Parkland

by Dave Cullen

  Dylan described the rest of his process as “so not professionally done.” He uploaded the picture to Snapchat on his phone and typed in his reply caption: “We’ll control our own lives, thank you.” He saved the Snapchat, dumped it into the Photoshop Express app on his phone, and then added the March for Our Lives logo. That failed to save, since it’s a premium option and he was using the free version of Photoshop Express. So he took a screenshot, cropped his phone’s border clutter, and discovered that the image now looked too blurry. So he uploaded that one into Instagram, sharpened it, took a screenshot of that, cropped it again, and texted the improved shot to the group chat. They loved it.

  “Who wants to post it?” he asked.

  Sarah and Cameron. Sarah drew 722 retweets and 4,878 likes. Cameron got 1,238 retweets and 6,565 likes.

  From first spotting the offensive tweet to posting the rebuttal and multiple team members tweeting it took about an hour, Dylan said. Quick and dirty, and it looked fine. They needed to stay nimble to match the NRA beat for beat, without getting diverted from their own message. And without forgetting to have fun.

  “It’s funny,” Dylan said. “If you came to one of our meetings and watched us and listened to us, you would think, ‘Nothing is getting done!’ But amidst this chaos and nonsense, somehow we are getting it done in our own way. I don’t know why it works, I don’t know how it works—but it does. And it’s incredible.”

  6

  The MFOL office had a brief life. The group had let a few other media outlets in, and that didn’t work out well. Time ran a cover story that omitted the location but included several revealing clues. And a TV crew used an outside shot that David believes was the final straw. “I saw them taking the shot and I told them not to use it and to delete it and they were like, ‘OK, we will,’” he said. “The one shot they used was that. Within twelve hours of the documentary airing, the Nazis, because I won’t call them the alt-Right, basically found where our office is, based off a door handle, had a hundred pizzas sent in my name, had death threats sent there. We all had to leave.”

  They worked from their homes again for quite a while, without a good meeting spot. Months later, they got a new office. No press this time.

  13

  Harvard

  1

  Four days to go, they took a detour to Harvard for two of them. It was an inconvenient time, but a hell of an opportunity: a crash course on their primary objective, not just from Harvard, but the guy who specialized in their target cohort. The diversion seemed crazy to me, because I still didn’t understand. If it had come the first week of November, they would have taken a rain check. The midterms were the mission, not the march.

  They came for a two-day seminar on young Americans’ attitudes toward politics, led by an authority on that topic: John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard’s Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The seminar was packed with concepts, strategies, and data, but one paramount idea: “Young Americans vote when they believe their efforts have tangible results.”

  That was the headline of the most important slide in a presentation titled “7 Things Everyone Should Know About Young Americans in 2018.” That’s the whole ball game with young voters, Della Volpe said—with potential young voters, because so few of them vote. And that’s why they don’t vote. The data demonstrates that overwhelmingly, he said. Because they don’t see tangible results from politics. They roll their eyes at adult fascination with a process totally unrelated to their lives. You can drive canvassers weary trying to register them; you can cajole them on Snapchat and Instagram; you can rock the vote until their ears bleed—and all that is necessary but woefully insufficient, Della Volpe said. You’re never going to get them to vote until you make that direct connection to their lives.

  And that usually fails, Della Volpe told the MFOL kids. Most of the things most politicians run on are just not this demographic’s prime concerns. That was the bad news. The good news was that every now and then, perhaps once in a generation, that changed. And it was changing now, he said. A companion slide laid it out in huge block letters filling the entire screen:

  Once-in-a-generation

  attitudinal shifts about [the]

  efficacy of political

  engagement [are] now underway

  For two decades, the Harvard institute had been polling young voters (under thirty) on the key question: Does political involvement have any tangible results? The results were generally miserable—with two exceptions: immediately after 9/11, and immediately after the inauguration of President Trump. The Trump administration woke the Parkland generation up. Young people saw exactly what elections could do to them, and they were overwhelmingly displeased. Pollsters tend to focus on the displeasure—a president’s approval rating. That’s the lesser indicator, Della Volpe said. It was the recognition that politics affects them, directly—that was the radical change.

  After 9/11, when young voters saw the connection, they voted more—particularly when someone reached out to them directly, Della Volpe said. It was that one-two combination that’s required: demonstrating that voting matters, and then a candidate emerging who can win them over. And then that candidate has to do the groundwork: create a powerhouse operation to reach this group and turn voting into a habit. So all that canvassing the MFOL kids were revving up, that mattered, too. You still have to find the kids, sign them up, and cajole them—after you demonstrate why they should.

  That latter point was a huge and overlooked lesson of the Obama campaign, Della Volpe said. Young voter turnout increased in 2008 and 2012 because Obama was on the ticket, and because his team went out and found them. Many political scientists have written off the Obama increases as fairly modest, but they are missing a huge point, Della Volpe said. Young turnout increased dramatically in the so-called battleground states, where the election was contested, and where the Obama campaigns concentrated most of their organizing to reach young people. Because that was fewer than a dozen states, the impact is diluted if you just look at national numbers, he said. It’s actually a one-two-three punch that’s required: convince young voters politics matters, field candidates who address their concerns, and then do the grunt work to get to them.

