I am glad I'm all to be small.
Yeah.
Also responded.
Any sort of thing.
Yeah.
The students ran action.
First off, we want to thank everyone for being here
today.
Whether you're a student, a parent, or a member of
our community, you came today to support our community.
It means so much to have all of you here
to honor those we've lost and to join us in
demanding that our lawmakers do better.
Just one week ago, eight people from ages three to
sixty-one were shot and killed just a few miles from
here.
To the families of the victims, we want to say
we're greeting for you and with you.
These are your children.
Your brothers and sisters, your parents and grandparents, and your
friends in college.
They deserved better.
We all deserve better.
For us, it is literally hit like home.
I was raised here and I prayed myself for being
a part of such a brave and loving community.
Words can never describe this endless unity, this feeling of
intense power.
But even with this solitary, I am scared for our
safety here and across the country.
Our lives have been marked with school shootings, mass shootings,
and shootings in our community every single day, and shootings
that don't make national headlines.
Guns are the number one killer of young people in
both America and Texas.
This is not normal.
And no other nation on earth allows children to be
shot and killed in schools like this.
Year after year, tragedy after tragedy.
Lawmakers in Texas have offered empty statements while they got
the laws meant to protect us.
And now they're going even further.
No, no common sense.
If more guns made us safer, we'd be the safest
country in the world.
This is all while they're refusing to pass life-saving common
sense gun safety laws like raising the age.
They're choosing to enable this violence with every vote they
take or fail to take, stripping us of our basic
public safety measures.
They're putting profits for gun makers ahead of our safety.
Two years ago, Governor Grant Albert signed a permanent carry
into law, literally flooding the guns industry over our own
safety.
The gun homicide rate in Texas has increased 91% from
2012 to 2021.
We are all living in constant fear of gun violence.
Because gun violence is all around us, we won't accept
it anymore
This year there have been over 75 students walkouts in
our across our state.
Thousands of students have walked out, marched, and demanded our
lawmakers to listen to our generation.
The walkouts that took place across our state were another
showing to our communities, our state, and our country that
we have enough.
But lawmakers accept us to show up for the day
and lost interest.
They are wrong.
This generation will continue to fight.
We will continue testify.
You're only making schools more dangerous.
And it will not be ignored.
Gun violence is bigger than our state, which is why
we're calling on Congress to reinstate the ban on assault
weapons.
Pass gun laws.
Keep us safe.
That's our fellow students, you have a role to play
in this fight.
If you're a student and want to make your voice
hurt, join us.
Make your voice hurt
Take students to 6443.
Thank you.
Thank you so much to my action, all the work
that they're doing.
They are our future.
Next, I'd like to introduce State Representative Mahela Plista.
Texas Alchester 70.
I just want to thank every one of you for
being here today.
And I'm saddened by the fact that we have to
be here.
I just wanted to thank everybody for being here today.
And thank you.
And I'm sorry.
I'm moved by the fact that I'm seeing so many
people here on this beautiful morning.
And I wish that we weren't here to talk about
this issue.
I've heard all these great speakers, and I'm so thankful
for every one of you that have made your voice
heard for those that are voiceless right now.
I represent a diverse community.
I represent parts of Dallas, Plano, Richardson, and I proudly
represent a part a portion of Allen, Texas.
My community is diverse.
I grew up in my community.
I'm the first-generation born person in my family.
famil Myy came from Romania.
y. They came to this countr because they
believed this was the land of freedom
They believed that we could live a life of price
prosperity, a life of freedom, but most importantly,
that we could live.
When I grew up, when I was growing up in
Plano ISD, I never had to do an active shooter
drill.
I didn't know what that was.
But on Saturday, when I heard about this mass shooting,
that we could have prevented.
We were stalled.
We were told to wait.
It is unacceptable.
When I found out about the Allen shooting on Saturday,
I was on the floor of the House of Representatives.
I immediately left and came back to the district.
