Parkland

by Dave Cullen

  “Brendan was one of our great friends,” Cameron said. “So when his brother Daniel started high school, we said he had to join drama. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing there, but he’s trying.”

  Daniel agreed and enjoyed it, to a point. The night before the shooting, he had had a long talk with his dad. Drama wasn’t for him. Cameron and Alex were so passionate about it. His loves were music and photography. He would finish out the year, but that would be it. (MSD offered a variety of different theater classes, and like most of the Never Again kids, he had it as a class as well as an extracurricular activity.) His dad was fine with his decision; he had given it a good shot. But what a fortuitous turn that he had connected with the group. Never Again felt like his therapy. It seemed to be getting him through.

  But recovery is different for everyone, and activism can also serve as avoidance, a way to sidestep dealing with the fears, either intentionally or not. “I am so proud of them, but worry that it will be very hard when they settle into their grief and trauma recovery down the road,” said Robin Fudge Finegan, who led victims’ advocate teams at Oklahoma City and Columbine, then served as a senior FEMA official. “One cannot go end around grief and trauma.”

  Exactly two weeks after the attack, MSD classes were set to resume. Most students were eager to get back but apprehensive about stepping inside. So the school set up an open house on the Sunday afternoon prior, and dubbed it “campus reunification.” Building 12 would be closed off as a crime scene for months, so many classes had to be moved. The rest of the campus was open.

  After eleven days watching his campus on television as a crime scene, Daniel discovered that’s how he thought of it. Changing it back to his school was way trickier than expected. The helicopters didn’t help. He lived within walking distance of the school, and the choppers kept hovering for several days. “I would walk outside, look up and see the helicopters, walk back in, look at the TV, and see the footage the helicopters were capturing,” he said. Helicopters were triggers for him, and so were any sort of bang sounds. He described walking with a group of friends, and a car engine “kind of went pop pop pop, and we all started hyperventilating.”

  But Sunday, he reunited with all the kids he had gone through it with, and that was a huge relief. He’d known they were all alive, but somehow it took seeing them to feel fully safe again.

  Wednesday, February 28, school resumed. Reporters were everywhere. Daniel was annoyed. He was happy to talk to them, but not to be inundated with them. The drop-off line was monstrous that first morning. “Obviously, parents didn’t want to leave their kids alone,” Daniel said. His mom wasn’t afraid of a repeat shooter, so she drove around toward the back gate, which was farther away—but still so many reporters! Daniel was navigating the press gauntlet when a reporter asked if he had a minute to talk. No time, he said—he was trying to make an appointment with another one. They both erupted in laughter.

  Class schedule began that day, but not really class. “So much Play-Doh, and so many comfort dogs,” Daniel said. “I don’t know what kind of meeting they had before, but every classroom had Play-Doh,” he said.

  Daniel was getting restless. “I did use the Play-Doh one time—I was really bored,” he said. “I didn’t really make anything. I kind of just squished it around in my hand.” The comfort dogs, though—those were great. He was eager to get back to work—not full speed, but something. But some of the kids were still in shock, not ready for any stress, so they had to take it slow.

  And sometimes he needed it slow—especially in the classes he had had with Jaime and Gina. “I was really good friends with Gina, so sometimes I’ll look over and see the empty chair, and I know I talk about that a lot and I know a lot of people talk about that a lot, but that’s one of the things that hits me the worst.”

  Daniel was excited to have a diversion—both from his grief and his activism. “Something to be a part of that isn’t political,” he said. “To be a kid again. I’m wearing a March for Our Lives shirt right now.”

  And he was still looking to do something creative with his life. He reflected on his artistic ambitions, seriously considering photography. But just mentioning it dredged up a painful memory. “I was so mad at all the photographers at the vigil the day after the shooting,” he said. “The moment of silence, I just heard camera shutters clicking the whole time. My friend Emma was like bursting crying and she was hugging me for support and there was a camera in my face taking pictures of me.”

  Four weeks later, it still burned.

