70 miles south of Washington, D.C., became the site of the 17th school shooting nationwide since Jan. 1.

Tuesday’s gunman, a student armed with a handgun, was fatally shot by a school resource officer after the teen opened fire, injuring two students. It was a much different outcome than what took place Feb. 14, when a former classmate gunned down 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. But for the distraught parents and students coping with the ongoing threats of gun violence, even the Maryland event this week is one shooting too many.

Laurie Leavy, of Coral Springs, Florida, had to wait 45 minutes huddled with other mothers and fathers last month under an overpass near Stoneman Douglas before learning that her 15-year-old son, Jason, was safe. “It was excruciating,” she says. “Terror was the closest thing I felt.”

She relates that “he was in the building on the third floor, locked in a classroom with other kids and a teacher.” Like so many others that day, he heard gun shots and screaming, crying and calls for help. Two members in his marching band were among the fatalities.

That week, Leavy emailed every Florida legislator in the state who received donations from the National Rifle Association, and sent about two-dozen checks made out for “Thoughts and Prayers.” A stay-at-home mom (she has an 11-year-old son as well) and Sisterhood co-president at her synagogue, she had to do something.

While earlier this month Florida passed bipartisan legislation for gun restrictions and increased school-safety measures, led by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, advocates say a lot more needs to be done.

“It’s like a Band-Aid on a cut finger,” says Leavy, who will participate in the March 24 walk in Cleveland, where her family is going for spring break. “It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough.”

There are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States — one for nearly every man, woman and child.

To be fair, a great number of Americans feel that guns remain a Second Amendment right, and as such, should be left well enough alone. There is nevertheless some wiggle room on background checks, age limitations for purchases, the types of guns that can be bought legally and certain modifications that can be made on them, like bump stocks.

The issue of general access to semiautomatic rifles — the type of weapon used by the Parkland shooter — remains one of the main concerns.

“It’s unbelievable that our country allows this, these kinds of weapons,” says Leavy, noting that so many other places around the world do not.

In fact, while Washington, D.C., is the main venue for the March 24 event, the momentum will be felt as related events are scheduled in locales as far away as Cork, Ireland; Helsinki, Finland; Bogatá, Columbia; Mumbai, India; Vilnius, Lithuania; Tokyo, Japan; all over Western Europe; and in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sarah Clements, 22, will participate in the Washington march, joined by her mother. The Georgetown University senior is also scheduled to speak on Friday afternoon at a university-sponsored forum titled “What Makes Movements Successful? How Students Can Change Policy.”

For the past five years, Clements has become used to the idea of being a leader, showing up at all kinds of events advocating for gun-control legislation and school safety.

It’s not really that surprising. After all, she grew up in Newtown, Connecticut.

In fact, her mother was a second-grade teacher on Dec. 14, 2012, when a young gunman shot and killed 20 children — between 6 and 7 years old — and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Of the multiple weapons he brought with him was a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle.

“I think I was always interested in politics, but after the shooting happened, after the shock of it, I felt so much anger,” says Clements, who at the time was a junior at Newtown High School. Along with people of all ages, she joined the Newtown Action Alliance and hasn’t looked back.

“We started changing the discussion about guns, school safety and the public interest,” she says. “What happened at Sandy Hook first opened the doors to ongoing conversation about these issues.”

Now, she says the Parkland students have taken off, prompting a wave of social action that has crossed the country and the world. And that makes Clements feel “cautiously optimistic.”

She points out that she is not against guns, per se. The person who wants to hunt or to have a handgun for their own protection is not on her radar. She is pushing for common-sense gun laws and getting guns out of the hands of the wrong people.

At the same time, she aims to invigorate students, so they become involved in their communities, register to vote and take their newfound energy to the ballot box.

Like others who are seeing young people find their voices, being engaged gives her hope. A double major in government, and justice and peace studies, who is active in Georgetown’s Jewish Students Association, she says she wants to tell her grandchildren one day how she was part of change for the good. How in the Jewish notion of tikkun olam, she helped make the world a better place.

