David thought it was a drill. Everyone thought it was a drill—“An extremely realistic one,” he said. They soon discovered it was not. “This was life or death.”
“And how did you find this out? From—”
“Our phones. We’re looking it up.”
Their phones told them the worst of it, possibly all of it, but at the time no one knew what was happening in the freshman building nearby. “We need to realize there is something seriously wrong here, and policy makers need to look in the mirror and take some action,” David said. “Because ideas are great but without action ideas stay ideas, and children die.”
In the next six minutes, David demanded action twelve times. “Any action at this point, instead of just complete stagnancy and blaming the other side. . . . We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action.”
That was the moment. February 15, 2018, 8:22 a.m. EST. David Hogg called out Adult America for letting our kids die. The uprising had begun.
3
I got home and flipped through channels on the TV. David Hogg was popping up around the dial. Conservatives were already chiding the Left for “politicizing” the mourning period, before an “appropriate” time had passed. A steady parade of Parkland students called out “thoughts and prayers” for the stall tactic it was. Politicians were going to think and pray and legislate to keep the deadly system precisely the same. What had begun with good intentions after horrors like Columbine rang hollow nineteen years and 81 mass shootings later. The Parkland kids welcomed thoughts and prayers in addition to solutions, not instead.
Sunday, the journalist in me got ahold of David Hogg’s number, and began texting. We spoke that afternoon, he put me on speaker, with the entire Never Again group. I wondered where they were, exactly, and learned later that it was the extended sleepover in Cameron’s living room. David was funny, self-deprecating, and incredibly cheerful. He said he was still in shock, and felt the pain worst through Lauren, who was devastated. But they had found a purpose; it was right there in their name, and he seemed electrified by it. They all did.
David told me it was too late to get a seat on the buses to their first rally in Tallahassee, but I could caravan up with them. Tallahassee? Wasn’t the march going to be on Washington? That was weeks away, he said—their first big insurrection would be underway in forty-eight hours.
“I’m taking the lead on that,” a girl said. She introduced herself as Jaclyn Corin.
She was conducting an organizational meeting the following day, and David promised to follow up with the location. But remind him, repeatedly, he advised. They were getting buried in press calls. I kept trying, and landed on Monday to a single cryptic text from Cameron: “Pavilion by the amphitheater at Pine Trails Park.” Huh. I figured his friends would understand that, but . . . My first taste of the months to come.
Google Maps matched a Pine Trails Park, 1.9 miles from the school, so I raced to it, and asked my way to an outdoor amphitheater, but there were dozens of tents and gazebos that could qualify as a pavilion. As I dashed about, asking kids, and focused on my objective, I noticed crosses and Stars of David in every direction, each one piled with memorabilia, and realized I was standing inside the sprawling memorial. A wave of sadness knocked me to my knees, and all I could feel was Columbine. This one had promised to be different, but these spontaneous memorials are horribly familiar. All the memorials include flowers, candles, and teddy bears, but each tragedy has its own iconography: thirty-two Hokie Stones at Virginia Tech, painted bedsheets and small cardboard angels at Newtown, and the line of enormous crosses towering over Columbine atop Rebel Hill. As I took in the lush park on the cusp of the Everglades for the first time, I saw them under the huge awning of the outdoor amphitheater: seventeen life-size angels, in flowing white gowns, with gold wings and halos, brilliantly lit from within.
The sun was setting and a storm threatened: rolling thunderheads streaked in amethyst by the sun’s dying rays. Hundreds of mourners roamed the area. Most were silent or whispering in hushed tones, but a group of young women sang out loudly to their savior, lilting sopranos riding the gentle notes of an acoustic guitar: “Yours is the kingdom / Yours is the glory /