Coalition sets out from campus for peace day
Armed with handmade signs and a message of peace, students marched from campus to the
Statehouse, where they stood in demonstration for the United Nations’ annual International Day of Peace Friday afternoon.
Hosted by //Forward, a coalition of progressive organizations on campus, the demonstration included representatives from campus chapters of Amnesty International, the Roosevelt Institute, Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Association, the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, the Secular Student Alliance and S.W.A.R.M.
Fourth-year biology and French student Kali Esancy, the president of USC’s Amnesty International chapter, said she hoped the march would promote an awareness of general peace and peaceful causes.
“I just want (people) to pause and think, because I feel like peace is something that people don’t really think of and they just take for granted,” Esancy said. “We just want to reflect more deeply upon peace and how it’s integral to everything, really.”
Jared Marr, a fourth-year political science student and president of the Roosevelt Institute, praised the cooperation and solidarity of the organizations as they came together to promote the ideal of peace.
“All these organizations that all come from different backgrounds and all have different purposes, but they all share this commonality and can all come together for this purpose,” Marr said. “You can’t create peace through war and things of that nature. You need to go in with a mind-set of peace in order to achieve peace.”
The International Day of Peace is observed worldwide each year on Sept . 21. The U.N.’s General Assembly promotes the occasion as “a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples.”