“This is a huge moment for our country,” she states. “We’re literally talking about people’s lives.”

Lauren Bell has also been busy since Parkland.

The 17-year-old resident of Sarasota, Florida, decided that she could help get teens registered and even pre-registered to vote (in Florida, teens can pre-register at ages 16 and 17). To that end, she has been encouraging teens in person and via social media to do so, and plans to continue these efforts through November.

She also took the bullhorn and spoke on National School Walkout day on March 14 in front of 300 students at Riverview High School who were protesting gun violence and advocating for school safety. Another national walkout is planned for April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School mass shooting.

“I want to stress the importance of voting, in all elections, at the state and local levels, too,” says Bell, whose father’s side of the family lives in the Philadelphia suburbs. “I want to focus on the positive.”

She says students have had enough with lockdown drills and Code Reds; they want to be able to go to school and simply feel safe. As such, she is pushing for more security measures on campus. She’s also part of a group at her school called “Students Stand Up.” And on Saturday, she is set to march locally in Sarasota, where she is also scheduled to speak.

“I want to see change,” insists Bell. “This can’t happen again. We shouldn’t have to live in fear at school.”

Rabbi Moshe Rapoport, program director at the Peltz Center for Jewish Life in Mequon, Wisconsin, notes the uncertainty young people feel today — a feeling of being unsettled.

He says that isn’t likely to go away as high-schoolers head to college campuses, where in addition to concerns about guns and physical safety come worries about religious safety as well, including anti-Israel sentiment.

“There is a great wealth of negative energy in the world today,” he says. “You can’t control what happens in life, but you can work to bring about positivity. That can happen in the form of good deeds, of everyday kindnesses. It’s very powerful.”

Rapoport, a Chabad rabbi who has worked with teens and college students for more than 20 years, stresses that this idea isn’t naïve; it’s not blind. Still, in relation to gun violence, small moves may seem … small.

“It doesn’t solve the big problems, the big discussions,” he acknowledges, “but it does empower people, intellectually and spiritually. This is something teens can do. They can educate; they can be positive.”

He also talks about how to heal. A statement in Proverbs, written by King Solomon, reads: “Anxiety in the heart of a person causes dejection, but a good word will turn it into joy.”

“We all need that,” he says. “Even rabbis.”

He noted that just last month, shortly after the Parkland shooting, more than 2,500 teens participated in the annual CTeen Shabbaton in New York City, where on a Saturday night in Times Square, a Torah was dedicated to those who lost their lives at Stoneman Douglas. Many students from the Florida community were there; all teens got to write a letter in the new scroll.

“To see so many come together, thousands, to dedicate in memory something to people they never met before, it brings some comfort. It shows that others are not alone in their pain; the whole Jewish nation feels it,” affirms Rapoport.

Public action and attention is changing the way America views gun violence and school safety — all because of these kids.

“They are finding their voice and pushing for a seat at the table,” states Amy Krulik, CEO of the Kaiserman Jewish Community Center outside of Philadelphia. “And they are harnessing the power of technology to get the word out and mobilize their friends.”

Krulik recalls a time when student engagement meant handing out fliers, hanging posters, wind-shielding cars or hitting the phones. “This generation’s method of promotion is much more wide-reaching, much more effective in sheer numbers,” she says. “Their proactivity has been years in the making. The kids have been paying attention.

“This is their moment — a moment in our political time, in our national psyche, about seeing certain things change,” says the mother of two grown children. “Parkland was the tipping point. It made them stop and say, ‘Wait, we can be heard, too.’ ”

Consider the fact that those voices joined together to help organize more than 800 events taking place worldwide on Saturday related to March for Our Lives.

As for Krulik, she knows a thing or two about school safety. In January 2017, she and other staff members led the evacuation of more than 225 people, many of them preschoolers, as a result of a bomb threat — one of many made to JCCs across the country. The Perelman Jewish Day School adjacent to their building evacuated another 200 elementary-school-age children.

