somehow struck a deal, the bill would go to Governor Rick Scott, a Second Amendment warrior with an A-plus NRA rating. “Honestly, I can’t see any of us going home now without something,” Jacobs said. The biggest danger was they would agree to something “so weak that it’s just a ‘Oh, we passed something,’” she said. “This is not going to be an easy lift. This is going to be Democrats on one side not liking it and Republicans on the other side not liking it and a whole bunch of us in the middle dragging them in. It’s a very delicate environment right now.”
Jackie was only vaguely aware of the particulars, but she could feel a tipping point. “I just wanted to do it immediately,” she said. “Because I knew that the news forgets. Very quickly. And if we were all talk and no action, people wouldn’t take us as seriously.” They could not wait a month, as with the big push too long after Newtown.
Jackie first visualized waves of students descending on the capitol from schools around the state. She put the word out, and messages came pouring in from lots of schools eager to get on board, but the organizational hurdles were overwhelming. “So I brought it down to one hundred Douglas kids, and even that was just very difficult,” she said a week later. “I couldn’t even imagine what my original idea would have taken.” Tallahassee was at the north edge of the state, 450 miles away. She had to charter buses, transport, feed, house, and chaperone a hundred minors for . . . how many days? Two? It would definitely take two days. And they had to convince top state officials to meet with them, or what was the point?
State Senator Book set her staff in motion, especially Claire VanSusteren, a senior aide. The three of them worked through the details all weekend. It was intimidating at first. “I was terrified,” Jackie said. “I’m a seventeen-year-old calling a Florida state senator. That’s just not normal.” But she got over her skittishness pretty quickly. “You have to remember that every single person we talk to is also a human, and we all have families, and we all have emotions. I just forget that sometimes. I got so lucky with them. I call them my fairy godmothers.”
State Senator Book worked the phones, cajoling her colleagues. As the yeses grew, the logistical concerns multiplied. Jackie had pictured a town hall format in a big chamber, but the unexpected response opened fresh possibilities. “Claire was like, ‘We were going to have dozens of meetings,’ and I was like, ‘What? That’s a lot.’”
But Jackie came to love the plan. She had asked for volunteers by text and social media, and was getting flooded with yeses of her own. She hit her hundred max quickly, and it was tempting to keep expanding, but Jackie wanted buses rolling by Tuesday. The logistics were daunting already. So Jackie sorted the hundred into ten groups, which would rotate around the capitol throughout the day, meeting officials in intimate sessions. Senator Book compiled a profile on each official, which Jackie matched to students based on interests and personalities—“Strong students with hardheaded legislators,” she said.
Housing changed a couple of times. Could the kids sleep on the floor? Of course, Jackie said. “At one point we were supposed to sleep in the Senate building on the twenty-second floor,” she said. “That was the plan.” But then Florida State University offered space in an office building nearby: two big rooms, one for girls and one for boys. Jackie put the word out to bring sleeping bags and air mattresses, and very little else.
Claire handled all sorts of things Jackie would never have considered, including two permission forms that every parent had to sign. Local and national media were getting on board fast, so they allotted several slots on the buses for media to ride along. Those slots were gone by Sunday, so the rest of us planned to caravan behind.
Funding fell into place too. Uber Eats donated lunch, and private individuals covered two dinners and breakfast. Senator Book insisted on paying the $12,000 to rent the three jumbo coach buses—not out of campaign funds but personally. She had survived sexual abuse beginning at age eleven, and her fight for victims’ rights drove her entry into politics. She saw a younger version of herself in Jackie.
“Lauren [Book] understood how taking action in the wake of something so traumatic can