Can music galvanize the nation to fight for gun reform? Philly’s Theresa Marsh hopes so.

It was last May, while watching the television news reports about the mass shooting unfolding at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that Theresa Marsh had an epiphany.

The protest movement against gun violence needed a protest anthem. Something unforgettable like “We Shall Overcome” which became an essential protest song of the civil rights movement. Marsh felt a shared song would help galvanize the nation to fight for gun reform. The problem is no song existed.

So, she wrote one.

Called “Always Love You,” Marsh, a retired English professor, will debut her song at a family-friendly concert she has organized this Saturday at West Philadelphia’s Calvary Center starting at 4 p.m.

According to Marsh, the anthem is the centerpiece of her Always Love You Initiative, which uses music to advocate for gun reform legislation, especially to ban assault weapons. This inaugural concert will also include classical, spiritual and funk music and will feature the Bismuth Quartet.

In addition, there will be a video presentation of the 21 mural portraits of the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting. For the children, Shariq Syed Raza, a trauma surgeon from Penn Medicine, will take questions from children about gun safety.

“Only the children will be allowed to ask questions,” Marsh said.

Marsh’s song was actually first created 10 years ago, in the wake of another mass shooting— this one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. where 20 children and six adults were murdered. Marsh said she couldn’t erase the images of the parents whose faces reflected “utter desolation and grief.”

When she heard about Uvalde, Marsh said, “I burst into tears. I don’t want to live in a country where a weapon is more important than children.” Then she dusted off her old song.

“I don’t want to live in a country where a weapon is more important than children.”

With America’s attention turning to the presidential election of 2024, Marsh said it is time to push to ban assault weapons and for voters to consider the gun reform positions of candidates running for public office.

While her efforts are nonpartisan with the singular goal of ending school shootings, she said she will “use the song as a jumping-off point to create the initiative. The initiative gives an opportunity to say this [mass school shootings] is outrageous.”

This year has been one of the most violent in history for school shootings. According to Education Week, there have already been 41 incidents that have resulted in injuries or fatalities — the most since the magazine started keeping an accounting in 2018.

It’s statistics like these that give the song’s lyrics its urgency.

“This is just one event. My vision is that others will want to present the concert,” Marsh said.

This isn’t Marsh’s first attempt to use music to bring attention to the horrors of current events. She once asked Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel for his help with a musical she had written about African genocide, especially in the Sudan.

“I read your letter with interest, but I don’t see how I could help: theater is not my area of competence,” Wiesel responded, adding,“Still, as you work to raise awareness of the horrors of genocide, naturally you have my best wishes.”