She looks at it as part and parcel of her job.

As does Rabbi Rapoport. After all, what is the alternative?

“Our youth,” he says, “is the greatest resource we have.”</s>On Saturday, activists in Washington, D.C. and across the country will hold “March for Our Lives” rallies to protest gun violence. The rallies were planned in response to the mass shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,but they’ve quickly grown into a global initiative. Now, there are 838 marches planned worldwide. Here’s a guide to the main U.S. march in the nation’s capital.

Who are the organizers? Student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are helping lead the march in Washington, D.C., and students at other schools around the country holding similar rallies Saturday. The events were planned in collaboration with larger gun reform organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety.

Who is marching? Student activists from Washington to Indianapolis — where high school students are protesting a rise in local homicides — to Los Angeles, where a number of celebrities are expected to attend a rally. According to the March for Our Lives website, there will also be official marches in a number of countries, from Italy to India and Ghana. American students have also organized marches in Austria and Spain.

Who is funding the rallies? Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Steven Spielberg and George and Amal Clooney, who donated $500,000, provided a significant portion of the funding. The overall cost for the rally in Washington is unclear, but by comparison, the Women’s March on Washington last year raised more than $2 million through direct donations. Organizers have said that all of the donations would go towards covering the expenses for the Washington march, including the permits to hold the event as well as lobbying efforts, voter registration and ballot initiatives.

What are they trying to achieve? While gun control advocates have a broad-ranging agenda, most have focused on pushing for comprehensive gun reform legislation that they say would prevent mass shootings. Organizers have also zeroed in on school safety, and are calling for lawmakers to ensure there are no mass shootings inside schools in the future.

“The march on Saturday means that we are on our way to getting real common sense gun safety done,” Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland shooting, told the PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff on Thursday night. “It means that, in a very short period of time, these kids and the people of this country have stepped up and spoken up and said, enough. And I think what you’re going to see is, not just in Washington, but around the country, possibly the largest number of people ever marching.”</s>Thousands turn out for gun violence protest in Omaha

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Several thousand people braved freezing wind chills and light snow Saturday to participate in the "March for Our Lives" rally near downtown Omaha.

Marian High School freshman Callie Cavanaugh says she's tired of school gun violence across the country, noting that she has cousins who live close to Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.

Also among the crowd was 14-year-old Melina Piperis, an eighth-grader at St. Vincent de Paul in Omaha, who said she wants to use her First Amendment right to call for gun control measures.

Westside Middle School student Aden Newmyer says "students have a voice, too," and wants Congress to see that people are angry about lax gun laws.

Omaha's was one of hundreds of marches planned Saturday in cities across the globe to protest gun violence and mass shootings.</s>Several hundred people are expected at a March for Our Lives event in Vancouver Saturday morning to rally against gun violence in the United States.

The march, which begins at Jack Poole Plaza at 10 a.m., is one of hundreds of similar marches happening across the United States and around the world. Survivors of the deadly shooting at a Parkland high school planned to lead thousands of students, teachers, parents and concerned citizens in a rally in the U.S. capital.

The Vancouver event will focus on “calling for American lawmakers to pass common-sense gun safety legislation and make student safety a priority,” according to a press release by the organizers of the Vancouver event.

The march is being organized by Democrats Abroad Vancouver, a local chapter of the Democratic Party’s overseas contingent, in partnership with March On Vancouver (the organizers of the Women’s March) Youth Seeking Change (a local student activism group), and Rock Your World (a California-based initiative encouraging students to become involved in advocacy work).

Half a dozen speakers are expected to address the crowd at Jack Poole Plaza, followed by a march through downtown Vancouver, past the U.S. consulate, before returning to the plaza.

“The gun violence epidemic in America touches both Americans and Canadians living in Vancouver. Anyone who travels to the US or has family and friends in the US could be impacted by gun violence in America, and many already have been,” said organizer Bodil Geyer, an American living in Vancouver.

