What Is the Never Again Generation

Survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School share The Parkland Manifesto for reducing deaths from gun violence.

If you attended high schoolhouse before 1999, chances are y'all did non live through a mass shooting in your classroom. Just on April 20th of that year, 12 students and one teacher were shot in Columbine Loftier School in Littleton, Colorado, and fiddling has been the aforementioned since and then. Or rather, much has been exactly the aforementioned since then, every bit we watch the same scene replay at schools, workplaces, churches, and music festivals year after twelvemonth, month after calendar month. On Valentine'due south Twenty-four hours this year, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida found themselves the latest members of this history. "We were all born after Columbine, we all grew upwards with Sandy Hook and terrorism and code-red active-shooter drills. We all accept grown up conditioned to be afraid.And nosotros're all ill and tired of being agape."

In the backwash of the shooting, the Parkland survivors have sparked the new #NeverAgain political move, helping organize the National Schoolhouse Walkout and the March For Our Lives. Two of them, siblings David and Lauren Hogg, bravely tell their story in #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line. Here, they share with us their x-point strategy for reducing deaths from gun violence in schools and beyond. Regardless of your political amalgamation, I encourage you lot to read the words of these youth who lived through the most terrifying experience of their lives. One that will fundamentally shape the rest of their lives. They deserve our attention, our support, and our activity to make certain that non one more student dies while trying to written report in schoolhouse.

Chapter 6: The Parkland Manifesto

Before February 14, we thought we had plenty of time. We wanted to do something that would make the earth a better place, to fight for justice equally lawyers or activists or crusading journalists, to be responsible citizens and enhance good-­hearted children. But first we had to finish loftier school.

After February 14, we knew how fast time could stop.

We learned and then much at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. We studied Supreme Court decisions, read Shakespeare, and explored the mysteries of black holes. Nosotros spent a huge amount of fourth dimension on contemporary issues like poverty and the environment. In our psychology classes, we talked well-nigh death and grief and mental disease. We debated gun command and the NRA. Nosotros spent a whole week studying school shootings. But it all seemed a piffling chip distant, a little chip similar a dream. Either it happened before nosotros were born, or information technology was happening somewhere else.

When it happened to us, nosotros woke up. We knew we couldn't wait until nosotros got out of higher and settled into jobs. We had to make the globe a improve place at present. It was literally a thing of life and death.

So we stood up and tried to make our voices heard. We're really proud of what we have achieved so far, and are so grateful to all the people who take joined our cause. They gave usa strength. They gave us hope. Yous requite usa hope.

Merely let'southward confront it—­it's non enough. And the merchants of chaos keep peddling their wares.

Sixteen days subsequently we woke upwards, a homo in Detroit who had just gotten out of a hospital where he was existence treated for hallucinations shot and killed his daughter, her mother, his cousin, and ii people who just happened to be there. Anyone who knows most history knows that the founders did not intend for anyone with an illness or a grievance to be able to take out their rage on the world with weapons that they could not take begun to imagine. This is madness.

It's nearly summertime now, and the decease count continues to rising in America. Without a radical modify in America's priorities and in our gun laws, our protests will have been in vain. Power and cynicism don't give way easily. But we have no intention of stopping.

After you spend a few hours hiding in a classroom while your friends and teachers are slaughtered, y'all tin't stop thinking about how insane this is and how to alter it. Volunteer in political campaigns? Try to fix the mental health system? Fight the gun lobbyists? Push for comprehensive background checks?

Nosotros retrieve you should. We hope you exercise. There is a whole globe to alter.

You probably don't know who Tyra Hemans is. She was at Parkland that day and she had friends dice. She was with us in Tallahassee when we asked our state legislators to do something. She was with us at the march on Washington. She's a bully speaker and a loving person. But we got famous and she didn't.

What about Zion Kelly? In September 2017, Zion'southward twin blood brother, Zaire, was murdered in Northeast Washington, D.C., by a kid with a gun. Zaire—­a standout student and athlete at Thurgood Marshall Academy—­was simply sixteen years old. To laurels his blood brother's memory and detect meaning in his loss, Zion, who is as shy every bit Zaire was outgoing, has even so made it his mission to stand upwardly, speak out, and change the earth. We were honored that he joined us on stage in Washington. Simply we got famous, and he didn't.

Or what near the protests at Liberty Urban center in Miami? Four kids were shot in that location in April, and two of them died. One of them was well-nigh to get inducted into the National Award Order. Hundreds of students turned out to protest. Only one newspaper went to cover the protest, only one reporter actually bothered to interview them. The Telly coverage was shot from a helicopter, and made the Liberty Metropolis protestation look like a riot. We got headlines, they didn't.

