Parkland

by Dave Cullen

  A school board member was chaperoning, and I caught him for a quick interview just as he was boarding. He stood in the doorway answering my questions with one foot on the first step, until Jackie whisked by, addressing 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.com, 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 announced they were matching that pledge. Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw quickly followed. They applauded the kids for “demonstrating their leadership with a confidence and maturity that belies their ages.”

  All afternoon, the three buses snaked up the Florida Turnpike carrying Jackie’s hundred Douglas emissaries to Tallahassee, with a caravan of news vans trailing behind. At four p.m., NPR’s All Things Considered took the air, and led with the story of the journey; they hadn’t even gotten there. Right about the same time, Sean Hannity’s radio show was playing on another Florida station, running a gun promotion. At 6:36 p.m., Oprah tweeted a fourth half-million-dollar pledge, which drew nearly half a million likes. “These inspiring young people remind me of the Freedom Riders of the 60s who also said we’ve had ENOUGH and our voices will be heard,” it said.

  The two-million-dollar celebrity windfall came with a price. Conservative critics took it as confirmation the kids were pawns—and added Decadent Hollywood to the list of puppet masters. “Crisis actor” charges leapt from right-wing websites to mainstream media. A growing conspiracy theory contended that school shootings were hoaxes cooked up by the Liberal Media as a pretext for a government gun-grab. It escalated when The Internet discovered that David Hogg had been photographed thousands of miles away in summer 2017. David’s friend got into an argument with a lifeguard at Redondo Beach, California, and David was interviewed about it on local TV news—“proving” he didn’t even live in Florida. That was airtight evidence for the fringe Right. They scoffed at the explanation: the Hoggs moved to Parkland from Torrance, California, in 2014, and David returned to spend most summers with his friend there. Sometimes, they went to the beach. The conspiracy sites howled. Crisis actor, obviously.

  Marco Rubio actually tweeted in support of the kids Tuesday evening, labeling the charges “the work of a disgusting group of idiots with no sense of decency.”

  “Thank you,” David tweeted back.

  His friends responded with humor. Wolf Blitzer asked Cameron about the crisis actor charges live on CNN. “Well, if you had seen me in our school’s production of Fiddler on the Roof, you would know that nobody would pay me to act, for anything,” Cameron said. Wednesday morning, he tweeted: “@davidhogg111 is smart, funny, and diligent, but my favorite thing about him is undoubtedly that he’s actually a 26 year-old felon from California.”

  The kids also responded with the facts, and assurances. The first $1.5 million came from more than 18,000 individual donors. “Donations will be used to pay the expenses associated with the March for Our Lives gathering in Washington, DC, and to provide resources for young people organizing similar marches across the country,” a spokeswoman said. “Any leftover funds will go towards supporting a continuing, long-term effort by and for young people to end the epidemic of mass shootings that has turned our classrooms into crime scenes.”

  They even used their parents. The kids rarely sanctioned that, because they understood the power of images. Parents at the microphone would undercut their message that this was all them. But they faced a countervailing narrative: Should two dozen high school kids really be handling $3.5 million, an amount growing by the day? And they did need help—not in planning, but in execution. An excellent New York magazine piece a few weeks later captured it well: “To handle the logistics alone, the kids desperately need grown-up help—even as they guard the specifics of what help they’re getting.” They had their guard up about that. I was constantly astounded about their candor in just about everything: what they were doing, how they were grieving, breakdowns and screwups and their own privilege. But one t
hing they were consistently cagey about, straight through summer and into fall: adult assistance. The only time I ever felt a smarmy talking point thrown at me was on the Tallahassee trip, while they were most sensitive about the issue and still new at handling their roles. Every time I asked about outside support, kids repeated the line “This is for kids, by kids.” That lasted only a few days. They despised talking points, and corrected the error quickly. After that, when they didn’t want to answer my question, they just told me so. It didn’t happen much.

  Clooney mostly texted with the kids directly. But he also spoke to their parents on Tuesday, to allay concerns on all sides. The kids let Cameron’s dad, Jeff Kasky, make a statement. “These people putting their money in—not a single one of them has said anything along the lines of ‘I’ll donate but you have to listen to what I say.’ Nobody is pulling the strings for these kids,” he said. “I have to make clear: [Clooney] is not directing them, nor is anybody.”

