CHAPEL HILL, NC – Amie Boakye is a UNC freshman from Loiusville, Kentucky. She was at the Kentucky State Fair when a shot was fired, leading families to flee the fairgrounds in terror.
“I just remember moms and their children running through and them shoving through,” Boakye said.
She said she and a friend ran over two miles from the fairgrounds to a hotel where her dad was able to safely pick her up.
One day, Boakye saw a flier advertising a rally against gun violence and reached out to the organizers.
“I immediately knew I wanted to participate due to my experience with gun violence,” she said.
UNC March for Our Lives hosted a rally calling awareness to gun violence and promoting action for gun control legislation Friday following the City of Raleigh’s first mass shooting.
The rally included a moment of silence, chanting, and testimonies from fellow Tarheels who have experienced gun violence firsthand.
“Living in a city traumatized by gun violence desensitized me to it, kept me living in fear, and overall had an impact on the way I and other young activists live our lives,” Boakye said during her speech at the rally.
Boakye’s hometown of Louisville suffers a high death toll to guns. Jefferson county, Kentucky had rates of 20.2 gun deaths per 100,000 according to research from EveryTown, an organization promoting gun safety. That can be compared to the rate of 6.7 gun deaths per 100,000 here in Orange county.
“Being a part of something like that- even just watching it go down in your community so much, you become aware of the effects that it has on the people around you,” Boakye said.
While the rally was not planned in response to the mass shooting in Raleigh the day before, UNC March for Our Lives president Megan Chen said that the timing really highlighted the importance of this issue both locally and nationally.
When asked about the aims of this rally were, Chen said this:
“We really just want people to head to the polls and make the changes necessary that we have been lacking in our government for far too long.”