Roberta Medina, Jan Race and Alisa Moore
A dozen members of the PebbleCreek Democratic Club along with five Verrado volunteers were among the estimated 15,000 participants who gathered at the Arizona State Capital for the March 24 student-led march for sensible gun control, called “March for Our Lives.” The primary goal of the event was to voice their demand that their lives and safety become priorities with our government and to end the reign of gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today. The parents and siblings who addressed the crowds have all suffered the loss of a relative to gun violence. They are living with the very real threat of being shot while in school, in the theater, in a mall or night club.
However, since the best way to accomplish lasting change is through citizens voting to elect like-minded candidates, they also wanted to register every eligible voter in attendance. They needed volunteers, and we “seniors” stepped up to the plate to help these dedicated youngsters! It was so inspiring to see their energy and desire to effect lasting, positive change in our country’s gun laws.
We had arranged with the Secretary of State’s office to pick up voter registration forms, and on March 24 we headed to Phoenix early in the morning to tie our red, white and blue helium balloons to the two trees that flanked our tables which were set up directly across from the Capitol building. We were glad to see that there were many volunteers circulating with clipboards in the crowd, which eventually grew to almost 20,000, to register voters and answer questions. We haven’t heard a final count, but our team submitted 20 registrations and have 18 verified new voters as of this writing.