A fake Facebook page caused confusion over the time of the Vancouver march, but organizers expected a good turnout Saturday morning.</s>Just days after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people, students-turned-activists echoed the words “never again” and “not one more,” pushing lawmakers for increased gun control and better school safety.

Many of the Parkland students, who have primarily taken to social media to champion these issues, have met with President Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., among others to demand action.

One shooting survivor Cameron Kasky, a junior at the high school, wrote an op-ed about his experience, demanding Congress to take action.

In addition to the 17-minute National School Walkout on March 14, which honored those killed in the massacre and protested gun violence, student activists planned a march in Washington, D.C. called a “March for Our Lives.”

Ahead of the event, here’s what you need to know.

When is March for Our Lives?

The march is slated to take place on Saturday, March 24, around 12 p.m., organizers said.

Where is it?

The primary march will take place in Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue between 3rd and 12th street NW, according to the March for Our Lives website.

Initially, organizers wanted to hold the event on the National Mall, but were forced to choose another location because their request conflicted with a film crew’s permit, the Washington Post reported.

Many other cities — such as Portland, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; Philadelphia, New York City, San Francisco, Dallas and Chicago, among hundreds of other places — are holding “sister marches.” Overall, there are more than 800 sibling marches across the country, organizers said.

To see if your city is holding a march, you can check here.

Why are the marches being organized?

“This is such a unifying experience, it’s truly nonpartisan” said Ellie Boan, 19, a freshman at the University of South Carolina. She plans to attend a sister march in Columbia on March 24.

“Not everyone necessarily agrees how [gun reform] should happen. But different viewpoints are coming together and all agree that no American child should feel unsafe in school,” she said.

For Boan, who has been working with local high schools and student organizations on her campus to help organize the event, the shooting itself “doesn’t get anymore close to home.”

Boan is originally from Parkland, Fla. While she didn’t attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, her older brother did. On top of that, her parents’ home is “just five minutes away from the school” where the Valentine’s Day mass shooting unfolded.

“I was on the phone with my mom during the shooting,” she said, adding that helicopters heading toward the high school could be heard in the call’s background.

“[Parkland] was the last place in America I ever expected for this to happen,” she said. Once known for its picturesque golf courses and safety, Boan added, the city will now be remembered as the site of one of the “biggest mass shootings in U.S. history.”

Shortly after the suspected shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was identified, Boan had a chilling realization: She knew him, albeit not well.

“His name sounded familiar, even though I didn’t want it to,” she said.

At that moment, Boan realized that she and he had attended the same middle school.

“He even had a presence back then,” she said.

Coming to that realization was the “most difficult thing to deal with,” Boan said. “I knew someone who was capable to inflict that kind of damage.”

But Boan has since channeled her emotions — which have ranged from sadness to fear to anger — into activism.

“I wanted to do something even though I couldn’t be there [Parkland],” she said.

Participating in the march later this month is the “most effective way to process what I was going through,” she added. “Students are directly telling legislators what they want to be done. I hope that continues.”

Perry Bradley, founder and executive director of Building Better Communities, a community outreach organization in South Carolina, is helping organize the sister march in Columbia that will end on the steps of the city’s statehouse.

Students, local lawmakers and state representatives are slated to speak at the event.

“Parkland opened our eyes,” Bradley told Fox News. “Adults are embracing what kids have to say [about gun reform].”

“I think that we have finally reached a breaking point in America,” 21-year-old Antwon Stephens, who plans to participate in a sister march in Atlanta, told Fox News. “Both sides are tired of the answer being nothing.”

Stephens, who said he comes from a family who “firmly believes in the Second Amendment,” echoed Boan — he also thinks the March for Our Lives movement presents an opportunity for unity, adding that both sides of the political aisle should work in a “non-partisan way” to understand “why things like this keep happening.”

“I think it is going to take a whole lot of elbow grease to keep this movement going strong,” he said. “But this movement is most powerful because it’s led by students.”