  2

  Jackie had some rough moments returning to school, too. “Normal” would never be the same, but a key first step is resuming a normal schedule. Hard to get back on track for five AP tests when you’ve got your hands full fomenting an uprising. That first Sunday, she went to “campus reunification” with her parents. A car ran over a water bottle, the cap popped off, and it made a bang. “I legitimately freaked out,” Jackie said. “I had an anxiety attack, and started crying. And I wasn’t even the one to hear gunshots, but I’m terrified. So if it affects me that much, I can’t even imagine the people that were actually in the room.”

  She had no empty desks to acknowledge, but she had an odd surprise her first day back in precalc. What was Alfonso doing there? “He was in my math class all year and I did not know him,” she said. New friends: the silver lining.

  Jackie Corin will never command a stage like Emma González, match the fire of David 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 inter
changeably, 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, over 1,700 kids were killed or injured by guns, heavily concentrated in the inner cities. Where were the tears for them?

  The disparity is partially an adult affliction: shrugging our shoulders at the urban violence, wishing we could help, but flummoxed how. We don’t understand the nuances of their neighborhoods or experience their pain. But paralysis is a learned response, and kids are often still appalled. The MFOL kids were.

  “We know that the reason that we’re getting this attention is because we’re privileged white kids,” Delaney Tarr said. “If you look at Chicago, there’s such a high level of gun violence. But that’s not getting the attention that this is getting because we’re in such a nice area.”

  They were determined to change that. They made their first move right out of the gate: Don’t frame the problem as school shootings. They were fighting gun violence, for all kids, not just them. But they didn’t know much about urban violence, either. Time to start talking to city kids.

  2

  Arne Duncan had served eight years as Chicago’s schools superintendent and seven more as Obama’s secretary of education. He lives in Chicago, ground zero in the urban gun wars. Duncan saw a chance for a powerful connection. He reached the Parkland kids through their school superintendent, and then got in touch with Father Michael Pfleger on the embattled South Side. Father Pfleger is the pastor of Saint Sabina Catholic Church, Chicago’s largest African American Catholic congregation. It has become a beacon of hope in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood ravaged by gun violence. He runs the BRAVE (Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere) youth group there, organizes the annual Peace Marches, and mentors young activists of color across some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods. The pastor recruited a few kids from BRAVE, and more from the Peace Warriors group on the embattled West Side.

  The Parkland kids were all over it. It came together on a Friday night and Emma agreed to host a meeting at her house the next day. They didn’t want another weekend to go by.

  D’Angelo McDade was the executive director of the Peace Warriors, a professional position intended for an experienced full-time adult. D’Angelo was a high school senior, struggling to avoid violence and get to college. Months later, asked if he recalled how he got the invite, he answered without hesitation. “I was called at 11:26 on March 2. At 11:26 p.m., I called and texted Alex. I called him at 12; I texted him at 1.”

  Alex King is a fellow Peace Warrior—a big, stocky guy with a generous crown of cornrows and a close-cropped beard. He’s a really smart kid with a sly sense of humor, constantly taking people by surprise. Alex has spent his life around guns, and has a lot to say. “I’ve been shot at, I’ve had guns pulled on me—really, I’ve had it all,” Alex said. His first time getting shot at was at age fourteen—he thinks; they run together. The first time he encountered a gun was at age eight; he just stumbled on it in a closet.

  Duncan bought the plane tickets, and early Saturday half a dozen kids, plus two parents, were drinking in the Florida sunshine. It was freezing when they woke up in Chicago, snow still on the ground from a brutal storm two weeks earlier. Felt good to take their coats off—they would be swimming in a few hours. How crazy to be cranking the AC! All these palm trees waving along the highway. They really had those, even at the airport; they were everywhere. How cool to finally see them in real life.

