Pastor said marching is sin. They left his church -- now will march in DC for gun control

A Columbus area family will turn their spring break trip to Washington into a real-life lesson about protesting with their children when they participate in the March For Our Lives.

Shannon and Ronnie Klein of Harris County, along with their three children, Nora, Cavan and Lila, plan to be at Saturday’s demonstration in the nation’s capital. The march is being organized by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were massacred on Feb. 14. Similar protests are scheduled around the country and the world, including in Columbus and Atlanta. Supporters are calling for stricter gun control laws to prevent gun violence and mass shootings.

The local demonstration, organized by Indivisible Columbus, is scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., starting on the Broadway median between 10th and 11th streets. The scheduled speakers include state Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, Muscogee County Sheriff Donna Tompkins, Columbus Councilor Mimi Woodson of District 7, Muscogee County School Board member Pat Hugley Green of District 1 and local students.

The Columbus march is expected to begin between 12:30 and 1 p.m. from the west side of Broadway at 11th Street and end at the same location. The planned route goes south from the stage on Broadway and 11th Street, , right onto 10th Street, right onto Bay Avenue, right onto 12th Street, right onto Front Avenue, left onto 11th Street and back to the stage on Broadway.

Meanwhile, the Kleins will be at the march in Washington.

“It can be considered controversial to take your family, to take your kids, but I feel like it’s something that we value and teach our kids, to participate in all levels of life,” said Shannon, who owns a catering business called Food Blossoms and works on Jenny Jack Sun Farm in Pine Mountain. “... If we want our ideals in our laws and in our government, then we have to sacrifice some of our daily lives and participate. So that’s what I’m trying to teach my kids, that we will sacrifice part of our vacation. We’ll drive far and deal with the sort of controversial part too, and we’ll participate. Our voice is our power as a people.”

Nora, a sophomore at Harris County High School, appreciates that mindset.“I think we’re really lucky to have parents that encourage us to be a part of things and inform us about what’s going on in the world, enough that we can make our own decisions,” she said.

Then she added with a laugh, “And they let us skip school to participate in the march.”

After school Thursday, the Kleins were in downtown Columbus for Nora’s ballet class. Their car already was packed for the next day’s drive to Washington. Along with their luggage, they had their homemade protest signs, including the following messages:

▪ “Books not bullets”

▪ “We are students. We are change.”

▪ “No more silence. Stop gun violence.”

▪ “#Enough is #enough.”

Before the March For Our Lives was announced, the Kleins already had planned to be in Washington on that date because family friends had invited them to stay with them for spring break. So while visiting historic sites, they will help make history by joining the more than 500,000 expected marchers — similar to the Women’s March that Shannon attended last year, the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The Kleins’ pastor at the time told their congregation that marching is a sin, Shannon said.

“We were just mortified,” she said. “Yes, he is talking about us.”

In the parking lot of that church, Shannon said, Ronnie told their children, “Kids, we will march to change laws that should be changed.”

Then he told them, Shannon said, that’s how segregation ended, by marching.

“So we are proud to march, but it’s not easy,” she said. “It’s been hard for us. We didn’t want to leave our church.”

Now, they attend a church that welcomes their activism, Shannon said.

Nora, 16, is one of the two Harris County High School students who worked with the principal to conduct a ceremony on March 14, the day of the National School Walkout to advocate for more gun control and mark the one-month anniversary of the Florida mass shooting.

Her stance generated “hateful” comments on Facebook after the Ledger-Enquirer reported her involvement in the event, Nora said, but she is encouraged by her schoolmates’ reaction when they hear she is going to the Washington march.

“Even my friends that are more pro-gun, so they don’t agree with my views politically, they’ve messaged me and they’ve been sorry for all the people that have maybe been hateful toward you, but we’re really proud that you’re standing up for what you believe in, and we’ll always be behind you,” Nora said. “... I had a lot of people apologizing to me for what other people were saying and telling me not to read it.”

Ronnie, a business analyst in the Columbus office of Togetherwork, a group management software and payments company headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., emphasized the importance of marching as a family.

“It’s a big sense of unity,” Ronnie said. “There’s strength in numbers.”

Even if you’re 8 years old.

Lila said she told her second-grade teacher at Mulberry Creek Elementary School that her family is going to the Washington march. The teacher then told the class about how citizens in other countries, such as Australia and Japan, convinced their legislators to “make gun laws better,” Lila said.

“When you have a gun,” she said, “you have to be old enough, and you have to keep them in safes, away from children to protect people.”

Cavan, 12, a seventh-grader at Harris County Carver Middle School, said, “We need laws, common-sense laws, about guns.”

Gun control doesn’t mean taking guns away, Nora noted. It’s about “making sure guns are regulated so they don’t get in the wrong hands,” she said.

Shannon called for banning assault weapons and stopping “the normalization of young boys owning them, so that we can at least stigmatize that to the point that people are only using guns for hunting, sporting and protection.”

This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 11:45 AM with the headline "Pastor said marching is sin. They left his church -- now will march in DC for gun control."