by Dave Cullen
In Joan Walsh’s story, she also described Schapiro’s gush of relief when Emma broke her silence. “It was phenomenal; it went straight to the heart,” Schapiro said. “We are a broken community. One that is going to band together. But we are truly broken.”
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Emma closed out the rally. Daniel and Ryan bounded out gleefully, running toward the Capitol to meet up with the documentary film crew. Traffic was snarled by the crowd letting out, and police officers had stepped in to direct it. A burst of sirens, lights, and bullhorn orders stopped the boys cold. They actually froze there briefly in the middle of traffic, in the busy intersection. Still getting triggered. It sullied the mood for a minute or two, then they shook it off. They were raving about Emma’s speech. Ryan admitted that with so many speakers, his mind had wandered. “You’re not always paying the most attention,” he said. “But the moment everyone shuts up, it’s the moment you’re like, ‘OK, what’s happening?’ People started crying. Silence is really powerful.”
A cluster of Capitol Police called out, “Where are y’all from?”
“Parkland.”
The cops were amazed, and a little starstruck. They chatted up the boys and then thanked them for protecting their kids. They were scared for their kids. Then they sheepishly asked for a selfie. Daniel and Ryan posed for several, then ran on. They were too excited to walk.
One of the cops called after them to hashtag it on Facebook: #USCP.
Daniel looked back to make sure the cops were out of earshot, then chuckled to Ryan. “He thinks we still use Facebook.” But he was excited to be asked. And they could hardly believe this doc crew wanted to feature them. The working title was “We Are Kids.” They had been on the fringe of the spotlight for five weeks now, but it had never settled on them. Two hours later, they were still giggling over George and Amal. Not just hanging out together—they got separated toward the end, and the Clooneys made a point to come find them to say goodbye.
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Lefties fear the worst. The turnout was huge. The academic team behind the Crowd Counting Consortium put their best guess at 470,000 attending the march in Washington, and 1.4 to 2.1 million people at 763 locations nationwide, plus 84 uncounted marches abroad. That made it the third-largest protest day since Trump’s inauguration, behind the two women’s marches. “That is in comparison with some of the largest marches ever seen in the United States, an extraordinary period of national political mobilization,” it said. For comparison, the historic 1963 civil rights March on Washington drew about a quarter million. Prior to the Trump era, the Washington Post identified the largest demonstrations in US history as the protest to the US invasion of Iraq, and the Vietnam War Moratoriums in 1969 and 1970. They drew about one million and two million nationwide, respectively. That would put MFOL as the third- or more likely fourth-largest demonstration in national history. And it was the first big one organized by high school kids.
The kids were targeting the youth vote but connecting with a much broader demographic. A university team conducted detailed crowd composition surveys of all the major Trump-era protests. They published their MFOL findings in the Washington Post. Only 10 percent of attendees were under eighteen, and the average age of the remainder was about forty-nine—older than at recent rallies. They were highly educated and highly female: 72 percent college graduates and 70 percent women. (Women composed 85 percent of the Women’s March.) The kids seemed to reach their other main target audience: unengaged voters on the sidelines. Over a quarter of the marchers were attending the first protest of their lives.
And The Trace’s data had previously shown the kids kept gun safety alive with 2 percent of all news stories for a solid month, spiking to 5 percent for the first walkout. It hit 9 percent the day of the march. No other tragedy, not even Newtown, not even Columbine, had accomplished anything near that.
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They had set an audacious goal, and surpassed it in five weeks. Now what? The horizon always looks different at the summit. No predicting how it would feel.
The mood all morning was electric—with an undercurrent of reverie. Even the kids exuded it. Hour by hour, you could see their bodies relax, feel them exhaling the calm. Of course. They had to catch their breath. They envisioned this march as the birth of their movement, not the climax, but it was sure feeling like a curtain call. The press tents, that’s where you could really feel that. Row after row of frenetic fingers clacking along the keyboards, shaping the movement’s swan song.
The kids were dreaming even bigger now, but would they be rallying in obscurity? Reporters were using the last of their Wi-Fi to put a big bow on this story. Would anything bring the press back?
15
PTSD
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Some of the kids were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Technically, they didn’t qualify for the diagnosis until a month after the shooting. For the first thirty days, a severe trauma reaction is classified as acute stress disorder (ASD), not PTSD. The condition is marked by symptoms like prolonged distress; problems with sleep, concentration, or memory; an inability to experience positive emotions; hypervigilance; a dissociation from reality; and recurrent dreams or memories. ASD is diagnosed in trauma survivors experiencing distressing symptoms and a marked impairment in the ability to function. PTSD is essentially the persistence of ASD beyond one month.
About 6 to 12 percent of survivors suffer ASD after an industrial accident, 10 percent from a severe burn, and 13 to 21 percent from a car accident. The risk surges if the survivor has been attacked by another person: the numbers go up to 20 to 50 percent after an assault, rape, or mass murder. These are wide ranges, due to differences in the nature and severity of the trauma, each person’s coping skills, and other risk factors. Prior trauma, or existing struggles with depression or drug abuse, drastically increase the risk. And much of our response is determined by how we perceive the event. “The way two people experience and perceive the exact same trauma can be totally different,” said Dr. Alyse Ley. “Even if they saw the same thing, they can have a very different experience of that event.” Dr. Ley specializes in child and adolescent trauma, and is the director of the child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship program at Michigan State University.
