leaving the march, I asked Daniel about it, and he was a bit surprised too. He noted that many of them had tossed out “little Easter eggs,” and thought it would be coming soon. I asked some of the kids a week or two later (I can’t recall exactly who), and although they were unsure about timing, they were sure I should keep it quiet. I didn’t ask about it again for a few weeks, and by then they had let it go.
The best count of actual sibling marches that took place in the United States comes from the Washington Post data, published in “Did You Attend the March for Our Lives?” The number given in the article is smaller than the figure stated in this chapter, because 84 of the marches were abroad.
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Matt told me most of the Cold Beak stories, and Dylan filled in more.
13. Harvard
I did not attend the Harvard conference. Most of the information in this chapter comes from my interviews with John Della Volpe, as do all quotes from him in the book. He also sent me the slideshow cited, and I pulled the passages directly from it. I interviewed him by phone in June, with several follow-ups. I talked to the kids about it as well.
His key polling question—“Does political involvement have any tangible results?”—has changed wording over the years, so I paraphrased him. His most recent statement, to which he asks potential voters to respond on a five-point scale, is “Political involvement rarely has any tangible results.”
Like Della Volpe, I wondered for a while whether Alfonso and David had choreographed that one-two punch. I was going to ask them about it when I saw them both at a community barbeque on the Road to Change tour in Aurora, Colorado, in July, but I could never get them together. (They move around!) I was talking to Alfonso as he was about to board the bus after the event, and David was off riding a bike to decompress. Just then, David rode up, so I asked them the moment I had them together. They both laughed out loud. It had been a last-minute situation.
14. March for Their Lives
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In the weeks leading up to the march, I thought about how I wanted to cover it. I figured there would be all sorts of reporting on Emma’s day, and David’s (a documentary crew was scheduled to follow him around). I was most curious what it would be like for someone not quite at the center of the organizing, outside the media storm. I knew immediately who I wanted. I pitched Daniel Duff the idea of spending the day with him and whoever he was going with: from first thing in the morning, through the day. He was game and checked with his family, and they agreed too. Vanity Fair also liked the idea, and sent a great photographer, Justin Bishop, to capture it visually. (My assignment was just to write extended captions, but it turned into a piece.) We knew it would be a crazy day, so my writer friend Matt Alston agreed to come down with us and help. He was working on a profile on me, and by sticking by my side, he could help me out and get a firsthand look at my process. 42 West gave us all access to the media interview tent.
Joan Walsh was Salon’s news editor when Columbine was attacked, and she edited nearly all the four dozen stories I published for it. (About two-thirds of those concerned Columbine.) That was my first time back into journalism since college, and she was really helpful in guiding me and honing my stories, and has been one of the major influences on my work. Joan was at Salon’s main office in San Francisco, so we did it all by email and phone, and didn’t meet in person for more than a year. We are now friends, and she is now national affairs correspondent for The Nation and a CNN political analyst. We coaxed the 42 West people to position us together in the interview tent, and we spent a good chunk of the day together, sharing findings, impressions, and ideas. Joan is one of the wisest people I know, and a great mentor, and we have been on this larger story together for nearly twenty years. She was incredibly helpful as a sounding board. She has also been covering civil rights issues within the African American community for decades, and that insight