Montserrat Garrido traveled from Hood River to Washington, D.C., for the March For Our Lives rally. She wore a shirt signed by all of her friends and family.
Courtesy of Montserrat Garrido
Montserrat Garrido started seeing other kids as soon as she got off the plane in Baltimore, Maryland. They wore T-shirts that read “Fight For Our Lives” and “Never Again.”
They were young people, like her, who had traveled thousands of miles to be at the “March For Our Lives” rally in Washington, D.C.
Garrido, a 16-year-old junior at Hood River High School, was flying from Portland with her father. She had packed a special shirt of her own for the big march: a white T-shirt with signatures from her friends, family and neighbors in Hood River.
“Everyone signed it so I could take them with me,” Garrido said.
Through an online fundraiser, the Southwest Washington Coalition Action Network was able to raise enough money to send Garrido and her father to the national march.
The Hood River teen had recently helped organize a walkout at her high school to rally for stricter gun control measures after 17 people were killed in a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month.
“In my community, sometimes I feel like it’s just me,” Garrido said. “There’s two other students that are as involved as I am. And I felt alone until I came here today.”
At Saturday’s march, Garrido and her father joined hundreds of thousands of people. As she walked the National Mall, she saw people of all ages and skin colors banding together for this one cause, she said.
“It was something that I’ll never forget, just looking around that sea of people,” she said. “I couldn’t even see the end of the crowd. It just went for miles.”
Sixteen-year-old Montserrat Garrido of Hood River was one of hundreds of thousands of people who marched in the nation's capital on Saturday to rally for stricter gun control after last month's school shooting in Florida.
Courtesy of Montserrat Garrido
Garrido had considered marching locally in Portland, but she felt she would be missing out on a historic moment if she didn’t make it to D.C.
“It’s the heart of our country. It’s where everything happens,” she said. “I just felt like I had to be a part of this.”
Before the march, Garrido took an early morning tour of the U.S. Capitol and the Senate. She had hoped to meet with Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, her representative in Hood River and the state's only Republican member of Congress.
Garrido said she received an email from Walden’s office the day before the march saying they had just missed each other. He was already out of town and back in Oregon.