3/24/18 SF March for Our Lives was Huge

San Francisco’s March for Our Lives on March 24, 2018 was easily over 100,000 strong since the Civic Center rally filled up the entire Civic Center from the library to city hall during the first half hour, and people kept streaming to the rally even as the march started at 2:30 p.m. down Market Street to the Embarcadero. Teenagers turned out by the thousands, unlike the Dump Trump rally on January 20, 2018. Despite the narrow focus on gun control, there was a sense that the tide has turned against the entire war machine, of which the gun industry is a part, and the anti-gun movement is fundamental to any peace movement.

Teachers marched with signs opposing arming teachers, and demanding pay raises. This comes at a time when the West Virginia teachers won an important strike, and other teachers are expected to follow with strikes soon across the nation. All of the gun violence in schools and in communities, as well as perpetrated around the world by the US military is because labor is weak. Allowing JROTC in schools to teach children to kill, as happened at Parkland, Florida, where the military organization, JROTC, taught a child they knew to be mentally ill to kill, also has to be opposed by teachers, staff and parents. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is an upper middle class high school, yet they allow JROTC. There was a time when that was unthinkable in upper middle class high schools. Three of the people killed at the Douglas High School Valentine’s Day massacre, 2018 were teachers. This is certainly a labor issue.

San Francisco does not allow gun shops and California has comparatively strict gun control laws, but that does not prevent gun violence, especially in the workingclass communities. This has become a pretext for installing cops in schools, who intimidate the students and promote the school to prison pipeline, all to maximize the profits of the prison industry.

There were a wide variety of homemade signs, and one of the best was a sign showing a bottle labeled NRA (National Rifle Association), pouring blood over the entire USA. People appreciated the chant: Ban All of the 300 million guns in civilian hands, ban the police, ban the military, ban the prison punishment system and ban the death penalty. They also liked the chant Ban So-Called War Toys.