Marching for Our Lives, Not Yours: An analysis of frames, news coverage, and the March for Our Lives movement

Abstract

This article examines youth activists from the “March for Our Lives” movement and how their identities impact their framing of gun violence. Analyzing speeches orated at one of the largest gun violence prevention (GVP) protests ever, this article exposes how the positionality and lived experience of white and/or affluent actors influences their framing and results in the exclusion of urban gun violence acted upon Black people and people of colour. This article finds that the MFOL movement reinforces racial hierarchies of worthy victims by describing the ‘characters’ and ‘settings’ of gun violence as those consistent with mass or school shootings. Despite the shortcomings of the MFOL movement, this paper suggests that the current issue attention cycle is conducive to conversations about the intersections of gun violence with race and that activists of colour are the ones leading these conversations.