Students rage, register voters after FL shooting MARCH continued from p. 1
clearly had help from the established gun-control lobbies who are now bankrolling the Parkland survivors’ crusade. (Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group Everytown for Gun Safety is a key backer.) Though we were too far away to see the stage, there were loudspeakers set up along the march route. Over all, the event seemed more tightly coordinated than the massive Women’s Marches — even if the sound blitzed out intermittently. Nevertheless, we could hear Columbia law student Alex Clavering on stage as he kicked off the march with a challenge to the media to cover the gun violence plaguing inner cities, and not just the mediagenic trauma of mass shootings in predominantly white, affluent communities like Parkland. “Today we replace apathy with action,” Clavering declared. “Today we want to tell stories not just about gun violence in our schools, but in those communities and neighborhoods who have faced these challenges for years,” he emphasized. “We recognize you, and we expect our media to recognize you, as well. “Our actions, and this youth movement against gun violence, is worthless if it is not intersectional,” he added, using a trendy buzzword. That insistence on acknowledging the full depth and diversity of America’s gun problem seems to be a key difference between today’s youth-led movement and previous mass efforts to end gun violence, like the Million Mom March that took place back in 2000. Today’s students are forcing people to make connection — which is why Governor Cuomo found himself standing somewhat uncomfortably at the front of the march alongside members of Black Lives Matter. Like the opioid epidemic, the race and class lines that once divided people into separate camps of gun survivors are becoming blurred by the magnitude of a problem that touches every type of community. Even at my son’s progressive elementary school in the East Village, kids as young as 3 are taught to huddle against the wall away from windows during active-shooter drills. Prior to the march, I was worried that the Parkland students were being overly packaged in slick video testimonials by gun-lobby groups all too hungry to make them the icons for the cause. But on the street, the anger of the students marching was palpable and very real. Many said they took part in the walkouts to honor the 17 killed in Parkland — some risking suspension to do so. Many said they knew someone at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, or had a friend who did. “I was the only one who walked out in my class” said Karen Hull from Randolph New Jersey. She came holding a sign that read: “Guns don’t kill people, the gaping holes in their vital organs do.” She marched with her friend Aliyah and her mother Ela Ravin, who participated in the Million Mom March 18 years ago. “I marched for my oldest daughter, so she would be safe. And since then, nothing has changed,” Ela acknowledged. “But now, with this new generation, it feels like something can get done.” Many who marched were teachers. Claudette Garley, an ESL teacher in Riverdale, Long Island, came with her young daughter. Asked if she ever felt unsafe at her school, Garley replied, “Sometimes. There’s no social services or support for the kids who have problems or are slipping through the cracks.” Her school district has many recent immigrants from Central America. “Before, I was never really worried about myself,” said Vanessa Keller, a first- and second-grade teacher
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March 29, 2018
PHOTO BY MILO HESS
Coloring his reality: A young student sat nex t to ar tistic posters about gun violence at Saturday’s march.
PHOTO BY SARAH FERGUSON
The Founding Fathers had no concept of what an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle was and the deadly firepower that it packs.
who marched holding the banner of my son’s school, Earth School, on Avenue B. “After the last school shooting, I’ve been having anxiety dreams in the school building,” she revealed. Vanessa’s father, Bill Keller, a retired elementary school teacher, flew in from Fort Lauderdale to march with her. “When I retired, they were just starting to do the shooter drills,” Keller noted. “And now they want
us to be police officers,” he scoffed, referring to the N.R.A.’s call to arm teachers in the classrooms. Keller said he felt compelled to protest after attending a couple of the rallies in Parkland with the shooting survivors. “The students are so poised and articulate, so there’s hope,” he said. “They seem determined to get things done.” Unlike the leaders of past student movements who spurned their elders, these kids make no apologies about taking money and help from outside groups and celebrities — even if they refuse to share the stage with them. They are the “mass shooting generation” — and gun violence has become their Vietnam. Even the pope is now urging them to stay angry. “This is not abstract. This could have been any one of our lives,” said Lila Podgainy, 16, from Chelsea, who attends NEST+m, a K-to-12 citywide school for gifted students on E. Houston St. She said she believed the Parkland shooting was mobilizing her and her fellow students precisely because, “We are fighting for our own lives.” “I think it’s also social media — and the fact that we as teenagers are the ones that use these platforms the most,” added her classmate, Ava Grubin, of Brooklyn. Unlike the Columbine massacre in 1999, the Parkland teens had the tools to broadcast their own shooting. And now their own rage. Their goals are ambitious, and they’re pretty clearheaded about what it’s going to take to pass meaningful gun-control laws: Flipping the House and Senate and then getting Trump out. To that end, students here and across the country are registering thousands of new voters. Said Grubin: “We’re raising the issue to the kids who will vote in the next election. Who will vote to get him out.” And it’s not just Trump. On Sunday, another group of students set off on a four-day march from Madison, Wisconsin, to the hometown of House Speaker Paul Ryan in Janesville, Wisconsin. They’re calling out Ryan for refusing to allow bills to ban high-capacity assault rifles and bump stocks to reach the House floor. TheVillager.com