For family and the future

“I was numb. I was in shock for three days after I heard about the shooting,” said Jennia Taylor, a senior at Spelman College who also plans to attend a sister march in Atlanta.

Hailing from Parkland, Florida, the shooting greatly impacted Taylor not only because it occured in her hometown, but also because the 21-year-old is a 2014 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, she told Fox News.

“[Stoneman Douglas] is a big family; it was like hearing that someone invaded your home,” Taylor said, who added that she first found out about the massacre through her family’s group chat.

“I lived there in high school,” she said. “I saw my teachers and coaches more than I saw my parents.”

The day of the shooting, hearing about students and faculty who had been injured or killed affected Taylor the most, she said. It was also unnerving, she added, because Taylor’s younger cousin is a freshman at the school.

She was also worried for her former classmates as well, as many of them have younger siblings or family members who are current students at the high school, she said.

“We all kind of know each other, she said. “It’s so intertwined, it’s kind of crazy.”

Taylor’s heart sank when she heard that Aaron Feis, a beloved football coach at Stoneman Douglas, had been shot and killed shielding students from a rain of bullets.

Taylor’s two brothers, also graduates of Stoneman Douglas, played football at the school and her family was well acquainted with Feis. As a result, the loss hit her hard.

“It’s really hard for my family knowing him, and knowing his family,” she said.

As for her participation in the March for Our Lives, Taylor said she’s excited to “see people from all walks of life who have been affected by gun violence come together and march for a purpose,” she said. “[They’re] putting opinions aside to make sure we have a safe community and safe society.”

“I’m going to grow up and have kids. I don’t want to fear that every time they leave they’re going to get shot,” she said. “After it happened in my hometown, I realized that it’s time to take action.”

How many people are slated to attend?

The National Park Service told the Washington Post that at least 500,000 people are expected to attend the march in D.C. alone.

How is the event funded — and who’s supporting it?

The event, which is being organized and led by Stoneman Douglas students and shooting survivors Emma González, Cameron Kasky, among others, is mainly funded through donations.

Kasky created a GoFundMe page to help pay for the event, raising more than $3.3 million in a month.

“Half of the funds raised on this GoFundMe will go toward the March For Our Lives Action Fund,” Kasky explained on the fundraising page. “The other half of the funding raised on this GoFundMe will provide relief and financial support to the victims and families of the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School via the Broward Education Foundation.”

Celebrities such as George and Amal Clooney and Oprah have donated $500,000 to the event, as have Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Deadline reported.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, announced on March 9 that he also donated $500,000 to March for Our Lives.

“I’m so inspired by all the conversations the Stoneman Douglas students are leading!” he tweeted.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for stronger gun control, and Giffords, an anti-gun violence group that was started by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, among other national organizations, are also working with march organizers — either through donations or planning and logistics.

“Students are making history and demanding that our elected officials protect them. Everytown is proud to help them make their voices heard on March 24, and we look forward to more Americans following their lead to forge meaningful change to our country’s gun laws,” John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown, said in a statement after the organization announced its $2.5 million grant to support sister marches around the country.

The ride-hailing company Lyft also announced that it will offer free rides to Stoneman Douglas students participating in the march.

Additionally, many celebrities are supporting the event by performing at the march in D.C. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Platt, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, among others, are slated to perform at the rally.

The event is not a political one, organizers claim.

“School safety is not a political issue,” a mission statement on the organization’s website reads. “There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing.”

While the activists “support the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, as set forth in the United States Constitution,” they also have a list of demands, urging members of Congress to pass laws to end the sale of high-capacity magazines, improve background checks and more safety measures.</s>Thousands are expected to march across the country Saturday to advocate for stricter gun laws during March For Our Lives, including a sister protest in downtown Rochester.

The nationwide protest against gun violence will be punctuated by the biggest march in Washington, D.C., where as many as 500,000 people are expected. They hope to change laws to prevent another school mass shooting like the one that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last month where 17 people were killed.