  They pulled up at Emma’s. “It was a gated community, and I thought it was a hotel resort or something,” Alex said. “I was like man, she lives here! And then when we pulled up to her house, my first reaction: Should I step on the grass? Should I go straight to the sidewalk?” Emma’s mom rushed out to greet them, and she walked straight up the lawn. “So I just followed her,” he said. “And then I saw the house—it was like this big glass window that was also a door and I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ And I also thought, ‘Should I take my shoes off before I step in?’ But when I actually got in there, Emma came around the corner running, hugging everyone—it was just like happy faces all around the room.”

  That’s the thing about Emma. I’ve asked hundreds of people to describe the Parkland kids, and with the others I get a description, but with Emma they tend to describe the feeling after she enters. They describe tranquility. Sometimes they portray it radiating from her, settling over her surroundings, other times it’s her little body absorbing the tension, drawing anxiety out of the air. Her smile is often mentioned, but more often the smiles in the room.

  About a dozen MFOL kids were bouncing around Emma’s spacious living room. Big relief, ice broken, now what? “Honestly neither side knew why we were there,” Alex said. “It was like, put Parkland and Chicago together and hey, let’s just see what happens. And we got to connect right off the bat.”

  They ate pizza on the lanai, and chicken wings. The food just kept coming. They played a lot of icebreaker games, splashed around in the pool, and spent time just being kids together. “We became friends before we went into the deeper conversation of what we have to do to change this,” Alex said.

  They went back inside, piled onto the puffy off-white couches, pulled in dining chairs, and shared their terrible stories. Alex described his nephew DeShawn Moore getting gunned down the previous spring. May 28, 2017.

  “It was a Sunday afternoon, I believe. He was on the porch with his girlfriend at her house and this car was circling the block and one time when they came around the block again, they started to shoot. He pushed her in a panic into the house, he tried to run home but— He tried to run away from the shots, but it turned out he was running towards them, and when he turned around trying to get away, it turned out he was shot twice . . . once in the back of the head and once in the back.”

  Alex learned his nephew was dead on Facebook. Was that common? Yes, pretty common. Alex had lost several family members to gunfire, but losing DeShawn was the one that sent him reeling. He leaned forward on Emma’s cozy couch to recount that story, then confessed his plunge into self-destruction, and his road out.

  Self-destruction, the Parkland kids hadn’t seen that coming, but Alex’s buddy D’Angelo McDade had a sim
ilar tale. D’Angelo is even taller than Alex, with a similar big frame, a high and tight haircut and chinstrap beard. He’s a bit more serious than Alex, and a natural orator, with a preacher’s cadence when he gets going. He sat back from the circle a bit, on a dining room chair, directly across from Jackie and Emma, who leaned in intently. D’Angelo spiraled downward after he got shot in August 2017. He was hanging out on his porch with his grandfather and a dozen family friends, when a man they’d never seen before came walking down the street and opened fire. “I was shot in my left leg, one from the left side and one from the right side,” he said. “The left side, it went in but did not come out; the right side, a bullet ricocheted off a doorframe and hit my leg. I was on crutches for six weeks.” His grandfather and another relative were also hit. Everyone survived. “And to be clear, we don’t have drug dealers in our houses—gangs, or anything,” he said. “It’s literally just an old-time place with old folks and children.”

  The shooter was caught and released multiple times, and D’Angelo believes he will likely get away with attempted murder—three counts. “There is an assumption that if your house is being shot up that you are a drug dealer and/or gangbanger,” he said. So getting shot was another strike against him; he could feel the thud of doors slamming shut in his future. Victimization of the victim.

  “I had a really bad attitude,” D’Angelo said. “I had this attitude of, ‘You can’t tell me anything.’” Then he found the Peace Warriors. Violence is woven so deeply into these kids’ lives, and the Peace Warriors seek to unravel it, one strand at a time. But the key step is stopping violence at the source. The Peace Warriors call themselves interrupters. “Interrupters of nonsense,” D’Angelo said. “We associate nonsense with violence, whether verbal or physical. If two students are engaging in horseplay and then begin showing verbal aggression, our Peace Warriors immediately step in. Mediating that situation to make sure that conflict does not rise to a pervasive or worse problem.”