Join the Parkland Students’ Civil Rights Movement! An Action List for Youth

“We’re going to be the last mass shooting… [We] The victims are the change we need to see.” 

~Emma Gonzales, student, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida

In response to the urgency of Emma Gonzales’ passionate commitment, this blog will spotlight both the variety of actions that kids are taking and can take in response to the latest mass shootings and ways adults can and must can support them. It concludes with a resource list and an events calendar, and an urgent plea for your help in adding to the list, a list to which our youth add every day. 

First, let’s consider why this mass shooting is different, qualitatively different, and why it needs our immediate attention.

• The youth are leading, shaming us, the adults who have failed them. They’re shaming us to join them on the line where they now stand. Listen to Emma Gonzales, a student at Parkland, now stunningly-moving advocate. Have a Kleenex ready and your sneakers laced: you will want to act. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxD3o-9H1ly
• Second, recognize that it’s more than policy. It’s a movement, a drive for a basic civil right – freedom from fear, in short, a Civil Rights movement. Youth will be criticized (the NRA has labeled them “puppets of the left,” pawns in the “deep state”); they will be shushed, shunned, harassed, even hurt, but they will not let go. They’re putting themselves on the line, asking us to support them. Most telling is the fact that if we don’t show up, they won’t stop. And they haven’t. In fact, their movement is growing.
• Third, companies, such as Hertz, Enterprise, United, Delta, Best Western, Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, REI, MetLife Insurance and banks – 16 at last count – are publicly pulling away from the NRA. When doing so they acknowledge that the NRA has no interest in safety, only gun sales.
• Congress is, at last, acting and it has the NRA beast is roaring. After Newtown, Virginia Tech, Columbine (fill in the sad list) the NRA stayed silent for a few months, silence their MO, for the outcries always wane. The NRA knows that post-shooting outrage dies, words that have gone nowhere. The NRA waits, waits, then quietly resumes—with lobbying, with paying off local, state and national politicians, with legislation. Not this time:  the NRA sees Florida’s Governor Rick Scott, who has earned an NRA A-Plus rating, advocating for raising the minimum age for gun purchases from 18 to 21. Defections by some of their staunch disciples confront them. Led by Florida Republican Congressman Brian Mast, a bill to ban tactical semi-automatic assault weapons already has garnered 167 bi-partisan co-sponsors in Congress. Bills to tighten background checks (and close gun show and private purchase loopholes), raise the age limit for purchase of certain guns and enact Extreme-Risk Protective Order laws are being drafted. The NRA’s pained roar after only 10 days gives eloquent testimony to its worry.  You know it’s hurting when the NRA starts threatening.

But let’s not fool ourselves because at this writing two contradictory trends are emerging:  Public passion and moral outrage now meet the task of writing and passing bills. There is some pulling back. Rubio now shifts his attention away from gun control to “massive, multi-systemic failure“ of law enforcement. A relatively modest bill to improve the system for providing background checks is stalled, and it is unclear what President Trump will support and how fervently. On Friday, March 2^nd, the Washington Post reported that “Congress leaves Washington with no action on gun control or school safety.” On the other hand, action on the state level heats up, and students from across the nation rally in support of their Parkland peers. Mairead Canning, a 16-year-old Montgomery County (MD) high school student said, “We really felt for those students. We felt we weren’t doing enough. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just be sitting on the sidelines.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/march-for-our-lives-gun-control-rally-bumped-from-mall-by-talent-show/2018/03/01/ad8c7268-1cc6-11e8-9496-c89dc446c2d3_story.html)

Let’s explore how we can help Mairead and youth like her by highlighting what youth are already doing, and what they might do. We need a menu of ideas, not one action, because everyone can do something. Young activists must be able to see themselves, must not be able to say, “I can’t do that,” because the singer can sing, the artist make posters, the persuaders lobby, those who pray support the group, and the researchers gather the stats, design and conduct polls. Know that youth can act in whatever arena they find most comfortable for them — home, school, community or through secular or faith-based youth groups.

To be more specific, youth can:

• Conduct a door-to-door voter registration drive
• Hold a competition around how many youth have registered to vote (fellow students, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, neighbors)
• Write an original play, musicians compose an original song for a school assembly, artists paint murals, signs for vigils, those who pray can support and the researchers can conduct and analyze surveys
• Organize protest marches and vigils
• Present findings and student poll results to local school boards
• Visit state and federal legislators advocating for enacting changes in gun laws
• Set up a school safety council in which students have a significant voice
• Work with teachers to infuse gun violence prevention into classes such as civics, history, health (fear, trauma) and math (polls, surveys)
• Urge adults to boycott businesses that support the NRA
• Establish a school youth watch group, not quite analogous to neighborhood watch, but more “We’re present. Talk to Us.”  “We’re Here for You” or something akin.  Basically, youth keeping an eye out for youthful loners, the isolated, offering an ear, a hand.
• Ask when babysitting whether guns are in the home and whether the guns are safely locked away
• Offer to mentor younger students
• Know that small actions, like reassuring a younger sibling, are totally legitimate.

We need as many ideas for the youth as possible! Share your ideas with me, and I’ll disseminate them through my blog.

And shame on us if we don’t act. Youth have stepped up to the line. Where are the rest of us?

Here are a few starter ideas for how adults can help youth, ideas that will be expanded upon in future blogs.  Adults can: open their homes for safe meeting spaces; feed youth (they’re always hungry!); drive youth to meeting places; escort them to legislative meetings; provide legal advice if asked; and if living near a state capital or Congress, volunteer to house youth and parents who are in town lobbying

Here are some resources. Please add others you’ve found helpful:

• #NeverAgain movement
• Moms Demand Action: Non-partisan, powerful grassroots movement of America’s mothers demanding new and stronger gun laws. https://momsdemandaction.org
• Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (current statistics, focused actions, legislative updates) www.bradycampaign.org
• The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (research, strategic engagement and policy advocacy) www.csgv.org
• Youth Service America (information on youth-led actions) #LeadASAP; www.ysa.org
• Students Demand Action (connected to Everytown for Gun Safety) http://act.everytown.org/sign/join-students-demand-action
• SAVE: Students Against Violence Everywhere works in partnership with Newtown Promise (“Research Based Program and Practices to help protect children from gun violence in your homes, schools and communities.”) http://nationalsave.org
• Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (research, write and enact laws; brilliant state-by state analysis) http://lawcenter.giffords.org

Events:

• 3/14: School Walkout (17 minutes). #EnoughNationalSchoolWalkout; www.actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/enough-national-school-walkout
• 3/24: March for our Lives in Washington, DC: #MarchForOurLives, www.marchforourlives.com
• 4/20: National Day of Action Against Gun Violence in Schools National School Walkout on the 20th Anniversary of the Columbine murders: @schoolwalkoutus

In the spirit of the Parkland student(s) and others, I’m eager to hear about your ideas for change.