WASHINGTON: Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to rally nationwide on Saturday for tighter gun laws in “March For Our Lives” protests led by survivors of the Florida school massacre, which reiginited public anger over mass shootings.
Students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 students and staff were killed on Feb. 14 will be among the 500,000 people organizers say could rally on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol in Washington.
The protests orchestrated by survivors of the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are aimed at breaking through a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to tighten firearms controls. Mass shootings at American schools and colleges have become a regular occurrence.
“This issue is going to turn into the No. 1 issue in this country. I know that’s not only what I want, but I know it’s what you guys want,” Alfonso Calderon, a junior at the Florida school, told Washington students at a pre-march event on Thursday.
The Washington rally is among more than 800 events scheduled worldwide, with US demonstrations set from San Clemente, California, to New York and Parkland, according to gun-control group Everytown For Gun Safety.
The teenage organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities, with singer Ariana Grande and “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda among those performing in Washington.
“Trainwreck” star Amy Schumer is set to appear at the Los Angeles rally. Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife have donated $500,000 and said they would be at the Washington rally.
Organizers want Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election this year, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers. On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.
On Friday, Republican President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.
David Hogg, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, said the protests were a way for young Americans to show their opposition to the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun lobby.
“We’re asking people (to) put the USA over the NRA,” he said at the Thursday event in Washington.
An NRA spokeswoman said it had not taken a position on the protests.
Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25,000 first-time voters at the rallies, potentially a boost for Democrats, who generally favor stricter gun controls.
Hundreds of thousands set to march for tighter US gun controls
Hundreds of thousands set to march for tighter US gun controls
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