Those kids tried to make their voices heard simply like we did. They lived through the exact same thing we lived through. But they don't live in a gated community. They are from a lower socioeconomic status and they are a different colour. Instead of riding their bikes to schoolhouse listening to NPR on their iPhones without even thinking someone might shoot them, they had to worry about information technology every day. In raw statistics, their odds of getting shot are twice as high as ours, and a lot of American kids just like them alive in places where they have a higher death rate than soldiers in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.

We're super glad people are listening to us, but nosotros're not the story. We shouldn't exist the "stars" of the school-­shooting generation, which is a horrifying thought on and then many levels. If people only mind when privileged white kids get killed—­and even then, merely when the number of dead kids is loftier plenty to make the news—­we're never going to fix this problem.

So what would fix it?

Once you start to think about that, yous meet how much bigger the problem is. At Stoneman Douglas last yr, we spent a month debating the pros and cons of hiring more school resource officers. It would probably make the schools safer, but schoolhouse officers phone call regular constabulary officers to handle black students at a much higher rate than white students. Which ways that students of colour are much more probable to go into the "school-­to-­prison pipeline," too, which ways they'll get something on their records, which means they'll accept a harder time getting a task. And the chance that the prisons will do anything to rehabilitate them is slim to none or worse, especially if they go to ane of the private prisons—­which our governor enthusiastically supports, past the way. So it really should be chosen the "school-­to-­prison house-­to-­life-­of-­crime pipeline." It'southward insane. We're actually making the problem worse. It's like we're living in a dystopia.

So what would fix that? Well, prison sentences are strongly associated with poverty, and a adept instruction is the best way out of poverty. So maybe we should try harder to go on poor people in schoolhouse. And requite them better schools. Education for women is the best way to reduce the teen pregnancy charge per unit, which is 1 of the best ways to reduce poverty, and then we should make a special effort to overcome the economic and cultural obstacles they face, besides. But where'south the money going to come up from? A rational regime would take information technology out of our military budget, which sucks up more than half our tax dollars because it's bigger than the five other largest countries' defense budgets combined, simply that means that y'all accept to shut military bases in states that fought hard to become them considering they bring in money and reduce poverty. And practise something about the arms manufacturers lobbies that push politicians to buy fantastically expensive weapons systems we don't need and don't use.

Sounds overwhelming, right? Probably impossible. When poverty and prison and getting shot in schoolhouse are simply some things you come across on Idiot box, and you lot don't think you could do anything well-nigh them even if yous wanted to, you tend to tune them out. We know the feeling. Information technology'southward called "learned helplessness." We were studying it in AP Psych a couple of days before the shooting. When you're in a horrible situation and you don't retrieve you lot can practice anything almost it, you merely surrender. It's terrible that kids accept to get slaughtered in schools, but what are you going to practise
most it?

Nosotros asked some local politicians well-nigh the school-­to-­prison house pipeline problem dorsum when we were debating an increase in school resource officers. They had no answer. They literally looked at each other like "Oh my god, I didn't fifty-fifty think about that." That's why nosotros experience similar saying "This is virtually kids' lives. This is nearly the hereafter of America. This is blood being spilled. You're letting kids die."

But the truth is, we didn't want to think about this stuff, either. We were forced to call back most it considering we couldn't accept the unacceptable. It would accept destroyed us. And when you're forced to think about it and follow all the threads and see how it's all continued, you realize that people in ability aren't whatsoever dissimilar. They're just bigger versions of those local politicians, who must have known about the school-­to-­prison pipeline. They just can't acknowledge they feel helpless, too.

That's why we e'er say this isn't about Republicans and Democrats. The whole point is that we're all continued. We just have to observe a way to get in bring us together every bit Americans instead of pulling us apart.

And to work against that helplessness, information technology's important to start working on a piece of the problem first, so you won't go overwhelmed by a problem and then big that information technology seems unsolvable. It was a weapon of war that devastated our community, and so the piece we are dedicated to working on is the gun piece. Don't get us wrong: It is the worldview that teaches you that problems tin't be solved just because that's the way it's always been—­but go on sending those thoughts and prayers—­that's what nosotros are rebelling confronting. But in our town, we are standing our ground against the lax or nonexist­ent gun laws that let kids to keep getting killed.

Then we are dedicating ourselves to mutual-­sense gun measures that respect our swain citizens' correct to ain guns and, at the same time, respect their correct to live as well. Here's our ten-­point strategy:

1. Funding for gun violence inquiry. It is one of the principal roles of government to ensure the condom of the public. Just equally nosotros do on any other serious public health threats, we need data on gun violence then that nosotros tin brand practiced policy.
2. Digitalization of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records. Information technology is 2018, why on earth exercise we still go along these rec­ords on paper similar it'south 1918? So that they volition exist harder to share, that's why. The ATF's job is to protect the public, and powerful interests accept made it their job to make the ATF's chore as hard equally possible.
3. Universal background checks. These piece of work and volition save lives—­menstruum. And the overwhelming majority of Americans support them. If your congressmen or congresswomen or senators don't terminate dragging their feet on this popular and sensible measure, vote them out.
4. Ban loftier-­capacity magazines. It's not an infringement on your Second Amendment rights if yous have to terminate and reload. This will relieve lives.
5. Assault weapon ban. They are non only used in mass shootings, they are also disproportionately used in other violent crimes, besides. Weapons of war don't belong on our streets and in our schools. The Founders would agree.
6. Funding for intervention programs. Attacking the gun problem at the source is only function of the solution. We must too empower community stakeholders, and fund successful models at reducing violence, such as Grouping Violence Intervention, Cure Violence, and Hospital-­based Violence Intervention.
7. Red flag laws (extreme risk protection orders). "Run a risk warrants" work. Since Connecticut'south ERPO law was passed after Sandy Hook, according to the Christian Science Monitor, "in 99 per centum of cases where a risk warrant was issued, police officers found at to the lowest degree one gun and removed an boilerplate of seven guns per individual."
8. Blocking people with a history of domestic violence. There is a federal police force that prevents some convicted domestic abusers from buying guns, but that only applies to those convicted of abusing a spouse or former spouse, and not someone they are dating. Or stalking.
9. A federal solution to stop interstate gun trafficking. Weak gun laws in some states make information technology very piece of cake to traffic guns into states with stronger laws. It's a huge problem, and merely Washington can solve it.
10. Safe storage/mandatory theft reporting. Safe storage laws would assistance reduce kid access, prevent gun theft, and save lives.

Okay, make that an eleven-­bespeak strategy, and this i might be the virtually important one of all:

11. Register. Vote.

These are only a start. We are yet learning, and nosotros welcome your input. We have been inspired by the stories we've heard from kids all over the land, and amazing ideas have been pouring in. Of form, nosotros have made mistakes, and will make more than. Simply if we are not always right, we know that our goals are. When our grouping came together subsequently the shootings, we idea we were teaming up to take action and make the world a better place. Nosotros probably never would have hung out ordinarily, just we found out nosotros all had unlike specialties and talents. After the March for Our Lives, we separated our group into committees, to maximize those talents and organize for the long haul.

Cameron is our power source. He talks fast and gets things washed faster than anyone thought they ever could be done, and he'south always pushing usa to be the all-time that we can be. Ryan is a primary procrastinator, the biggest procrastinator I've ever seen in my life. But when the last minute comes, he does amazing things. He uses one-act as a gainsay strategy, and so he's the one who slashes our attackers into submission with a yard sick burns. Delaney'due south one of the schoolhouse fashionistas, but she's as well very analytical and one of the best directors we've ever had in Boob tube Production. Jackie'due south the president of the junior course and has mad skills at organizing and coordinating—­if you lot need to get iv buses and sixty or seventy people across the state to a march, she'll go it done. And Emma's the misfit amid misfits considering she's and so not a misfit. She's the just non–blazon A personality in the grouping, totally unflappable and eloquent and the most loving person y'all'll ever meet. She's our Buddha, the peaceful radiance at the center of all the spinning wheels.

Nosotros had no thought what we were doing at the kickoff, simply we concluded upward working then much and pushing ourselves so hard, we started to fuse. Information technology was like we were all dissimilar metals and we melted under the heat and became the strongest blend in the natural globe. Nosotros formed a bond so potent, it's unbelievable. We love each other from the bottoms of our hearts. So what we finally realized is that, even though we didn't plan it consciously, we put ourselves through a strange kind of loftier-­intensity do-­it-­yourself group therapy. We came together to try to heal the globe and found out that was the best manner to heal ourselves.

And then that was what we learned when our lives became unbearable. We establish out that everything was connected then we formed a connection that was so beautiful, nosotros became a family unit. This is how nosotros boil it downwards: We learned to love people for what they are instead of hating them for what they're not. And like the namesake of our high school—­Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who changed her earth by a full-­on date with it, every day, as a journalist, a suffragette, and conservationist—­we are learning to change the world past presuming that we can.

So that's our answer to the incommunicable issues we have to solve. We accept to come together to fight the chaos because division is what causes information technology. Join the states. Check out Local Activeness on the March for our Lives website to get involved where you lot live. Pass up to take the unacceptable. Don't let bullies intimidate yous, and don't let the cynics impale your promise. Dear each other every bit much as you lot can, hate each other as picayune as you tin can, and never, ever stop pointing at the naked emperor.

Excerpted from #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line past David Hogg and Lauren Hogg.
Copyright © 2018 past David Hogg and Lauren Hogg.
All rights reserved.
No function of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David Hogg (Class of 2018) and Lauren Hogg (Form of 2021) nourish Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. They are both members of March for Our Lives. Follow David on Twitter at @davidhogg111 and Lauren at @lauren_hoggs.

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Source: https://www.porchlightbooks.com/blog/excerpts/neveragain-a-new-generation-draws-the-line

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