Focused Read in 3 minutes
( If you missed the Town Hall you can watch it here )
“War Room ~
The teenage strategy
sessions that built an anti-gun movement out of the trauma of
Parkland in one week...
(By Lisa Miller
Photographs By Andres
Kudacki)
… The teenagers who quickly became the faces
of the trauma were not those who had been the closest to the violence
or to the dead — the largest portion of whom were in the ninth
grade in what’s known as the freshman building. Most of those
students and their families are suffering in all the cruel and
by-now-expected ways; overwhelmed with loss, they are numb and
raging, sometimes to the point of paralysis and surreal disbelief,
and, to the public, mostly invisible. But a different cadre of
students, spared the worst, has exhibited a very different response:
Activated by fury, demanding to be heard, they had the emotional
bandwidth to strategize and to give sound bites as needed.
Most of these kids are
juniors and seniors who, in the taxonomy of high school, were
the “misfits,” says David (Hogg).
Theater geeks and drama nerds and
journalism fanatics, these are the kids who like to perform, who have
scrutinized the president’s use of Twitter, who voraciously consume
media of all kinds.
David is the kind of person who wakes at 3:30
a.m. to study...;
drives to school listening to NPR;
works in
the school-community garden dreaming of hydroponics because he has
ideas about growing food on Mars;
and then after school streams Vox,
Philip DeFranco, Al Jazeera, “and CNN somewhat,” until it’s
time for bed.
Delaney Tarr, 17, a senior,
is a “fangirl” of
quality photojournalism
who loves John Oliver
and Jordan Klepper
and
binges on One Day at a Time.
Emma González,
who spoke at a
Fort Lauderdale rally three days after the shooting,
is president of
her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.
Cameron Kasky,
whose
living room has become the movement’s headquarters,
is an actor.
Just days after the
shooting, Cameron mentioned to his friend Jaclyn Corin, junior-class
president, his “grand idea” (her words) to start a movement.
The
concept was to pull five core people together, “create a march and
get in the media and pull the focus onto the politicians who are
performing poorly in their jobs,” Jaclyn explains.
It was Cameron
who pushed out the hashtag #neveragain, encouraging everyone on his
feeds to repost and retweet at the same instant: Friday the 16th at 3
p.m.
At first, when Cameron floated the hashtag, “we were like,
‘Isn’t that like something the Holocaust survivors used?’ And
then we were like, ‘Whatever, it’s fine,’ ” Jaclyn says.
On Friday, a small group
of Cameron’s friends, including Jaclyn and Alex Wind, a
musical-theater buff, met at Cameron’s house to start making plans.
But for all the student
activists, and for a nation watching Parkland, the gun-control rally
in Fort Lauderdale, organized by Florida state senator Gary Farmer
with help from other groups, was a turning point.
There, Emma stood
up and became the face and voice of what, it was suddenly clear, was
not just a trauma but a student-led movement —
her tearful
incredulity at what had just happened at her school, her fury at
politicians’ complicity with the gun lobby, and her insistence
on a strong, rational response to the deaths of innocents instantly
an emotional proxy for every American who since Columbine has been
observing the political paralysis on this issue with barely
suppressed rage.
“Maybe the adults have gotten used to saying, ‘It
is what it is,’ ” she said from the podium, wiping tears with
the heels of her palms,
“but if us students have learned anything,
it’s that if you do not study, you will fail. And this case, if you
actively do nothing, people will continually end up dead. We are
going to be the kids you read about in textbooks.”
In her black tank top,
with raggedy friendship bracelets stacked on her wrist, Emma looked,
as the comments said, so relatable — she could have
been any teenager you know.
For kids raised on dystopian fiction,
Emma was the recognizable warrior-heroine.
For kids whose political
awareness was sparked during #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, Emma spoke
in a familiar cadence about power, corruption, and powerlessness: “We
are pissed-off millennials who are tired of taking people’s shit,”
David says. “When you raise a generation of children telling them
they need to be ready for a school shooting, how the fuck does that
not change something?”
... More important was what
followed. Cameron’s small band grasped immediately that it needed
to join forces with the other Douglas students who had become
super-visible, and after the rally on Saturday night, about 20 kids
gathered at his house for a strategy session...“The people at
Cameron’s house are some of the smartest people in the school,”
says Jaclyn. “We just knew what to do to get the job done the
quickest and most powerful way.”
Ted Deutch, Parkland’s
representative in Congress, had been interviewed several weeks before
at the high school by David, and he stopped by Cameron’s house
later that weekend to see how he could help. Walking up the driveway,
Deutch saw Emma on the stoop, sorting through messages and talking
with Demi Lovato on her cell.
Deutch told the kids to keep doing what
they were doing, “that they should continue speaking out in their
own voice. They shouldn’t let people tell them what to say or how
to say it. They should reject offers of talking points.
The reason
that they’re so effective, that they’ve caught on, is that
they’re so genuine.
… The parents look on
cautiously, proud of their children and worried for their safety and
health. Already they have been the targets of death threats and
conspiracy theories.
... Trickier than logistics is
the longer-term project of navigating the tripwires within the reform
movement itself, mostly about just how much reform to push for.
More
difficult, maybe, is the question of how these well-off, telegenic
kids will use their new platform to help amplify the voices of
inner-city kids for whom gun violence is, statistically, a far bigger
problem. They already understand this issue.
“We know that the reason that we’re getting this attention is because we’re privileged white kids,” says Delaney.
“We just try to make a
difference so that those who are not as affluent, as wealthy, as we
are won’t have to deal with this either. Because if you look at
Chicago, there’s such a high level of gun violence. But that’s
not getting the attention that this is getting because we’re in
such a nice area.”
The ghastly irony is that
for some of these newly minted activists, as for many of their
generation, viral exposure has been a youthful ambition...
Delaney
stops to consider what her life has become, a kid who once collected
oversize spectacles and whose spangled prom dress is hanging in her
room.
“But this is about a much bigger thing here.”
You
can read the story in its entirety here
You
can find the “March for Our Lives” petition here
You
can register to vote here
For more information, you can find the "March For Our Lives" here
Focused Thought in 45 seconds
( Meme courtesy of Tina Vigilante over on Google Plus )
Focused Action in 30 seconds
You can share Vote Vets Tweet here
.
.
.
→ Direct sources for Democrats:
* ( Personal favored and most informative follows are shared here with the understanding that readers will always apply their own critical thinking to any information provided anywhere by anyone. #StrongerTogether does not share sources of information lightly but -- no one is perfect! -- so always #DistrustAndVerify I am using a star rating that is strictly based on my situational experience with the work of the media personality specifically in relation to issues of interest to me. )
The Democratic Party Website
Also
C-SPAN (a good place for speeches & hearings direct source (s))
→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of the most credible media -- at the moment:
📰📰📰 Mother Jones
→ Some of the most credible Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
( 📎 Interesting to note: Wallace, a Republican (an inactive Republican I believe she calls herself) is new to the job but for right now she has clearly put country over party and her work on Trump GOP has been credible, IMO... )
...for Networking for Democrats today!
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
📎 Note: I rarely get involved in primary races -- outside of those in my own area. And, unless there is a glaring reason that can not be ignored, I support Democratic Party nominees winning in general elections.
.
.
.
(Linked) "...is our 2016 platform...a declaration of how we plan to move America forward. Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
*
Curated by Gail Mountain, with occasional personal commentary, Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
( You can also find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GKMTNtwits )
*
See the League of Women Voters website:
Vote411 here
Thank you for focusing!
g., aka Focused Democrat
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
No comments:
Post a Comment