Parkland - Dave Cullen Page 0,100

wanting to be alive, and not fearing for their lives.”

The tour was all about connecting with young locals, who had typically gotten their activist feet wet organizing a sibling march or a school walkout. They had tasted success, proved their ability to peers and themselves, and flung themselves into the fight for the midterms. The Parkland kids had provided a model, validation, and hope.

Diego Garcia was there, the Latino kid who had struggled for adult respect in his community. The Parkland kids’ approval had been key to earning it, but it came at a price. He had just organized a die-in at Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower, and the Parkland kids helped spur attendance by retweeting it. But Twitter trolls descended and terrified him with some of their threats. The MFOL kids were used to that, but he wasn’t. Yet.

A big element of the tour that was not announced to the media in advance was connecting with some of the promising activists by bringing them on board—literally. If it worked out, the group would look for candidates in other cities. “Once we hung out with them, they were like, ‘We want to come!’” Jackie said. “So we added a lot more people.” They left Saint Sabina with seven Chicago recruits, including Alex and D’Angelo from the Peace Warriors, Diego Garcia, and Trevon. They filled out release forms with family contact information at the barbeque. “It’s quite literally like the Freedom Riders, where people hop on and hop off,” Jackie said.

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Town halls were the tour staple: the Parkland kids in conversation with young local activists, and sometimes a third contingent. Night two of the bus tour was only thirty miles from Saint Sabina, but culturally worlds away. The town hall was held at a Unitarian Universalist church in suburban Naperville, mostly white, and also Asian—not just affluent, genteel. The crowd was wildly enthusiastic. They leapt to their feet for the Parkland kids’ arrival. When it ended, much of the crowd rushed the stage: not just to chat up the Parkland kids and grab a selfie, but to talk to the local teens as well. They were ecstatic. To appear on that stage as peers, beside these national sensations, completely changed their sense of this mission. Changed the way they were seen by their parents, teachers, and school administrators—some of whom had chastised them as being immature for participating in the walkouts. Changed their image of themselves. Possibly forever.

The event definitely fired up the young activists, but it was hard to imagine changing any minds that night. The free tickets had been snapped up in a few hours online, and the room seemed packed with true believers. But believers in what? Gun legislation, definitely, but how many members of that genteel suburban community were engaged in the deadly struggle underway on the South Side or West Side of Chicago, thirty miles away? Probably very few. But many were making that connection for the first time and thinking about “the gun problem” in a new light.

The new freedom riders from Chicago provided some of the most poignant moments at the Naperville event, and provoked most of the standing ovations. These minority activists were bright and charismatic. They might have rivaled Emma and David in an alternate universe that cared about black kids.

A telling thing happened at the end of the Naperville event. Jackie was moderating, and after the last question, she asked if any of the panelists had a final thought. One of the Chicago kids made a plea for donations for the Peace Warriors, “Even if it’s five dollars.” And then it was over, and the local host activists on the panel, mostly from Downers Grove North High School, rose to present a check to the Parkland kids. They had been working their butts off on fund-raisers to support the bus tour, selling wristbands and buttons, and holding a car wash that very afternoon, and had raised $1,118, a few dollars at a time. They had printed up one of those huge cardboard blow-up checks to present together, and were all smiles. Cameron Kasky was one of the MFOL kids on the panel, and before the Downers Grove kids even reached him with the check, he said, “As our first gesture to work with Chicago students, we are pledging all of that money to ChicagoStrong.” ChicagoStrong is an umbrella organization created in the wake of Parkland to connect and support like-minded groups across the city, including Peace Warriors and BRAVE. Jackie