Roughly two dozen people wearing orange T-shirts marched in downtown Mountain View on Sunday to speak out against gun violence. The event, which organizers had been planning for months as part of Gun Violence Awareness Weekend, happened to take place just two days after a San Diego federal judge overturned California's 32-year-old ban on assault weapons.
Volunteers with the San Jose chapter of Moms Demand Action met at Mountain View City Hall before marching down Castro Street to the Mountain View Transit Center and back. Organizers said they wore orange to honor survivors and victims of gun violence and were also marching to honor the victims of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority light rail yard mass shooting in San Jose.
The group carried large plastic bags filled with 2,700 handmade origami boxes, each box representing a life lost to gun violence, as part of a partnership with the Soul Box Project, started by an artist in Portland to raise awareness of the United States' gun violence epidemic.
“You don't really know who is a survivor of this epidemic," said event co-organizer Rachel Michelson to the assembled volunteers, kicking off the event. "And I think there's much more of us walking around, maybe we don't even realize it ourselves, that are indeed impacted."