Young agitators

The survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida – the youth who saw 17 of their colleagues killed – are saying that’s enough. No more. Never again. They are organizing, sharing their voices with media (and juggling interviews), and lobbying GOP representatives at every level. It is one way to deal with the shock and grief.

Sarah Chadwick, a 16 year old student, sent a tweet to the nasty guy saying she didn’t want his condolences, she wants gun control. It went viral.

Twitter user JeLLe (who I don’t think is a student) has a nice graphic in response to those condolences.

Those students aren’t just talking. A hundred of them boarded buses and went to the state legislature at the other end of the state, 400 miles away. If you’re going to do nothing you need to see the people your inaction affects. But even while the students were in the gallery the legislators voted down an attempt to revive a bill to ban assault rifles. Completely heartless.

Of course, those GOP elected officials don’t want to hear such personal stories. They’re doing all they can to smear and discredit the kids. Like saying the kids are puppets of the left or at least are being “coached” – sheesh, kids need to be coached to say “Please don’t kill us!”?

Actually, the kids were coached. As would any kid who had taken a decent government class in high school. Emma Gonzalez, one of the student leaders, is taking Advanced Placement Government, and says they’ve had three debates about guns this year. They’ve studied and know the talking points – and now have first hand experience on how empty the talking points of the right are. I’ve heard one say your right to own a gun is not more important than my safety. Gonzalez said:

The people involved right now, those who were there, those posting, those tweeting, those doing interviews and talking to people, are being listened to for what feels like the very first time on this topic that has come up over 1,000 times in the past four years alone.