  He also said Clooney had hooked them up with attorneys and admin help, and, crucially, the powerhouse PR firm 42 West, which represented major entertainment talent. Jeff Kasky said the March for Our Lives Foundation would be set up that week to oversee the handling of all funds.

  4

  It was a wearying ride to Tallahassee, with three rest stops and lots of bladder issues. At the stops, kids said the elation had subsided in the first hour. No one was sure what they were in for. They were excited to meet their representatives, but fuzzy on what that would look like. And what should they say? Many were taken aback by the media whirlwind. They had expected us to move on by now, not follow them up the turnpike.

  “I don’t think any of us thought it would get this big so quickly,” Daniel Duff said. Daniel was a skinny freshman with curly brown hair and braces across an irrepressible smile. He could be Central Casting for the sidekick’s handsome little brother in a high school rom-com. Governor Scott was one of the few officials he was familiar with—“Mostly because he looks so much like Voldemort.”

  Daniel was fourteen, from a fervently Republican family, and had never paid much attention to politics. He was very into it now. Tallahassee sounded exciting. He was really eager to talk to officials—but how blunt should he be? Was someone going to guide them? He wasn’t aware of the training ahead, but would find it a godsend.

  The lead bus pulled into Leon High School around 9:30 p.m. The kids were tired, hungry, and ready to crash. The campus was built on a hill, with a grassy ridge and a staircase leading up to the school. The grounds were lit, and hundreds of students lined the ridge. The kids staggered off the first bus to rapturous cheers and a hug-brigade of local officials lined up beside the door. As they mounted the staircase, adoring Leon students pressed in from both sides. A bank of TV cameras were positioned to capture it all, with the caravan of more rolling in. The kids felt like astronauts returning from the moon landing. No one had foreseen this. Daniel Duff wondered who was hugging him, and was visibly overcome. All those kids stayed at school till ten o’clock? “I didn’t know that we were that big,” he said. “To meet some kids who have a voice?”

  Several Parkland kids stepped up to the microphone at the top of the stairs. Impassioned speeches recaptured the mood from the Publix lot, until a technical glitch took out the speakers. They wrapped it up and went inside. Some of the Leon kids joined them, but the bulk remained outside to repeat the process. The second bus got a similar welcome, but when Jackie’s bus pulled in an hour later, they had given up and gone in for pizza with two-thirds of the Parkland contingent. Jackie’s group was ushered in quickly with little fanfare.

  It was very late, but the legislative training went forward. It was vital. Claire VanSusteren gave an overview. This is a conversation, two ways, and it demands respect, she said. It’s OK to be emotional with officials, but if you get angry or contentious, meetings will be canceled fast. She said that had happened to a group of activists earlier that month.

  Several speakers repeated her warning, but Representative Jared Moskowitz went a different route. “You need to make this real for them,” he said. “You’ve got to put them in that school.”

  “You are the epicenter of the earth right now,” Senator Book said. “You are what is going to change the world. And the most important thing is that we not let people look away!”

  Daniel Duff was relieved. He got it now. They all did.

  Senator Book and Claire VanSusteren spent the night with the girls, in sleeping bags on the Red Cross cots. Conversation bounced among normal teen topics, the speeches they were planning, and memories of the shooting. Some were sharing stories for the first time. “After three o’clock, I could not stay up one more minute,” VanSusteren said. She suggested everyone get some sleep.

  “We don’t really sleep anymore,” the kids told her. She shuddered. Then she wandered off to try.

  5

  At five a.m., the doors swung open for the Good Morning America crew. The kids walked to the capitol groggy but exhilarated. But disillusionment crept in fast. Sessions seemed to take one of two frustrating paths. “For the most part, the people we talked to already agreed with us,” Daniel Duff said. That was the biggest complaint, because so many of the yeses had come from allies. Alfonso’s group had been paired with more hard-liners, who seemed primarily intent on merely placating them. More thoughts and prayers. Either way, all minds seemed to have been made up long before they arrived. So why talk, if no one was actually listening? Of course, legislators had thought about this—and voted on it—that made sense, though only in retrospect for many of the kids; they hadn’t really thought about it before. Or they assumed the officials’ own kids getting gunned down might make them rethink things. They might be receptive to hear what they had to say. No sign of that.