And while the nation's capital will serve as ground zero, sibling events to the march will unfold in cities large and small across the United States.

The Rochester protest is slated to begin at 3 p.m. at Washington Square Park, 181 S. Clinton Ave., in downtown Rochester. As of Friday night, more than 5,000 responded as interested in attending the Rochester march and over 2,000 people said they would be attending.

More: March for Our Lives 2018: Info for DC, NYC, Boston and other major cities nationwide

More: Walkout Wednesday: Area high school students send message, 'We are sure to make an impact'

The rally starts at 3 p.m. and will be followed with a ¾-mile march through downtown. It will end at Washington Square Park and conclude with statements from students, advocates, and community members.

Marchers will move west on Court Street, north on Exchange Boulevard, east on Broad Street, south on Bausch + Lomb Place and end at Washington Square Park. The rally will impact downtown traffic, parking and transit services between 3 and 5 p.m.

St. Mary's Place will be closed until the march is over. No parking will be allowed on the Court Street Bridge.

Between 4 and 5 p.m., traffic will be closed on the following streets:

The Rochester rally follows area-wide school walkouts on March 14. Students from several Monroe County schools, including Brighton High School, Aquinas Institute, and School of the Arts, participated in nationally organized walkouts, exiting their buildings from approximately 10 a.m. to 10:17 a.m. to call for gun control legislation and shed greater light on the issue of gun violence.

An estimated 600 Brighton students made their way from the inside of their classrooms out onto the school's snow-clad football field. They stood before a group of student leaders where they listened to statements that expressed not only solidarity with the victims and survivors of Parkland, but also opposition to all violence.

Organizers trumpet, "School safety is not a political issue." The March For Our Lives mission statement. "There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing. The mission and focus of March For Our Lives is to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues. No special interest group, no political agenda is more critical than timely passage of legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country."</s>Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon remembers the day executives at the WB informed him that the third season finale of his wildly popular show, about a vampire hunter and her supernatural friends, would be delayed. It had been four weeks since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre — an attempted bombing and mass shooting that killed 15 — sparked a nationwide debate over gun control and the effects of violent entertainment. The episode’s plot included a school explosion and a scene in which armed students attack the mayor, so out of sympathy for victims and fear of copycat killings, the network broadcast a rerun instead. Another Buffy episode from that season, called “Earshot,” featured a suspected school shooter, and its airdate was also rescheduled. Whedon understood the decision. “I was like, We shouldn't say boo about it because of course they should [postpone],” Whedon told BuzzFeed News in a recent interview, recalling the “horror” and “sense of hopelessness” he felt in the aftermath of Columbine. It wasn’t the last time an episode of a teen series would face controversy following a school shooting. Four months after a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Glee aired an episode in which students go on lockdown after hearing gunshots. While co-creator Ryan Murphy praised it as “the most powerful, emotional Glee ever,” some Sandy Hook parents criticized the episode for coming “too soon” after the tragedy. (In the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, Murphy found himself in a similar situation, deciding to tone down the graphic visuals from an episode of his show American Horror Story: Cult that featured a mass shooting scene.) After last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the Paramount Network delayed the premiere of Heathers, a television series remake of the 1988 cult film about a pair of teenagers who murder their classmates. “Out of respect for the victims, their families and loved ones, we feel the right thing to do is delay the premiere until later this year," the cable network said in a statement.

School shootings aren’t going away, and the conversation over how they’re portrayed on television isn’t either. While politicians and cultural critics, including President Trump, have criticized Hollywood for “glorifying violence,” showrunners and directors told BuzzFeed News they think carefully about how they're depicting shootings. Whedon, a vocal NRA opponent who says he’ll attend this weekend’s March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, said “actual deadly accessible guns are the issue,” not the entertainment industry. Still, he decided not to prominently feature the use of firearms on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unless they were in the hands of villains. “When we were making Buffy, we actually had a chance to say, ‘Oh, we can actually take a very hard stance here,’” Whedon said. “It's not a cop show. We're not wed to the idea of the shootout in the alley.” Throughout the show, Buffy refuses multiple times to use a gun against her enemies. (“These things? Never helpful!” she says about firearms in a Season 6 episode.)

