Parkland - Dave Cullen Page 0,1

That first night, Cameron, Jackie, and David Hogg started simultaneously on separate tracks to completely different movements, which they fused forty-eight hours later to form a juggernaut. Cameron’s first and best move was assembling talent. By Saturday, when Emma González went viral, two dozen creatives were conjuring up a new movement in Cam’s living room.

I spent ten months shadowing these kids, and they were relentless, frequently racing around the country in opposite directions. That was their secret weapon: waging this battle on so many fronts with a host of different voices, perspectives, and talents—healing each other as they fought.

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I swore I would never go back. I spent ten years researching and writing Columbine, and discovered that post-traumatic stress disorder can strike even those who have not witnessed a trauma directly. First responders, therapists, victim advocates, and journalists are among the vulnerable professions, but I had never heard of secondary traumatic stress, or vicarious traumatization (VT), until it took me down, twice, seven years apart. I learned that it comes in many forms, that PTSD is very specific, and less common than depression, which struck me. I was sobbing all day, mostly in bed, then slumped in a chair, unable to work effectively, or to do much of anything. That’s when I agreed to some of my shrink’s terms: read no victim stories the first week after a tragedy; watch no TV tributes or interviews with survivors unless I promised to hit the mute button if I started to feel the warning signs. I could study the killers at will, because they didn’t burrow inside me—it was the survivor grief that did me in.

Even years after Columbine, I had no idea it had drawn me in for life. Since that day, I have tracked every major tragedy in some capacity as a journalist—but always at a distance of either time or space. In the immediate aftermath, I engage with a cadre of mental health and criminology experts, and with countless informal survivor networks, especially the many Columbine survivors I now count as friends. Months, or preferably years, later, I have gone back to the scene of some of the worst crimes. I work with John Jay College’s Academy of Critical Incident Analysis (ACIA), which brings a small team of experts and survivors together for a three-day study of one critical event each year. I studied the Virginia Tech and Las Vegas tragedies on-site, and Norway’s 2011 Worker’s Youth League attack from New York City. But I could never plunge back into the scene of the crime while the wounds were still raw. Nor could I bear the prospect of documenting horror another time.

Parkland changed everything—for the survivors, for the nation, and definitely for me. I flew down the first weekend, but not to depict the carnage or the grief. What drew me was the group of extraordinary kids. I wanted to cover their response. There are strains of sadness woven into this story, but this is not an account of grief. These kids chose a story of hope.

The Parkland uprising seemed to erupt out of nowhere, but it had been two decades in the making. The school-shooter era began at 11:17 a.m. MDT, on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, in Jefferson County, Colorado. There is a photograph that became iconic, which I described in Columbine: a blond girl, head thrown back in anguish, caught by her own hands, palms against her temples, fingers burrowing into her scalp. Her mouth is open, eyes squeezed shut. She mirrored what I witnessed when I arrived that first afternoon: girl, boy, parent, teacher—everyone clenching something: their hands, her knees, his head, each other. But nothing prepared me for the same kids the next morning. Their eyes were dry, their faces slack. Their expressions had gone vacant. That’s why I’m still on the story two decades later: I never wanted to see that look again. But what we see today is worse: unsurprised survivors who expected a shooter.

The media coverage of Columbine was unprecedented. CNN logged its highest ratings ever, and the New York Times covered the story on its front page for nine straight days. It was an exceptional moment, demanding exceptional action. Law enforcement and the education system responded with significant changes, including the Active Shooter Protocol, and then . . . we came to accept it.

There were no vacant stares from the Parkland survivors. This generation had grown up on lockdown drills—and this time, they were ready.

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Sadly, I’ve become a talking