Organizers and community members gathered in Merced on June 24th to pay homage to the nine African-American victims killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Organized in conjunction with Live Free Merced and Mt. Pisgah, the local AME church, the event brought together about 60 people.
We’Ced youth journalists recently spent time discussing the massacre at the Emanuel African African Methodist Episcopalian Church in downtown Charleston, which had a white shooter killing nine African-Americans. Many We’Ced members expressed outrage at the actions of the shooter, but the conversation soon began to circle around another issue: gun control. The tragic violence of this incident rekindled questions about how we regulate guns and guns access in our country.