city. joshua jamerson, national politics reporter, scott wong, senior staff writer for the hill. chris, start us off right now as you re out there, is there a hope that you re seeing from those that are marching and participating in these manages there s a moment something might actually get done? i think that s exactly the feeling, richard, among the people out here today. this recess rally as they were calling it wrapped up about a half hour ago. obviously very, very hot and humid here today. the organizers were pleased with the turnout. i would say at least 100 people out here today in foley square in lower manhattan. the people that i spoke withing are cautiously optimistic i think i could say. they see this as a moment where unfortunately, because of the mass shootings we ve had recently and some of the inner turmoil going on at the nra there might be a little bit of movement. now it s very important to point
we ve moved down into the crowd now since last time we talked to you and you can take a look for yourself at what we re seeing here. it actually is a pretty good turnout here today. given as i said before it s extremely hot. very humid here. a lot of people drinking water before this thing started earlier. a lot of people were kind of hiding in the tree-lined walk behind me. just to stay out of the sun. but once they started this event a little after 2:00 eastern time, a lot of these people came forward. we saw some poignant moments earlier when they called the organizers, every town for gun safety, called people who had been personally affected by gun violence to the front and held a moment of silence. there were about a dozen people there who had directly lost people to gun violence. kind of a touching moment. we ve heard from advocates. we heard from democratic congresswoman carolyn maloney who represents the east side here. this is one of 100 of these things taking place over yeste
he s talking about something else. it s all about putting himself in the media and making him look good. i don t think he s helped us one iota when it comes to gun safety laws. we the people, like you said, we have to keep pushing and if we keep pushing they have no choice but to start listening. they have to listen and if they don t listen, we re just going to push them out and we have to keep at it. that s what we re doing and that s what the recess rally was all about. we have to continue to be heard. we can t just let a mass shooting take place and then all of a sudden let s say it happens on monday, by friday it withers away and monday there s something else. we have to keep at it and that s what we re doing. i have to be positive because if we don t continue to be positive, what are we doing? christina, how much has the landscape changed as you see it? you mentioned the recess rallies. there s big spending now on advertising as well. we re headed towards an election. this is pa
rid now at a so-called recess rally that was happening earlier. what are people there telling you, natasha. ana, this rally was a little bit different in the sense that it was organized on the local level without any coordination with these other rallies around the country. when they found out that others were doing this and the organizers said they felt empowered and the people behind this one today were college students. they simply were in so much grief about their hometown going through this tragedy that they wanted to take some sort of action. they wanted to come out and register voters, to educate people, to really not take this massively, and moms demand action which is involved in some of these other rallies around country found out they were doing this and offered them assistance. so this is a very organically organized event today where veronica escobar, a congresswoman in the area spoke to the crowd about some of the things that she feels lawmakers