I felt a calling to be with you, my constituents,
because you guys give me strength to go back and
keep fighting.
I didn't get on the news and talk about mental
health.
I heard my colleagues talk about mental health for 30
hours.
And then when I got back on the floor of
the house, I laid out Nami's number one mental health
bill.
House Bill 4713.
People let you know.
Give me a seat at the table.
We can continue putting more people at the table.
We need to go home.
We need to talk to our families.
We need to talk to our friends.
We need to register to vote.
There are only 15 days left in this legislative session.
My colleagues have done nothing.
They have not passed any bill to keep us safe.
As a matter of fact, they keep passing bad pills
that will make us have these things happen over and
over again.
It's that we must.
I need you guys to contact every state representative from
Collin County to Denton County to Tarran County to Dallas
County.
And you let them know. that you are ready to
register, and you are ready to vote
We must have change in Texas.
Let's get to work.
Hold them out.
Cold them out.
All right, everyone.
We've eaten up a little bit out here.
So we reminder, we have our water station.
You feel hot, please go stock up.
Um, I do want to introduce um our next speaker
with the C Run Foundation, and I'm asking Blair Taylor,
a volunteer with Mom's Demand to also come up.
Thank you, Blair!
Um, so my name is Blair Taylor.
I'm the community outreach lead for the Dallas County for
the Dallas County chapter of Moms Demand Action for Duncan
America.
So I am so excited today to introduce you to
O'Neill.
And the reason is gun violence has so many layers,
right?
It's it has lots of causes, and we have lots
of solutions.
Currently, we are all feeling that bang your head against
the wall that is the legislative session.
Am I right?
Hold on to that anger when it's next election season.
In the meantime, we can do things to curb epidemic
gun violence, and one of those things that we can
do is crime prevention through environmental design.
It's directly linked to environmental justice, which is also how
we combat systemic racism and economic oppression.
All factors in gun violence
So the Dallas chapter nominated our community partner here
for a grant to fund the project.
And we got it.
Woo.
So our Hair Orange Project starts next weekend.
So we are canvassing, we are having resource block parties,
we are canvassing some more.
We are doing get up to code events, which he's
going to talk about, and we need your help.
This is all happening in South Oak Cliff in the
Deer Path Park area, one of the hot zones of
gun violence in this city and in this state.
So I want to introduce you to O'Neal to tell
you about this foundation, and then find me, find one
of us, and we will get you connected because we
need the boots on the ground, and you guys are
the boots.
Thank you so much, both.
Real quick, I know it's tomorrow, but I just want
to say, you know, happy Mother's Day.
All the beautiful, all the strong Mother's Day, allow this
to happen, allow for this organization, allow for this coordinate
coordination for us to be able to curb this epidemic.
This is the real pandemic.
This pandemic has been going on way longer than COVID-19.
Real quick, again, my name is O'Neil, and this is
my team.
This is Brooklyn Easy, and this is CNN Casillon.
They are my board members for the SAREN Foundation.
So the SARM Foundation is the socioeconomic revitalization of urban
neighborhoods.
We have to understand that any change that we want
to see, regardless if it's gun violence, regardless if it's
drug pedaling, regardless if it'ss a lack of accessibility to
economic wealth, that it becomes a social isue.
People.
And whenever we see this type of epidemic, when it
comes to gun violence, we're seeing an attack on our
people, an attack on our communities, an attack on our
neighborhoods.
And that's why we got to make sure that we
come together as a people, as a community, as a
group, as an organization, and we fight.
We fight.
They allow this to happen.
They take the easy route.
They know that any type of policy they can do,
that they can push any type of legislation, Greg Abbott.
John Corner.
It's an urban environmental uh initiative where we go in
with to low income, underserved communities and help with urban
urban environmentalism, illegal illegal, uh, excuse me, um uh yeah,
race mismanagement and illegal dumping that happens in these neighborhoods.
And why this is so thank you, I appreciate that.
