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Tri-State Students Prepare To Attend 'March For Our Lives' Rally

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- In the wake of last month's deadly school shooting in Florida, students in our area are preparing to travel to Washington for the "March for our Lives" rally.

Their signs are ready and their chants rehearsed after the money for their trip was raised in just two hours.

50 students at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens Village are eager to rally like they've never done before.

"We want to make sure that children from a very young age, even high school have that chance," 11th grader Hazveen Loazare said. "To live their life and not having to worry about getting hurt in schools."

A coach bus will take them to Washington DC, where the group will take part in the protest spurred by the mass shooting of 17 people at a high school in Florida.

"Children matter, and just because we are children it doesn't mean our voices don't matter," 11th grader Harmonia Peet said.

Peet is the president of the high school's student organization. She wants a strong message heard this weekend.

"We hope that essential guns are restricted in some sort of way and that students are protected better and no kind of school shooting should happen again," she said.

Peet and her classmates took part in the national walkout last week, thinking their activism may stop there since they couldn't afford to get to the nation's capital. That is, until Marisa Kabas came along.

"The kids are ready, they're energized and the future will be better because these young people are not giving legislators a choice," the Brooklyn activist told CBS2.

Kabas is a friend of the principal, and set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the trip. In just five hours, people donated enough to go.

School faculty think the event will be groundbreaking.

"Amazing teachable moment about the power of young people and the good that they can do," Principal Sam Cochet said.

It's the first time the kids will be going to Washington for an organized trip.

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