year, to hurl all his energy into the midterms, an arrangement he hoped to repeat in 2020, helping to elect a worthy new president. Before and after, he would go to college, starting in the fall of 2019, and “read a shitload of books.” That would give him plenty of time to prep for that first congressional run.
Ryan Deitsch and Delaney Tarr also ended up deferring college for at least a semester to throw everything they had into the midterms.
Matt Deitsch continued to defer his college career to keep working at MFOL full-time.
Lauren Hogg and Daniel Duff were sophomores now, eager to stick with MFOL and excited to start taking on more responsibility. After six months interacting with the media, Daniel was thinking about joining us. He had a few years to pick a college major, but was starting to lean toward journalism. “I’m spending a lot of my time with like film and TV production and all that,” he said. “But I’m also very interested in creative writing and journalism, and they kind of go hand in hand.”
A temporary casualty of the MFOL success was the Douglas drama program. “It decimated the drama program,” Alfonso said. He chose not to go out for the fall play; so did Cameron and most of the others from MFOL. Too much at stake. Cameron didn’t even return to Douglas. Broward County had an online course program for homeschooling, and Cameron enrolled in that to finish his high school education. He would spend most of the fall in Los Angeles. Alfonso also enrolled in most of his courses online, heading over to school just for drama class. He skipped the play but kept the class.
Several of the Chicago kids went on to college. Alex King headed to Grand Valley State University. He was majoring in theater, a happy coincidence after six months with the Parkland drama kids. “My mind was set on it long before I met any of them,” he said. Alex was the first in his family to make it out of the neighborhood and into university. Realizing the dream.
When the movement was just beginning, and its future uncharted, Jackie foresaw a generation of struggle, to make the world safe for the kids she would raise someday. Five months later, with thousands of miles in the rearview, she confirmed that assessment. “Though election cycles can change things, it’ll take a generation of people to understand that they don’t need these weapons,” she said. She met a lot of people in gun country, and heard a lot of them say, “I’m a responsible gun owner; I didn’t do anything wrong.” She understands that. But her generation, trained to expect a gunman to burst into their classroom any day, tends to see it differently.
Her goal was not a decisive win in November and sweeping gun reform the following spring. It was passing one reasonable law after another, to reduce gun violence without cramping the style of responsible young gun owners. “When they have kids, when they grow up with this all the time, and they’ve seen the positives that these laws will create from a young age, they will understand,” she said. “It’ll take a generation. And it’s unfortunate, but I just hope that when we have children, they will probably, hopefully, end up in a society where these laws are implemented.”
3
The tour wound down toward a finale at Sandy Hook, with a reunion of all the kids from both buses. The penultimate stop was New York City, and many of the kids from the Southern Tour had already rejoined them there. Spirits were high. It was exciting to be in the big city, but Lauren Hogg was downright bubbly. She bound around the auditorium on the Upper West Side, chatting, giggling, and hugging old friends and new. The pop band AJR made a surprise appearance, and closed a short set with “Burn the House Down,” which the MFOL kids had adopted as their theme song. Lauren said they played it all summer long on the bus. The bouncing beat, and the lyrics about casting aside doubt to take a stand against injustice had saved her on all those long, dreary rides.
Lauren sang along to the first verse and danced in her seat. As the first chorus approached, she could barely contain herself, until the stage door flew open, and Emma, Matt, Cameron, and a dozen more friends rushed out to join the band, while she dashed up the short steps, with more