About half the people treated for ASD are eventually diagnosed with PTSD, and the other half improve enough in that first month to avoid it. While it’s optimal to get treatment as early as possible, the one-month milestone is a good marker for parents or friends to observe. At that point, the afflicted survivor with full-blown PTSD needs more sophisticated help than loved ones can generally provide.
And there are additional conditions to watch for. “Individuals who have experienced a trauma injury may also develop panic disorders, major depressive disorder, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders,” Dr. Ley said. “Often if you have one, you have the other—sometimes the disorders have overlapping symptoms and are difficult to tease apart.” Major depressive disorder is serious, and extremely common in trauma survivors. “So what a parent is really going to want to watch for is a change in the child, in their behavior and their functioning,” Dr. Ley said. “And major depression is not just a sad mood—it affects your entire body. It affects your sleep, your appetite, your feelings about yourself, feelings of guilt and worthlessness. Their energy level is affected. Suicidal ideation is also extraordinarily common in a person who has major depression.” Weight change is also a major marker of depression, but it can look different in adolescents who are still growing. A loss of appetite might lead to failure to make expected weight gains, or to dropping off the growth curve. “Children and adolescents who have been traumatized need to be monitored for depression and anxiety, as well as PTSD,” Dr. Ley said.
The long-term consequences can be heightened for adolescents, because these symptoms can alter their cognitive development. “There’s a negative filter across everything you do and see and how you view people and yourself in relationships,” Dr. Ley said. “Untreated PTSD can change
the developmental trajectory. The goal of the therapist is to get the young person back on track with developmental milestones and coping skills.”
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I met Dr. Ley at the three-day Academy of Critical Incident Analysis (ACIA) conference on the Las Vegas shooting in early May, along with two survivors, Chris and Jenny Babij. We discussed the MFOL kids at length. Chris and Jenny had experienced their attack side by side, but completely differently. They had been standing right in front of the Route 91 music festival stage, so hundreds of people were taken down by gunfire all around them. Chris was badly wounded in the shoulder, and he’d tripped as they fled the grounds. Jenny was running just ahead and did not discover until too late that he was gone. They were separated until the morning, and Jenny was wracked by guilt for “abandoning” him, despite her relentless attempts to reach him. Chis lay on a gurney within the chaos of an overwhelmed ER awaiting treatment for several hours. Over and over, a custodian rolled a bucket by to mop up all the fresh blood. So much blood. A triage nurse came by with three color-coded tags: Chris was tagged as non-life-threatening, which meant he had to wait. He said he didn’t mind. He had seen so many people in a horrible state. It was actually a great comfort to get tagged, he said. It meant he was in the system, would not be forgotten, and would be treated after the people in danger of dying.
Four months into their recovery, Parkland rattled Chris and Jenny Babij—enough to impede their progress temporarily. They were awed by the MFOL kids but concerned. Recovery had been their primary pursuit, advancing at a pace that worked for them. Chris was just then preparing to return to work. Were the kids taking on too much?
“We have to trust them,” Dr. Ley said. Adults can be too eager to step in and “help” people like Emma. “People just assumed, ‘Oh, she’s having a breakdown,’” Dr. Ley said of Emma’s tearful speech. “So what? Shouldn’t she? My first thought was, ‘Yeah, it’s about time. Look at what this kid has been through.’” If she were breaking down hourly, riddled by intrusive thoughts, and couldn’t sleep or function, that would be entirely different. But crying can be cathartic, even onstage.
“Adults will always think of ten thousand reasons why you can’t do something,” Dr. Ley said. “Kids won’t do that. That’s what’s glorious about young people: the still-developing impulse control. They see something, they see a cause, and they say, ‘I’m going to do what’s right. You’re not going to stop me.’”
Still, the responsibility the kids had hoisted onto their shoulders posed risks, Dr. Ley said. So did the painful glare of the spotlight and the abject cruelty of their adversaries. Nobody can anticipate how badly that spotlight can twist you, she said, and trusting the survivors doesn’t mean trusting them blindly. “We need to have parents who are very aware,” she said. “A parent has to be able to sort of look at their own child and say, ‘Yeah, they’ve got the coping skills to handle some of this’—but be watchful and know when to say, ‘Wait a second, you’re beyond your limits. This is not going well.’ Then they have to take steps back. What’s really important in trauma work is finding out what the individual needs.”
She talked about siblings on different trajectories, and she could have been describing David and Lauren Hogg. David was relentless, and he seemed not just capable of the responsibility, but buoyed by it. His parents, Rebecca and Kevin, gave him wide latitude—insisting that one of them chaperone him out of town, but generally letting him chart his own course. Lauren was in no position to take that on, and her parents were far more protective of her. Lauren saw her own limits and eased into the MFOL group gradually.