  The House chamber was gaveled to order and began with a tribute to the Parkland kids, and a reading of the seventeen names. Senator Book’s team was hoping for some real floor debate, and the kids packed the balcony hopefully, but it was generic speechifying. Claire advised them to move on quickly, and they did.

  Most of the meetings were conducted behind closed doors, at the legislators’ insistence. The kids then filed out and described them to the media throngs. And they were not happy. Senate president Joe Negron opened his session to the media. He was joined by two other Republican Senate leaders. The senators were respectful and engaging, seemed genuinely concerned, and answered every question—but most of them evasively. The questions were dignified, as instructed, but the reactions were spontaneous and blunt.

  “Why should anyone have an assault rifle?” a boy asked. “That’s an issue that we’re reviewing,” Negron said. The students groaned.

  One student asked for a simple yes or no answer on raising the purchasing age of an assault rifle to twenty-one, and Negron offered a long-winded dodge. The grumbling grew louder. Then Senator Bill Galvano poked his head to the microphone and said simply, “My answer is yes.” Applause broke out and shouts of “Thank you! Thank you!”

  “I’ll take two more questions,” Senator Negron said. “This young lady, and the young man in the red tie.” When his turn came, the red-tie boy stood and spoke more sternly than his peers. “You said you would look at things closely. Are you willing to actually act on anything? Yes or no?”

  Senator Negron gave a long, meandering answer: he was proud of the senate, they were working on mental health . . . No real answer.

  Alfonso Calderon wore a bright red tie over a crisp blue dress shirt with a rainbow lapel pin. He was the only kid who dressed up. In the hallway afterward, I asked if he’d gotten the memo.

  “Yeah, I have a problem with rules,” he said. But then he laughed and said it was actually strategic. Ties are catnip for adults—they’ll always call on you. It had worked with the senator, and with me and countless other reporters, who had lost most of the students we wanted to follow up with in the mad hallway jumble. The red tie made it easy.

  His crazy mop of black curls, piled
high and flopped over to the right, sides buzzed razor short. It was quite a look, but he pulled it off. High cheekbones, deep dimples, intense brown eyes, and a mischievous smile helped. He was cocky, but self-deprecating—he definitely saw life, including himself, as a comedy. It took only moments with him to see he shared Cameron’s wicked sense of humor. They turned out to be close friends. Alfonso was one of the Never Again leaders who handled most of the group’s Spanish-language TV. We spoke briefly and he promised to circle back, but his friends were waiting, and were looking on expectantly. He resumed his position at the center of his pack.

  Just outside the building, it felt like a different world. Throngs of students and teachers and PTA members had marched on the capital to support them. Demonstrators gathered instead beneath the six soaring Doric columns and the wood-and-copper cupola atop the adjacent old capitol dome. Several different rallies had been in the works, by different groups on different days, but they had merged to rally behind the Parkland kids. Thousands already filled the granite steps, the lawn, and the Apalachee Parkway, when the final contingent from Florida State University rolled in.

  Seventeen placards were positioned on easels up and down the steps, each one bearing the contents of one of seventeen bills that had failed in the last several years—failed even to be read in committee. “Seventeen bills that could have saved seventeen lives,” a mom told me, a senator told me, aides told me, and the incoming president of the Florida PTA told me. They had their talking point.

  A whole lot of students had come, but they were not the majority of the crowd, not by a long shot. There were moms, so many moms, and grandmas. Dads too, but three-fourths of the crowd was female, many of them in red Moms Demand Action T-shirts. They had been fighting for this so long, they said, and many had lost hope, until they saw David Hogg on Thursday morning, the leader they had been waiting for—and then Emma called BS on Saturday, and really blew them away. The signs were all hand-painted, with phrases like am i next?; protect kids, not guns; and children shouldn’t die for your hobby. There were elaborate artworks of acrylic paint on ten-foot tarps, supported by poles along each side. One said blood on your hands, with bright red palm prints, and dripping blood. Another featured a giant blue clockface labeled next massacre countdown clock. And of course we call bs signs everywhere.