me for political gain, and then the other is just showing their face because if not the country would hate them because we’re kids who honestly did survive a school shooting and I’m joking a lot now, but—”
He was thinking out loud, really, and he plunged ahead awhile longer and then asked to clarify: “What I mean by using us is, first, we are using [the Democrats] to our advantage. Realistically, they’re giving us a very nice platform, they’re letting us speak to their leadership which are people in power. Before this, I would’ve probably never voted for that party, and now I’m considering it, I’m really thankful that they at least reached out to us, like we didn’t have to jump so many hoops to speak to them, like the Republican Party. And the Republican Party, generally, I don’t feel agrees with our viewpoint, so it’s understandable that they don’t want to talk to us.”
That was becoming a problem. By March, nearly all the MFOL kids were bringing it up nearly every interview. They were eager to work with both parties, and knew that lots of Republicans quietly supported them but couldn’t risk the association. Ryan Deitsch commented on that danger that same week: “When you take a selfie with a bunch of kids that went there to speak their minds and have their voices heard and then it’s like, ‘I was just with Never Again—vote for me next election—’”
“We have not endorsed political candidates nor shall we ever,” Alfonso said. “That is a rule we have made. That’s why we’ve spoken to both leaderships—I mean as much as we can, because one of them doesn’t want to talk to us as much, and we’re trying to work with them. Honestly, if a Democratic senator and a Republican one asked me to talk to them at the same time, I’d probably speak to the Republican.”
6
Daniel Duff was planning to walk out, and excited about it—and tickled that he was going to lead the walkout at a distant school, thirteen hundred miles away. His cousins in Pennsylvania had hatched a plan. Colin and Kyleigh Duff were students at Parkland High School (no connection), and Daniel was helping plan the walkout there. Colin and Kyleigh asked Daniel to record a short video, saying who he was, why he was walking, and why it mattered. Colin and Kyleigh’s classmates were over the moon. One of the kids leading the national movement was personally involved with their walkout. The school administration got on board. “So they’re going to meet in the auditorium, watch me, and then they’re going to walk out,” Daniel said, still a bit incredulously. It was a big school too—about three thousand kids. Daniel wasn’t a leader at the MFOL meetings, more of a foot soldier. But he would be so much more for these kids. “I’m going to be like the voice of a walkout, I guess,” he said.
Daniel described the plan gleefully, while still scripting it. Two days later, he was morose. He had stayed up way too late on rewrites and recording, and hated the result. “I was so tired, and I had my March for Our Lives shirt on and everything,” he said. “And I watched the next morning, and I was like, ‘I look way too tired and you can clearly see me reading the script.’ So I’m going to redo it once I get home.”
The walkout was in two days, and his uncle would have to edit it, but he was going to record it over. He had to get this right.
11
Walkout
1
This was turning into a huge deal. Twenty-five hundred schools had organized school walkouts, in every state, and the media was all over it. But in Parkland, the school administrators had erred on the side of caution, and decided it would be a quiet affair.
That’s not what happened. Kids disobeyed their faculty. They moved fast, busted out of school, and merged several protests on the fly through shouts and texts and social media. The change came suddenly. At 9:59, one minute to walkout, few of the thousands who would flood into Pine Trails Park within the hour had any idea they were headed there.
Here was the plan: Each school participating was asked to walk out and observe seventeen minutes of silence on Tuesday morning at ten a.m. local time: one minute for each of the fallen at Douglas High. How they conducted it, and what might follow, was up to them. Every school