Why this is so important, is that when we we
talk about urban environmentalism,'re not just talking about necessarily the
the air that they breathe, the water that they drink,
or the land that we have our families live on,
but the actual structure of those neighborhoods and communities through
the oppressive, racist, redlining, and discriminatory
housing that affects and makes it so that we have
no accessibility to the resources that would allow us to
be able to curb these issues like gun violence.
Urban environmentalism is about the health of our
neighborhoods.
It's about the health of the individual.
It's about the health of your grandma, your grandfather, your
uncle, your auntie, your cousins that live on the block
with you, that have to see this, that have to
breathe in the toxic air, that have to drink the
polluted and lead-polluted waters that afflict South Dallas, West Dallas,
Oakliffe, PG, all these communities that have been left and
thrown to the side, thrown to the wayside, and then
get attacked by mass shootings, by attacks by gun violence.
Listen, this time last year, our family is
from Buffalo, New York.
You got it?
Last year, I was grateful that my team was blessed
enough to be able to do a cleanup in front
of the grocery store that got shot up and we're
a terrorist.
You people, one of which was close to my family.
People like that allow this type of legislation to loosen
these gun laws.
All they're doing is arming terrorists.
Let me tell you something right now.
Love will always triumph over hate.
That's the opponents of stricter gun laws.
You're going to lose.
Thank you, O'Neal.
Emil is amazing.
His team is amazing.
And I just wanted to point this out, like this
is why we brought him here.
Because this is actionable change that you can help with
right now.
You don't have to wait to vote.
You don't have to wait to make the call for
the next bad bill.
You can help with community outreach and resources right now.
The second piece of community outreach that we have coming
up is Pride Parade in Dallas.
Now, more than ever, we show up.
We show up for the LGBT plus community and we
affirm that.
So Kane has no room in our state, despite what
our lawmakers have decided that they want.
And it is our job and our privilege as moms,
as mothers and others to show up in this way.
O'Neill just made this comment that love is gonna win.
We need to remember love is not always soft and
gentle.
Love is loud.
Love is loud, love seeks justice, and that's what we're
doing.
Thank you, Claire.
Thank you, Neil.
Next, I would like to introduce Francine Lee, Chapter President
of North Texas, Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs.
The same great fires that forged the Constitution is calling
upon us right now.
For us to take up the mantle to solve an
epidemic that is sweeping across America.
I am the chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Public
Affairs Association, North Texas chapter.
Thank you, France.
But in this moment, the only thing that are important
and matters to us are our children and our fellow
Americans who are being slaughtered in schools,
malls, churches, and public gathering spaces.
I'm not here to give the regular everyday speech that
we do after each mass shooting because words cheap and
I'm tired of talking.
As a former child refugee who had bullets shot
at me and my family as we were running through
the fields of Cambodia, fleeing, evacuating for our lives.
This is why I am proud to stand here with
moms demand action and our many, many extraordinary advocacy
group, Daisy Blue, Rise AAPI, many
many others here.
Secure safety for the next generation.
By preventing gun related violence through aggressive solutions.
Invest in mental health resources.
If not us, then who?
If not now, elect real
leaders to the state house, state senate, Congress, and thank
you.
Thank you so much, Mike.
Next, I have the pleasure of introducing a dear friend
of mine, Kat Vargas, volunteer with the Texas chapter of
Mom to Man Action.
Hello, my name is Kat Vargas.
I'm a volunteer with the Texas chapter of Moms to
Man Action and a member of the Collin County community.
I first started volunteering in 2019 after the El Paso
shooting when a white supremacist left Allen and drove 650
miles to murder 23 people who look like my husband
and our beautiful boys.
I distinctly remember laying in bed with my husband that
August 3rd night.
We had two children at the time, and I remember
thinking we need it to be logical.
As I said, I'll cover the baby and you cover
the oldest because you're bigger.
It was at that moment something inside me broke.
This was not la logical.
Living this way is not rational, and I refuse to
accept it as normal.
Days later, I attended my first mom-to-man action meeting, and
for the last four years I have made the simple
commitment to keep showing.
In April, I joined Evalde families and survivors, my fellow
volunteers and other Texans, waiting 13 hours to testify on
House Bill 2734 to raise the age to 21 to
purchase and possess assault style weapons in Texas.
My husband is a first responder here in Allen.
And I testified that he came home.
Thank you.
And I testified that he came home with their training
one day, emotionally sharing.
We are training not to prevent shootings, but to arrive
to dead bodies and tear treatment for those we think
might be lucky enough to live.
Just two weeks later, he responded to the shooting at
the outlet mall.
Which should have been a fun day of shopping turned
into a war zone where children as young as three
years old were shot and killed.
We are here to say not one more.
Not one more.
This week in our state legislature, after an unprecedented bipartisan
vote out of the Community Safety Select Committee, Republicans refused
to bring raise the age for a full vote on
the House floor.
Shame on them!
Because Texas lawmakers have failed us repeatedly, refusing to take
action on even the most basic of gun safety solutions
that Texans agree on.
Local bomb demand action volunteers will now shift our focus
to federal action to protect our loved ones.
As we approach May 24th in the one-year mark of
the Evalde shooting, in the wake of our own community's
devastation, we call on Congress to reinstate the bipartisan assault
weapons ban.
These weapons of war have absolutely no place in our
streets or in our malls.
Well, today marks one week since our reported white supremacists
took the lives of at least eight of our neighbors
and community members, wounding at least seven more.
Tomorrow on Mother's Day will mark one year since the
white supremacists in Buffalo, New York took the lives of
ten people and wounded three others at a grocery store.
The shooters were armed with hate and a firearm.
Not only a firearm, but an assault weapon, a weapon
of war designed to kill as many people as quickly
as possible.
Congress passed an assault weapons ban in 1994 on a
bipartisan basis.
More than 50 Republicans in Congress voted in support.
But in 2004, the gun lobby prevented it from being
renewed.
They came together last summer to fight to pass the
bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
All we're asking is for Congress to find that common
ground again, to listen to the American people, to listen
to Texans and reinstate the bipartisan assault weapons ban.
So on tomorrow's Mother's Day, all over America, and especially
here in Texas, there are mothers that will go to
bed tonight asking themselves who will cover which child.
For more than thoughts and prayers, we are demanding policy
and change.
It will take all of us.
And I am asking that everyone here pull out your
phone right now.
And text FedUp to 6443.
Text FedUp to 6433 to get connected and
to make the calls to reinstate the bipartisan assault weapons
ban.
And I want you to make a promise to yourself
that you will continue to show up and demand Congress
do something now.
Thank you so much, Kat, and all the work you're
doing.
Next, we have Semina Kamali.
64433.
Yes, so I'm gonna repeat that.
Next up, we have Samina Kamali, attorney, activist, advocate for
civil rights and women's rights.
I'm not here representing any official organization or nonprofit or
community.
I'm here representing my broken heart.
Hold it on the side.
And my broken heart has something to say to you.
Take care of yourself.
Take care of the people that you love, and let
the people that you love take care of you.
Ending mass shootings in America is going to take a
change in our culture.
And that isn't going to happen in a matter of
days or weeks or months.
So we're in this together for a while.
They want to ignore the connection between mass shootings and
anti-immigrant rhetoric happening right now at the border.
Anti-Asian hate crimes, record high.
Anti-Semitic crimes, record high.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric by a city councilman right here in Allen.
It's all related, is my point.
It's all connected.
All the hate and violence is connected.
And now that we've made the problem so much bigger,
what are we going to do?
We know it's not ending with thoughts and prayers because
we heard earlier from our Methodist pastor that faith without
works is dead.
Just like John Lewis told his people who were marching
and risking their lives for civil rights.
And that phrase is a very paraphrased.
When you see a thing that is evil, you change
it with your hands.
If you cannot change it with your hands, you speak
out against it with your tongue.
If you cannot speak out against it with your tongue,
you hate it in your heart.
I told you at the beginning, my heart is broken.
But I have my hands and I have my voice,
and I am honored to be here with you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, S.
Again, go grab a bottle of water
Next up, I am so proud to introduce Sandvi Mukara
and the March for Our Lives Greater Dallas group.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Sandvi Mukara, and I'm the representative of
the Greater Dallas March for Our Lives chapter, where we
walk to mobilize youth and students to work to prevent
gun violence across America.
To start off, I'd like to thank every single one
of you for taking the time out of your day
to rally with us.
I'd now like to talk about why this event is
happening and why I'm here.
Gun violence isn't a problem, but rather a pandemic across
America.
It's the greatest public health crisis that we suffer from,
and it's also the largest leading cause of youth death
nationally.
When we further examine gun violence through a racial equity
lens, we can see that while gun violence affects every
community in the United States, young black and brown people
experience the highest rates of homicide.
However, gun violence is an urgent, complex, and multifaceted problem.
To facilitate structural change, we need legislative change.
And that is brought about by using our voices to
tell the people in power what we want.
Some of our elected representatives love sitting in the offices
that we put them in to protect us, doing absolutely
nothing.
And that's something that we all have the power to
change today.
I am here advocating with you all to make ripples
in a silent pond.
Although many criticized our efforts bleeding, but they would amount
to nothing.
When drivers see us from across the road, when we
make so much noise that residents open their windows to
see who's responsible for all the commotion, we'll make a
splash in that pond.
As we grieve for the city of Island, we turn
our grief into power and agency.
And as we stand here today, that splash in the
pond is going to keep rolling until it becomes a
huge wave.
One that will crash on the Capitol's doorstep.
No longer are we going to sit in silence and
fear as we watch our government fail to protect us.
We will march and rally and make noise every single
time to continue making ripples and waves in our tiny
little pond until eradication of gun violence across America is
a reality, not a dream.
Thank you.
Thanks again.
Sorry.
A group of responsible gun owners who believe in both
the Second Amendment and the name for responsible gun ownership.
I'm a Vietnam era veteran, a former NRA certified
firearms instructor.
I did that so I could teach Boy Scouts how
to use guns safely.
I'm also a hunter.
And finally, I'm a father and a grandfather.
And two weeks ago, my three-year-old granddaughter in San Antonio.,
her nursery school was closed down because of threats of
a shooter
I grew up in a time and place where guns
were mere tools used by farmers and ranchers
to rid their land of rattlesnakes and coyotes and occasionally
bring home a rabbit or pheasant for dinner.
The times have changed.
Today our melting pot is a nation going through seismic
shift in growth and diversity with inclusion,
immigration, rokeness, threatening those in power.
And when I say those in power, I have to
have a disclaimer because I am one of those predominantly
white male Christians.
As a result, we find ourselves in a growing culture
war, a battle fueled by fear, uncertainty, hatred,
and a digital Greek chorus with a broadcasting
a continual message of disinformation and diverseness and
division.
For some, particularly for some fireworks, firearms,
particularly uh assault rifles, have become holy icons
in this war.
And the right to carry them, as Mike Pence recently
told the NRA spoke at the NRA National Convention.
A God-given liberty.
Tragically, along with weaponizing God and worshiping guns,
we reverted to sacrificing our own.
Over forty, six hundred people lost their lives to gun
violence.
That was an eleven percent increase over the past year,
and an average of one death every two hours.
Almost sixteen victims per 100,000 residents.
We're in this crisis in the Lone Star State largely
because lawmakers, perhaps clinging to the myth of the gunslinging
American cowboy, have chosen to banter to a vocal minority
in order to maintain power.
I will tell you personally, I'm such a bad shooter,
I need more than three.
It's time our lawmakers acknowledge the blood on their hands.
Okay, mom
It's time they man up.
Ramp up their courage and honor the wishes of a
majority of us by passing some basic majors.
Again, including restrictions on a load.
We'll lose both of those rights.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kat.
We heard from so many thoughtful speakers today that joined
our Mother's Day of Action to show up for the
victims and survivors of the Allen Outlet Mall shooting that
happened just one week ago.
And we're gonna make our voices heard.
So join me in telling our lawmakers.
We're not gonna go away.
We're only gonna get louder.
Enough is enough!
Enough is enough.
Enough.
I do want to thank so many people that made
today happen.
All the organizations that you heard from, so many others
that are here.
We have voter registration tables.
We got everything.
You know, come see this when we're done.
Because we are going to take action.
Yes, we are.
And thank you to every single one of you that
is here today.
If this is your first time joining us, welcome.
Stay with us.
Keep showing up.
We need your voice.
We need you here.
Texas lawmakers have failed us time and time again.
And so we are here.
We are here to take federal action to protect our
loved ones.
So we have a lot of asks from you.
You heard a lot of them already.
We're gonna recap them right now.
If you're fed up, and if you didn't already text,
text ready to 64433.
That is how you're going to find out about our
wear orange dates or pride dates.
That is how you can take action right now, as
early as next Saturday.
So please text.
If you are a student, if you know students, sell
them to text students to 64433.
And use your voice.
Share what you heard today.
All these organizations we heard from, and so many more
are doing the work that we need to make change.
I am just, I'm so overwhelmed that all of you.
Thank you!
We have a chase of rings.
Now we're sweating out here.
It doesn't matter.
You're gonna hear us.
That's a beautiful song
So as we heard from our Clean the Block initiative,
we have a lot of great events coming up for
that event.
Wear Orange Weekend.
That is National Gun Violence Awareness Day, where we're gonna
take action to honor victims and survivors of gun violence.
Dallas County has some events, Terrant County has some events.
Stay tuned for call in.
But you know, we have so many things coming up.
We want you there.
We need you there.
So please, again, text so that you can find out
about everything we're working on.
I do want to ask Blair.
It's me again.
Okay, y'all.
Um some wonderful volunteers helped me, and we distributed these
red flags.
Okay.
Um, most of them have a sticker on it that
has the name and age and date, and some of
them have cities of people who have died by gun
violence in the state of Texas since January 1st, 2023.
There's a couple that have some some gun violence stats
on there as well, but we handed out 300 flags.
Yay!
So here's what we're gonna do because visual optics matter.
So I want you guys to all take your red
flags, and there's a very tall gentleman wearing sunglasses.
I see him.
Do you see him?
No, don't turn around, sir.
Don't turn around yet.
Okay, so in a minute, when Alyssa, because she's in
charge, tells you that we're gonna do this.
What I want you to do is I want you
to go over there and I want you to plant
your flags sort of like, you know, a foot apart,
six inches across, whatever.
Plant your flag and then gather behind them so that
the playground is in the background.
Okay.
Take your signs, get get act like you like each
other, get kind of condensed, you know.
But we're gonna put our flags in there, we're gonna
take a big group shot.
Sorry, language, group picture.
Um, you're welcome
to.
If you would like to leave it, I will take
them later.
If you want to take it with you and go
put it in some lawmakers' yard, I didn't say that.
Don't worry about that.
Don't be like me.
Here's Alyssa.
Thank you, Blair.
I do want to highlight another point of action that
everyone here in our community can take.
Everyone across the nation can take today.
The city of Allen is honoring a moment of silence
today at 3 36 p.m.
Please set your alarms right now and join us in
doing that to honor those eight lives.
I'm gonna leave you with this last thing.
Use your voice.
Your voice is important.
You matter.
Call your legislators, call your friends, call your family.
Use your voice.
Remember why you're here today.
Remember what brought you here.
Remember why you want change.
Go forth.
Yay.
Where is the where I can find it?