  Della Volpe shared an anecdote that surprised me—and explained an unusual argument I heard from the kids repeatedly in the three months after they met with him. Della Volpe had been talking to a teenager, asking whether gun control would be a major factor in his first vote. “And he said to me, ‘Well, I don’t think guns are on the ballot,’” Della Volpe said. “I said I could make the case that they are on the ballot in every city and town across America, because every member of Congress is up for reelection.” To take full advantage of the Parkland kids, Della Volpe pointed out, voters should make it their business to know where every member of Congress stands on the Parkland agenda. “It took me a couple of minutes to kind of make that case to a first-time voter,” he said. “That’s the kind of effort it’s going to take in order to really take full advantage of the Parkland kids.”

  I had heard the Parkland kids hammer that point repeatedly and I had found it a little odd. Didn’t it go without saying? No. For a lot of new voters and nonvoters it did not. Young voters have long been a sleeping giant of American politics, because most of them stay home. If they ever turned out in percentages to match their older counterparts, they could swing many elections. And over the past year, young people had been turning out to vote in special elections. Della Volpe said there were signs that year really could be different. The MFOL movement came at exactly the right political moment. “The attitudinal shift has already happened,” Della Volpe said. MFOL was tapping into an energy that was already boiling on Valentine’s Day. It was waiting to be activated. MFOL stepped up.

  Della Volpe said Harvard’s research indicates that young voters were 50 percent more likely to say politics matters than they were pre-Trump. Democrats were particularly charged up. In the spring of 2018, Della Volpe found that
the number of registered Democrats between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine who said they intended to vote surged to 51 percent, from just 28 percent in 2014. On the Republican side, the number rose from 31 to 36 percent.

  The Parkland kids were having a major impact—building on the energy already in play.

  Della Volpe was impressed that these kids understood they had launched a generational campaign. Even if they devoted their lives to the fight, ultimately they would hand the baton to kids who had not yet been born. They also understood that they had to motivate people, especially young people, to vote.

  The public has bought into the NRA’s air of invincibility and won’t rally behind gun safety candidates because it doesn’t believe they can win. Most of the public refuses to push their candidates too far into the gun debate. Most Democrats, and lots of moderate and even conservative legislators, back the MFOL agenda. But they won’t go near gun legislation. They don’t want to vote on it, and you’ll rarely hear it in a stump speech, almost never in a campaign ad.

  “You have to begin to slowly build momentum because most voters don’t have a lot of faith in anyone outmaneuvering the NRA,” Della Volpe said. “You need to believe there’s an opportunity that you can win. It gives voters, especially young voters, faith. And the Parkland students, they’ve had more success already than many others have in many years. And I believe that has to be part of their narrative. ‘We’ve done this, we’ve done that: help us take it to the next level.’” Jackie Corin had come to the same conclusion by day two.

  2

  An entourage of journalists, academics, activists, and fans followed this story with fascination. Most experienced the kids electronically first. And the burning questions once they finally got to spend a day or two with them in person were always: Are these kids real? Are they the same in person as they are online? Or is that all rehearsed or manufactured? Can they spout all those statistics or sling those clever zingers on the fly? Yes, yes, no, yes. Most came away stunned that the kids were even more poised, informed, and charismatic in person. Their TV/Twitter personalities were authentic, but wildly incomplete.

  Of all the people I discussed them with, the one who captured them best was Della Volpe. He encountered groups of the MFOL kids at several conferences throughout the year, as well as the Harvard seminar. That began with a breakfast at Harvard’s central dining hall. “One minute they’re like any other fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-year-olds—being goofy, playing with their food,” he said. “And then, they step outside and we have a conversation and they turned into some of the most inspirational leaders in the world today.”

  Della Volpe found Emma entrancing, but not at first. He sat beside her at breakfast, and his first big impression was “What was she doing with her eggs? She put two packs of mayonnaise on her eggs, which I found really odd.” She told him how excited she was to be heading to New College of Florida in Sarasota in the fall. He said she described it as small and kind of hippie-like and inexpensive enough for her to afford. “She looked forward to sitting under a tree and reading and hanging out and being a kid,” he said. Ordinary. And then she turned to business, and she seized the room. And held it.

  As one of the movement’s brightest stars, Emma projects determination, authenticity, and candor through any screen—just as she would when she’d stare silently into the lens for four and a half minutes and bring the house down at the DC march. But it’s such a different vibe in person, where she exudes a sense of tranquility. Others see her as absorbing anxiety so that all the tension in the room fades. “A sense of calmness,” Volpe said.

