a different issue. “No more interviews,” she whispered, without slowing down or looking up. He apologized, sheepishly, and turned to find his seat. She was never mean, just firm.
A CNN producer approached Jackie about switching buses. This time she looked peeved. I’m sorry, she said, no changes. The producer persisted, and Jackie was incredulous. Hear me out, the producer insisted: they weren’t asking for a better bus, their team had inadvertently been split up. They were set to livestream segments to CNN, HLN, CNN International, and CNN, but they couldn’t pull off any of that from separate buses. Oh. That was legit. Jackie would find someone to swap, and she did.
Jackie must have settled a hundred minor issues in that last hour, all of it filmed, even the trivial stuff, often by five or ten devices at a time. I asked her later if the spotlight was intimidating. “You get used to it real quick,” she said.
Jackie’s dad, Paul Corin, watched Jackie manage the chaos in disbelief. She’d always been a go-getter, he said, but this? “I’m in awe,” he said. “Of my own daughter. I want to take her when she gets back to get her DNA tested, because I saw her come out of my wife, but I’m not sure I could produce this.”
He described her as brilliant and emotional. “But she’s not showing it now, because she’s laser focused right now.”
Last-minute glitches kept mounting. Jackie worked through them, but the clock ticked past one p.m. She had no margin for error. They were scheduled for a late arrival, then pizza with students at Leon High School a mile from the capitol, and a late-night crash course, sort of Lobbying 101. Most of the kids admitted they had little idea what the term meant. The air-conditioning had gone out on one of the buses, and the driver couldn’t get it fixed. It was sweltering in there already. The bus company gave up and dispatched another bus, which would take another hour. Jackie ordered the other two to head out. They waited. “It really flattened the mood,” Jackie said.
Jackie’s driver said the delay would force him to work overtime. He demanded Jackie pay for his Tallahassee hotel room. “He got out of the bus and started walking away,” Jackie said. “I was a mess. I was crying. I kind of had a breakdown. ‘I have so much pressure on my shoulders—you cannot be doing this!’” She agreed to pay, and he agreed to drive.
3
They expected Tuesday to be eventful. It began with a team meeting at Cameron’s to run through everything before heading to the Publix. Most of the team was headed to Tallahassee, but key players had to stay back. A huge CNN town hall was scheduled for Wednesday night in Boca Raton, where David, Cameron, and Alfonso would be key speakers. Alfonso would attend most of the Tallahassee event and then fly down to make it. David was off to L.A. taping Dr. Phil and would also get back just in time. And then there was the primary objective, the march; no time to waste.
The Women’s March had provided a template, kindred spirits, and plenty of allies. Deena Katz, one of its organizers and a Dancing with the Stars producer, got on board quickly and filed the permit application for the National Mall early that week. It projected student speakers, musical performers, and half a million marchers. It proposed a fifty-foot-wide stage, twenty tents, twenty generators, fourteen Jumbotrons, and two thousand Porta Potties.
The kids also recruited Emma Collum, a South Florida attorney who had handled transportation and logistics for the Women’s March. She described an exhaustive labyrinth of regulations dictating everything from march routes, bus parking restrictions, and petty rules on Porta Potties.
Could they pay for all this? Apparently. They had five weeks to raise a million dollars and were closing in on $1.5 million in two days. That was double the Women’s March haul in its first two months. Then George Clooney and his wife released a statement:
Amal and I are so inspired by the courage and eloquence of these young men and women from Stoneman Douglas High School. Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side with this incredible generation of young people from all over the country, and in the name of our children Ella and Alexander, we’re donating $500,000 to help pay for this groundbreaking event. Our children’s lives depend on it.
Later Tuesday morning, Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg