Parkland - Dave Cullen Page 0,132

they chatted up the cops.

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The Crowd Counting Consortium published its results on the march, along with historical comparisons, in “Did You Attend the March for Our Lives?” (Washington Post). I drew additional historical references—including on the Vietnam War and Iraq protests—from “This Is What We Learned . . .” by the same authors in this piece on the Women’s March.

The University of Maryland sociology professor Dana R. Fisher led a research team to gather very specific data on the composition of the Women’s March in 2017. They surveyed every fifth person in the crowd to compile a wealth of detail about who the attendees were, why they came, and what their backgrounds were. It was very successful. Major demonstrations continued in the months that followed, so Fisher redeployed her team for every large protest in Washington from that date forward, and she was continuing her crowd analysis at least through October 2018. Her results on the MFOL march were published in “Here’s Who Actually Attended the March for Our Lives” (Washington Post). This is incredible data, and my source for crowd analysis.

The Trace’s data comes from the article “Parkland Generated Dramatically More News Coverage Than Most Mass Shootings.”

15. PTSD

All quotes and reflections from Dr. Frank Ochberg and Dr. Alyse Ley come from interviews with them. I have been consulting with Dr. Ochberg about trauma issues since 1999, when he played a big role at Columbine. I became an Ochberg Fellow at the nonprofit organization he founded, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. I first discussed the Parkland kids’ situation at length with both doctors during the ACIA conference in Las Vegas mentioned in the prologue in May—both individually and in panel discussions. It was enlightening to also involve two recent survivors of the Las Vegas tragedy, Chris and Jenny Babij, in that discussion, and for their real-time coping experience to inform it. I followed up with Dr. Ochberg periodically, and he helped vet portions of the manuscript medically and filled in and fleshed out many ideas in an interview in mid-November (though I of course take responsibility for the material in this book). I then followed up with Drs. Ochberg and Ley in separate lengthy interviews in late November. Dr. Ley followed with citations from the DSM-V.

16. Denver Noticed

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I again used the Crowd Counting Consortium’s (CCC) data for the sibling marches. However, a major distinction is necessary between estimates of the DC and the sibling marches. A wealth of different organizations weighed in with estimates of the DC march, and the consortium evaluated all of them to create both a range and a best guess. With the sibling marches, there were far fewer sources. The CCC relies on estimates published in local news outlets, and on Twitter posts in the cases of small demonstrations. Typically news reports are intentionally vague, with terms like “thousands” or “hundreds.” Local authorities used to estimate crowd sizes, but the numbers grew so politically charged that they stopped doing that years ago. So the CCC conservatively converts “hundreds,” “thousands,” and “tens of thousands” to “200,” “2,000,” and “20,000.” That can result in a gross undercount. Because much of this chapter is set in Denver, I dug a little deeper. Most local news reports used the “thousands” catch-all, but everyone I spoke to felt the actual number was toward the upper end of that range. Denver’s alternative weekly Westword was the only news outlet to offer a harder number, reporting “almost 100,000.”

I wanted to experience how the walkouts played out in many different places, but I could be in only one place at a time. For the first walkout, I decided it was most important to attend the Douglas event, and I used news accounts to gauge the impact nationwide. (That was just for background, and I didn’t describe any other walkouts in the book, but the New York Times had a thorough roundup of them, and the TV networks offered great video footage.) For the second walkout, I decided to risk something big happening in Parkland to check out what was happening further afield. Columbine’s choice to hold a walkout-related event a day early allowed me to experience it in two cities. I flew to Denver on April 17 and spent three days meeting with organizers and others related to their big event, watching them handle last-minute logistical details (like walking the site and choosing where to put the Porta-Potties, and so forth), interviewing the Parkland kids