Tens of thousands of marchers took to Atlanta streets Saturday morning as part of a nationwide series of events to protest gun violence in America.
Marches to protest gun violence kicked off across America Saturday morning, with more than a half-million people expected to participate in the main "March For Our Lives" event in Washington D.C., organized by students after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
Atlanta police said there were no arrests and no incidents in the march, whose estimated crowd was 30,000.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement, led the crowd as it made it way through a 1.3-mile downtown route.
“We’re never too young, we’re never too old to march, to speak up,” Lewis said. “To speak out.”
Lewis reminded the crowd how the students of the 60’s demanded change, as he saw students creating a new movement.
“Never give up,” Lewis said. “Never give in. Keep your faith and you’re going to have a victory.”
The March for Our Lives movement also came to Athens on Saturday on the University of Georgia campus.
Four simple words – “We demand action now” – surrounded the UGA arch.
“This is an amazing turnout,” one protestor said. “I didn’t think there would be this many people, but there is people on this side there is people on that side. There are so many people here and we as college students are inspired by the high school students. They’re taking so much action and that just gives us so much energy to do the same thing.”
In Athens, in between demands for stricter gun laws and increased school security, stood a handful of counter protestors.
Next to many of the college students were professors, some remembering when they became social active during the civil rights movement.
The students who organized the rally in Athens say they now want to take the energy at the arch and influence lawmakers in the months and years to come.
11Alive's Christie Etheridge was in Washington, DC, site of the flagship march brought hundreds of thousands of young people to the nation's capitol.
"I want us to be able to go to school and not worry about being shot," one student said. "Not worry about being killed on a supposedly safe property."
The expected crowd of 500,000 filled the streets and spilled out the sides, nearly bumping up to the military vehicles and dump trucks that blocked all the intersections leading up to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Many of the speakers were the same age or younger than the audience they greeted. (Story continues below gallery.)
"I think that’s what makes the difference, because this whole movement is because of the younger kids," one marcher said.
Joseph Fris went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High and was friends with at least two of the students killed.
"I have a pin on for my friend Nick Dworrett," he said. ""And I have shoes on dedicated to my friend Alex Schachter."
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