Saturday afternoon, I was walking through Times Square in Manhattan with my mom and little brother when a police officer stopped me and ask if I had marched earlier in the day. I’m assuming he asked because he caught sight of the “Enough is Enough” T-shirt I was wearing. I had filled the dual roles of covering the Westfield march for Hi’s Eye and adding my voice to the call for gun control.

I told him that I did march today, and his response was immediate: “Thank you,” he said. With his hand on my shoulder, the officer began to explain that our generation is the generation that is going to change everything. He said he wished that he would have done things like this at my age. He emphasized to me that he and many others are supporting us and stated that they are there for us if we ever need anything.

As we continued walking, we heard chants coming from across the street. We crossed and saw that it was a carryover march, several hours after New York’s own March for Our Lives had concluded. Teenagers with shirts and signs were gathered in a circle, holding hands as they screamed chants such as, “No fear! No hate! We just want to graduate!” and “Never again!”

The one thing that caught my eye the most was a teenage boy who had an orange shirt on to symbolize the colors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. But the difference between his shirt and the others was that he wrote out each victim’s name from the Feb. 14 shooting, along with names from other mass shootings in recent U.S. history. These names covered the front and back of his shirt. He said, “I just felt this was the right way to memorialize the victims.”

My mom, little brother and I only watched this mini-march for 10 minutes and left only because we were going to miss our train home. But the atmosphere around these 30 teenagers was amazing. They represent a movement that won’t stop until change happens.