Parkland - Dave Cullen Page 0,35

Hogg’s Twitter feed, or keep the faithful giggling like Cameron Kasky. But while they lit up the Internet, along with Delaney Tarr and Sarah Chadwick, Jackie was the driving force behind the scenes. Movements are born from hope, but they are built brick by brick. Jackie had been laying the foundation for MFOL before she knew it existed.

Jackie is an implementer by intuition, but a natural leader as well. She has a quiet charisma that doesn’t project from a stage or transmit through a TV set, but is powerful in the room. She knows what to do, takes charge, and then she’s relentless. Cameron’s mom had noticed it that first Saturday, when she returned from the cruise to find the team organizing in her living room. Among all the silliness and horseplay, Jackie seemed on a mission. “My first impression was she was like superintensely trying to organize these buses,” Natalie said. “And I was like, ‘Of course she’s class president. She’s organized. She’s capable. She’s a leader.’”

Jackie was never political, not even a little. The sharp turn in Jackie’s trajectory is captured in her Instagram feed: all activism post-Valentine’s, not a whiff of politics prior. So many chummy girlfriend poses and scenic vistas before the attack: tie-dyed shirts at Camp Blue Ridge, fluorescent face paint at a Miami Dayglow concert, wading the Chattooga River with big American flags. Even the aesthetics flip: the before side is all choice lighting, cropping, and color saturation, carefully curated to present a vibrant, digitally enhanced life. Dingy grays and muted colors after, hastily documented cinema verité style. And dividing them, that stark post, a plain white background with the small silhouette of an AR-15 beneath three huge words, the last in red, make it stop. It would be months before Jackie would return to the carefree poses of “normal” life.

Two weeks into the struggle, Jackie had identified a new enemy: fear. Politicians were afraid of the NRA and its supposed political omnipotence, which would crush their careers if they dared step out of line. Reasonable gun owners were afraid of making modest concessions that they actually agreed with, because ceding the momentum would supposedly ignite a wave of dizzying defeats ending in the abolishment of the Second Amendment and the end of deer hunting. The NRA preached “Never give an inch.” Don’t support measures you agree with; support holding the line.

“I think people are scared to make such a big change,” Jackie said. “Even though maybe their moral compass is saying it’s right. Just like the civil rights movement . . .”

Never Again was facing a bit of a branding issue. They were using two names regularly, and interchangeably, drifting slowly toward MFOL. They were keeping rather quiet about why for a while.

And there was a problem with the march. The DC mall was not available. The conflict involved a small student group filming a video on some of the same grounds. The park district followed a strict first-come, first-served policy. They suggested Pennsylvania Avenue. That would require permits from the city for the streets and from the federal park service, which had jurisdiction over the sidewalks and parks along Pennsylvania Avenue.

So the kids had a choice: move the date, or move the venue. Easy, Jackie said. “We were told it was already booked, so we were like OK, Pennsylvania Avenue, even better. It’s in front of the Capitol.”

The changes also meant actual marching would be figurative. Instead of a march to a rally, it would just be a rally. But that would be enough.

It was already enough. Coni Sanders’s father, Dave Sanders, was the teacher killed saving students at Columbine. Coni had become a prominent champion of gun reform, waging a relentless struggle; the activists seemed to lose every skirmish on every front. I got a gushing message from her around that time. “I am in awe of what is happening,” she said. “It’s working, Dave. All these years and it’s working.”

Part II

Building a Movement

Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.

—Martin Luther King Jr.’s third principle of nonviolence

7

Peace Warriors

1

The Parkland generation was raised on lockdown drills—responding to tragedy by learning to hide better. Tragedy: a word we’ve grown so sick of, but we employ it selectively. Year after year brings a fresh crop of devastated kids—most of them affluent, telegenic, and white. It’s horrifying, yet safer than enrolling in an inner-city school. In February, seventeen died at Douglas High, along with 1,044 others in America. In the first six months of 2018,