Newtown Activists Cycle to Hartford for March for Our Lives

NEWTOWN, CT — One group of activists gathering at Edmond Town Hall in Newtown at 8:30 am on Saturday, March 24, to participate in the March for Our Lives rally in Hartford won't be clamoring aboard a waiting bus. Instead, Team 26, will be bicycling up to the state capital.

The Newtown-based Team 26 has ridden in protest of gun violence every year since its inception shortly after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. According to Monte Frank, the group's founder and a declared candidate for Lt. Governor, this rally is different. He sees it as much a tribute to a new spirit of anti-gun activism as a protest.

"When we started this in 2013 we wanted to make sure that it was a moment, but it's turned into a movement. And so we have had high school and college kids ride with us over the last five years, and we have slowly seen momentum build. Now I feel like the dam is bursting open as students emerge and raise their voices that they have had enough," Frank said.

Team 26 expects to place between 30 and 50 cyclists on the road to the rally in Hartford, where they will join an anticipated crowd of around 10,000 around 12:30 pm. The gathering at the capital is among many "sister rallies" to be held in cities nationwide that mirror the principal protest in Washington, D.C.