In the aftermath of Columbine, Whedon didn’t think his show would provoke copycat killings, because the weapons were portrayed in a negative light. In the episode “Earshot,” Buffy finds a classmate assembling a rifle in the school’s clock tower. She believes he is going to kill their fellow students, but it turns out “the school shooter angle in the episode was a red herring,” Whedon explained. The boy actually intends to kill himself, but Buffy talks him out of it and immediately dismantles his weapon. But Whedon acknowledged that viewer reaction is hard to predict. In the 2002 episode “Seeing Red,” Buffy is shot and beloved character Tara Maclay is killed by Warren Mears, a misogynist outcast. At the time, Whedon assumed that a bad guy using a gun couldn’t lead to copycat behavior. “He represented the worst in everything, so I didn’t think people were going to be like, Hey, let’s jump on that bandwagon!” Whedon said. But that was in 2002. Now, given the frequency of mass shootings across the country, he isn’t so sure: “But god knows what I’ve learned lately is that bad examples don’t seem to throw people off.”

Asked what advice he’d give to someone writing a school shooting storyline today, Whedon stressed respect for the characters and for the gravity of the situation: “If you're in the head of a person who's trapped in a classroom, if you don't let genre tropes outweigh the physical and mental experience of the people you're filming, then you have a shot at saying something useful.” For Whedon, the Parkland students turned activists call to mind some of the messages he was trying to convey in his work: “I spent most of my career writing about teenagers who would lay down their lives for each other and would stand up to all injustice, and I thought I was writing fantasy.” Similarly, Linda Schuyler and Stephen Stohn — two of the Canadian showrunners behind Netflix’s Degrassi: Next Class — said they find the Parkland survivors “deeply moving” and plan to incorporate elements of their activism into the forthcoming season of the high school series. The two said it’s “highly likely” they will explore a school shooting, too. “It’s something that’s happening with greater frequency, and it’s happening to teenagers … and our attitude on the show has always been, whatever is out there affecting our young people, we should be talking about it on Degrassi,” said Schuyler. The pair previously tackled school shootings in the first season of Degrassi: Next Class and in an episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. “Time Stands Still,” perhaps the best known episode of the show, saw Jimmy Brooks (played by now-rapper Aubrey “Drake” Graham) shot by a troubled classmate. When crafting the story around that episode, Sohn said they were "very concerned" about the possibility of inciting a "copycat situation,” but pursued the storyline to portray how access to guns, coupled with an environment of bullying, “can be a pressure cooker for some of these kids to explode.”

“We do not want to glorify things, and we don't want to sensationalize them,” Schuyler said. When writing the aforementioned school shooting episodes, the showrunners consulted with Barbara Coloroso, an expert on bullying and an author who published a book on the issue soon after the Columbine massacre. They also spoke directly to teenagers with the goal to write material that would resonate with and accurately reflect their young viewers. “Hopefully as storytellers, we are being respectful enough to all sides of the story,” Schuyler added.

Although Schuyler and Sohn feel it’s their duty to tackle issues that teenagers go through, they have no plans to portray anything “overtly political.” “The mandate of our show is to sort of take what's happening in the environment politically and make the political personal,” said Schuyler. “We wouldn't address gun control per se, but we will look from a particular character's point of view at how damaging the misuse of guns can be and how damaging it can be when bullying isn't dealt with at an early stage.” Some showrunners and producers looking to portray gun violence and mass shootings have turned to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control and often works with television producers and writers to create storylines for shows like ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Wife.

