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The student organized and led March For Our Lives event occurring noon Saturday in Asbury Park will kick off from Library Square Park, traverse down to and then along the Asbury Park boardwalk to Bradley Park, according to Mark McDonald – one of the few adults aiding Asbury Park, Ocean Township and Long Branch youth.

“I’m really just handling the logistics for them,” McDonald, an Asbury Park resident said. “I’m helping them with insurance, permits, sound, and stages. It’s the youth that had the passion desire and commitment.”

The students have been working for over a month to organize the event but the recent snow storm has shifted the plans.

Instead of meeting in the park, participants will rally at the corner of Asbury Avenue and Heck Street, adult organizer Jesse Rindner of Ocean Township said.

The 26-year-old video editor, who works at Refinery29  in New York City, said she had no idea the event post would take off in the way it has.

“I thought I’d make a Facebook event and would have to bribe 20 friends to participate,” she said. “But I literally woke up the next day to 200 people saying they would be interested in coming.”

Admittedly not an activist, the Asbury Park native said the adults [which also include members of the Women’s March Asbury Park organizers, Joe Grillo and Geri Jannarone] wanted to ensure the event was student led and runned.

“This is my first time doing this and I’m just learning as I go,” she said. “We just wanted to help get these kids together and give them the tools they need.”

The event will feature predominantly youth speakers, including two Asbury Park High School students, Ocean Township students who endured a terroristic threat from a fellow student two years ago, a young girl whose Temple received similar threat, and a young woman whose father was shot and killed, Rindner said. There will also be address from Biotech and Communications High School students, performance from local student youth choirs and bands, and a spoken word youth poet.

“I think it will be really touching,” the Asbury Park native whose father Joe was born and bred in the city, said. “I feel like the issue is very black and white. We are coming from a place where we are not against gun ownership but we are against gun violence. I feel like it’s a very non partisan issue and we just want to make sure everyone stays healthy and alive.

“Due to the snow we changed from having the rally on the grass to the streets so that way people don’t get all muddy,” she said. “The time and speakers will still be the same just moved over a couple hundred feet.”

McDonald said no politicians or adults will be allowed to address the crowd, other than the one or two adult gun violence speakers.

Jannarone, in a written statement said, the Asbury Park community will join the thousands of Americans across the country inspired by, and led by students who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar.

The March For Our Lives campaign launched in the tragic wake of the 17 lives cut short in Parkland, Fla., on February 14.

“The collective voices of the March For Our Lives movement will be heard,” Jannarone said “School safety is not a political issue. There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing.”

The March For Our Lives Asbury Park event runs from noon to 3 p.m. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

[Photos courtesy of March For Our Lives Asbury Park organizers]

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