Hardee and Highlands County students join March for Our Lives

Bowling Green - Young people marched in Bowling Green today to support the March for Our Lives movement.

The "sibling march" allowed students and families in Hardee and Highlands Counties the opportunity to join in the national movement to call on lawmakers to create laws and protect students' lives with new legislation regarding firearms.

March organizer JaKevis Brown brought together students and community members in this gathering at New Life Power Outreach Church in Bowling Green.

There, the crowd said the Pledge of Allegiance, heard from Bowling Green Mayor Sam Fite, Bishop Wilfred Smith, Jack Brown and other speakers and displayed their March for Our Lives signs and other banners protesting gun violence.

Brown, a Hardee Senior High School student, and assistant organizer Ashja Camel read the names of the 17 victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Balloons were released in honor of those students killed in Parkland.