  The one-two combination of the head and the heart was especially powerful in person. Della Volpe marveled at their symbiotic relationship at the National Conference of Mayors a few months later. Alfonso went first. That was vital. He painted a portrait of ordinary life for a fifteen-year-old in America: homework, silly fights, and friendships—and a gunman down the hallway. “I came home, I told my friends,” Della Volpe said. “About sixty kids in a ten-foot closet with a seven-foot wall, cuddling with them, and crying, and then the look on his friend’s face, she knew she was going to die. I get chills just thinking about it. I had never had anyone describe what it was like to have a gunman run around the hallway, what it’s like to see one of your best friends die. Cool, composed, caring.” The room was captivated, he said. “And then David takes it bigger: ‘OK now, America. This is what we need to do about it.’”

  Della Volpe observes politicians for a living. He sees hundreds of speeches a year and couldn’t recall a more powerful combination of speakers in the past several decades. He’d wondered if they had choreographed it that way, so I asked them later, and they had a good laugh. They were just thrown together that day, but they realized Alfonso had to lead off: heart first, then head. Reignite the imperative to act, and then map out how we get there.

  14

  March for Their Lives

  1

  Daniel Duff said it was going to be huge. Huge? What did that mean? He had no idea, really, but expected it to feel huge. A lot had been made about all the celebrities coming, but Daniel had no interest in that. I asked him about it anyway, when he got to DC the night before—anyone he wanted to meet?

  Nah. So not what this was about. But then he thought it over and changed his mind. George Clooney would be cool. Daniel liked his directing and acting, and what an impact he’d had on their movement, opening his wallet so publicly, so fast. A talented artist who also had their back. Yeah, Clooney would be pretty cool. George. Ha-ha. If he came. Maybe Amal too.

  The team stayed together at the same hotel. Wake-up time was reasonable, around seven. Most were milling about the lobby sleepily at eight. Big-name allies were also there, and Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly looked wide awake. Cameron was all smiles as always, and came over to hug Daniel and his brother Brendan and crack jokes. Emma glided by with David, looking reserved and meek, as though she were physically retreating into her baggy white March for Our Lives long-sleeved T-shirt. Her jeans were ripped aggressively, and she slung a heavy black backpack over both shoulders with peace warriors emblazoned on the straps. Her trademark scalp was hidden under a slouchy gray beanie, with a Twitter logo apparently, or something close.

  Daniel was giddier than I’ve ever seen him. This might literally be the biggest day of his life, he said. Seemed kind of early. But who knows? Most of the MFOL team were juniors or seniors. Some would surely keep up the fight from college, some might move on. Eventually, the torch would pass. To whom, to do what—who knows?

  Daniel had come with his family, who said they were bagels people, so we hit the Bagels Etc. across the street. Daniel’s dad and brothers relived the horror of Valentine’s Day, frantically texting each other about the ominous signs. Brendan looked right at Daniel. “I was so terrified,” he said.

  After breakfast, Daniel was supposed to rendezvous with his friend Ryan Servaites, another Douglas freshman. They were supposed to be filmed by a documentary crew, but the streets were swelling fast, and it was getting hard to move. They were also running out of time. Daniel and Brendan had an MFOL team meeting at a steakhouse until the march. They would try to film sometime that afternoon.

  2

  Two hours to showtime, and Pennsylvania Avenue was already jammed. The stage straddled the entire avenue, about fifty feet wide and forty feet high, flanked by massive Jumbotrons. It was lit by eight 4,000-watt lighting towers, and built by over a dozen mast-and-boom forklifts, scissor lifts, and manlift jibs, rising up to fifty-five feet high. Five strategically placed banners with the massive march for our lives logo ensured it would appear in every shot: directly beneath each Jumbotron, angled on both sides of the performance area, and a modified version above the width of the stage, with extra stick figures over the Jumbotrons, so the full name would appear above a tight shot of the performance. They had thought about this.

  Metal barricades walled off a few levels of VIP access near the stage. Celebrities m
ixed among them, but it was mostly students, hundreds of them, from local schools and bused in from around the country. They carried hand-painted signs like we will vote, we will rise; the smallest coffins are the heaviest; and ban assault weapons or we will ban you; and many wore big orange Price Is Right–style price tags reading $1.05. Organizers were distributing them, and the MFOL website had a feature to print one out, and invited kids to create their own.

  Early revelers were bopping to tunes thumping out of two 7,000-pound sound towers, powered by two massive generators cranking out 220,000 watts. The audio carried clearly for the three-quarters of a mile to Twelfth Street, thanks to eighteen more Jumbotrons along the route, plus seven additional sound delay towers, each one powered by a 70,000 watt generator. Free water bottles were everywhere, a hundred and twenty pallets of them, stacked six cases high. About 1,900 hundred Porta Potties were arranged in clusters stretching along Jefferson Drive to Seventh Street, and Madison Drive to Twelfth.

  As I walked Pennsylvania Avenue, the early arrivals were enthusiastic but jittery. They were all true believers at that hour, and fear was rampant that the kids had made a strategic blunder. One person after another told me their friends had stayed home to attend local marches. Would that drain their force? All the coverage would hinge on the number of people who turned out in Washington. No one would remember how many people showed up in Denver or Boise or Birmingham.