For Avery Gardiner, copresident of the Brady Campaign, it’s just as important to depict the everyday shootings that occur across the United States — and not just high-profile mass shootings. While ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy featured a storyline about a mass shooter who murders two of Dr. Meredith Grey’s colleagues, a 2016 episode centers on a young boy who accidentally shoots his playmate after finding the weapon in his mother’s drawer. It was a plotline the Brady Campaign consulted on. And immediately following the episode, actor Ellen Pompeo urged the importance of keeping guns unloaded and properly stored, away from children, in a PSA. The collaboration wasn’t without criticism. The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action condemned the Grey’s episode and the anti-gun messages “permeating television programming and film,” writing: “Thankfully, the episode was immediately followed by a Brady Center ad, alerting viewers to the fact that the preceding program was intended as propaganda.” Gardiner also stressed the need for shows that depict the reality of how shootings affect the families of victims. Shows like The Chi, a Showtime drama created by Lena Waithe about life in Chicago's South Side, for example, portrays the factors that might lead one to turn to guns — and how deaths resulting from gun violence affect victims’ loved ones. “The realities of that violence and how it tears communities apart is something that Hollywood should be showing on TV," Gardiner continued. "It's an American problem that we need to be solving."</s>The March for Our Lives, the anti-gun violence protest occurring in cities around the world today, saw thousands of protestors band together in pursuit of stricter American gun laws. Organized by initiators of the #NeverAgain movement and survivors of last month’s school shootings in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 people dead after an attack at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the marches are predominantly developed “for kids and by kids,” an initiative that follows the National School Walkout earlier this month. And with the movement’s youth and student-focused spirit came passion and creativity in full force. From calling for action from politicians to scrutinizing the NRA, the impactful signage from the march put America’s epidemic of gun violence on full display.

Below, see the best signs from the march.</s>MONTREAL — More than a dozen Canadian cities hosted marches Saturday to call for stricter gun control laws in both Canada and the United States in the wake of a deadly high school shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Fla.

In both Montreal and Toronto, several hundred people joined local events in support of the massive March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., which was organized by American students calling for change in the wake of the tragedy.

In one of Montreal’s two marches, hundreds of protesters swayed together singing to the tune of “Glory, Hallelujah” before setting off towards the city’s U.S. Consulate.

Ellen Gozansky Malka, a Montrealer now living in Parkland, told the crowd that two of her children were at the school during the shooting and saw things no child should see.

“Our children should never fear going to school, and they should never jump at the sound of a book falling on the floor,” she said to appreciative applause.

“This will have a lasting effect on our community. We have to make sure this will never happen again anywhere, anywhere in the world.”

A few blocks away, a slightly smaller event was organized by 11-year-old elementary school student Lexington Vickery, who led about 150 cheering classmates and supporters on a raucous march in support of American children.

“Its about making them feel better, and making them feel more supported and working to help them so they can have more courage to go to the government and get their gun legislation,” the sixth-grader explained in an interview beforehand.

In Toronto, marchers carried signs protesting both gun violence in the United States and recent shootings that have plagued the city as they marched from a downtown square to the U.S. Consulate.

An organizer told local news station CP24 that while Canada doesn’t experience mass shootings on the same scale as the U.S., Toronto has seen a number of high-profile fatal shootings recently.

Police have said that last weekend, an innocent man was gunned down in a “cowardly” attack after visiting friends. The following day, two people were shot and killed outside of a bowling alley — one of the victims was allegedly targeted, and the other was described by police as a bystander.

“I think it’s important to have this march today in solidarity with students in the United States because gun violence is taking its toll on families, individuals, communities across North America. In Toronto we’ve seen a hundred per cent increase in gun violence homicides over the last three years,” said Louis March, a co-founder of Toronto’s Zero Gun Violence Movement.
• Police: Brother of Parkland shooting suspect trespassed onto school grounds to ‘soak it in’
• ‘Spike’ in online threats to Canadian schools following deadly Parkland shooting: police
• NRA breaks silence after Parkland school shooting to attack teenage survivors, law enforcement and media

Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the march in Washington, D.C., with smaller gatherings to take place in hundreds of cities across the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people participate in the March for Our Lives protest around the world regarding gun violence, mass shootings and school shootings in the United States.