YESTERDAY, CELEBRITY COUPLE George and Amal Clooney donated $500,000 to a group of students organising a rally called ‘March for our Life’.
Human rights lawyer Amal and actor George promised to march alongside the students, after finding themselves inspired by the stand that young people in America have been taking against gun violence since last week’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
George released a statement with his donation:
Amal and I are so inspired by the courage and eloquence of these young men and women from Stoneman Douglas High school. Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side with this incredible generation of young people from all over the country, and in the name of our children Ella and Alexander, we’re donating $500,000 to help pay for this groundbreaking event. Our children’s lives depend on it.
Several celebrities followed suit.
Steven Spielberg matched the donation made by the Clooneys and said:
The young students in Florida and now across the country are already demonstrating their leadership with a confidence and maturity that belies their ages. Kate [Kapshaw] and I applaud their efforts to take a stand for the benefit of this and future generations. They are an inspiration to us all, and we are joining in this movement with a donation of $500,000.
Oprah then took to Twitter to announce that she would also be following George and Amal’s lead.
Winfrey said that the children standing up for themselves remind her very much of the Freedom Riders in the 1960s.
American businessman Jeffrey Katzenberg and his wife Marilyn Katzenberg also donated $500,000 to the March for our Life fund, saying that they’re “proud to stand with the brave young leaders from Parkland, Florida, who have taken their pain and grief and turned it into action.” They also confirmed that they’ll attend the march alongside George and Amal.
The March for our Life rally was organised by five Marjory Stoneman Douglas high students.
It’s set to take place in Washington, D.C. on the 24th of March 2018.
The students who organised the protest are Jacqueline Coren, Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, Alex Wind and of course Emma Gonzalez. Gonzalez has received a great deal of attention for the powerful speech she gave while holding back tears just three days after the mass shooting that left 17 dead took place.
At an anti-gun rally in Fort Lauderdale, she told the crowd:
Every single person up here today should be at home grieving. But instead… We are up here, standing together because if all our government and president can do is “send thoughts and prayers”, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.
We are going to be the kids that you read about in textbooks. Not because we are going to be another statistic about mass shootings in America, but because we are going to be the last mass shooting.
She called attention to Trump’s tweet in which he urged people to report people who display behavior consistent with previous mass shooters. Trump said “You must always report such instances to authority.” Emma’s response was:
We did. Time and time again. Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter. Those talking about how we should have “not ostracized him”… You didn’t know this kid. OK? We did. We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue. He wouldn’t have hurt that many students with a knife.
Other students across the United states have been staging walk outs from their schools to protest the gun laws in America. Two days ago, students staged a ‘die-in’ where they lay on the ground outside of the White House to urge congress to take action.