Dr. Frank Ochberg, who was part of the committee that first created the diagnosis of PTSD, concurred. “There are going to be adults who criticize the kids and the supporters of the kids, saying, ‘Hey, you’re abusing them, they’re abusing themselves, they’re missing out on teenage life,’” he said. “Yes, there’s a certain risk, but let’s not patronize them or overly parent them. Let’s celebrate their wisdom and dedication and leadership.”
There’s a profound therapeutic benefit of their activism, he said, and Dr. Ley elaborated. What most people failed to see in Emma’s tears—and in the march, in the movement—was the power of reasserting control. Control. Such an elusive element. Control is crucial to recovery—recovering the feeling that was ripped away in the moment of violation. It’s especially profound in violent crimes: gunshots, rape, assault, and mass murder. “At that moment you’re being terrorized, there is chaos,” Dr. Ley said. “You feel like you have no control of your body, your destiny, your future. And that fear of the unknown, of whether you’re going to live or die, sticks with you. So one of the main things in treatment is allowing a person to reassume the control of their own life, their body, their destiny.” That can mean a long, arduous recovery. It’s rarely possible to reassert control over the brutalizer, or effectively counteract the damage. Therapists help their patients simulate control, or visualize, but that can feel contrived to some, and painfully slow to others.
“That’s why what these Parkland kids are doing is so powerful,” Dr. Ley said. “They’re saying, ‘Hang on. Stop. I’m going to regain control. We’re going to do something about these weapons that we had no control over.’” To hell with simulations—they made it real. They could not rewrite Valentine’s Day, but they could reframe it. They had looked beyond that powerless afternoon, determined they had been made powerless their entire childhoods by gunmen who could strike at any moment. They set their sights on that larger problem, and reclaimed their power by working to protect seventy-four million American kids. To hell with simulations—reality felt more powerful. They didn’t start this as a form of therapy, but Dr. Ley said they could hardly have designed a better treatment plan.
Part III
The Long Road
Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.
—Martin Luther King Jr.’s sixth principle of nonviolence
16
Denver Noticed
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Boise noticed and Birmingham noticed. Each drew 5,000 marchers, and 15,000 to 25,000 turned out in Phoenix. They turned out in large, small, and medium towns all across America. In Denver, tens of thousands showed, nearly 100,000 according to one local news outlet. The Denver organizers were stunned. “On Facebook it was about thirty thousand who said they were coming, and it jumped so fast!” said Jessica Maher, one of the Denver organizers. Jessica was a college senior who had never done anything political in her life. Now she was director of political affairs for Never Again Colorado. The waves of supporters pouring into Civic Center Park and marching past the Colorado capitol dome on March 24 changed everything. This was real, she realized. This was powerful.
MFOL had mobilized on two fronts: inspiring millions of kids, and then recruiting them into a vast grassroots network. It was all about the network now: 762 potential affiliates had come of age that day. National media tacked on the sibling march story as an afterthought. The intersectional message got even less ink or air. The New Yorker, The Nation, and a few others noticed MFOL’s signal that they were fusing with the urban gun safety movement, but it was mostly mentioned in passing. But urban activists heard it loud and clear.
For sibling organizers, the march was already their second local event. Most had been involved with a walkout, and some had organized a die-in or other protest as well. They used each undertaking as a building block to grow their network, to learn from mistakes, and to gather momentum for the next one. The feverish pace had been a blessing and a curse. Now they had time—which could easily translate to boredom and fading interest. Time to map out eight months of initiatives to maintain excitement, register millions of young voters, and turn them out on Election Day.
In Denver, it began with Madison Rose. Madison was a college student who watched the Douglas students erupt on social media day one. That was all it took. Anger had been simmering for years. Why were adults just letting them die? That first night, M
adison decided she wanted to organize a Denver march. Then Never Again announced its plan. Perfect, Madison said. She signed Denver up as a sibling.
Logistics were overwhelming—no one to delegate the permitting or grunt work. That forced Madison to reach out aggressively and cobble together a metrowide team. That proved surprisingly easy. New groups were mushrooming across the city and suburbs. She would eventually hook up with Emmy Adams and Kaylee Tyner, who were part of a fledgling network in the Jefferson County School District. Kaylee was a junior at Columbine High, and Emmy was a senior at Golden High. All of Jefferson County (Jeffco) still felt the Columbine scars, and Parkland had hit hard. “I just couldn’t take seeing the community have their hearts broken again,” Emmy said. “So I started by reaching out to people at my school, saying, ‘Hey, does anyone want to help me create some solutions?’ I thought like five people would show up to this meeting, and it ended up being over seventy kids. I was like, ‘OK, if we can get this many at Golden, we can spread this across the district.’” That turned into Jeffco Students Demand Action. It included students from every high school in the county.
Emmy became copresident, and the group organized the first school walkout across the county. They paired that with a rally after school that day, to bring all the young activists together. A big contingent from the group marched in Washington and networked with other cities. Most of the cities in America had a story like that.
When the marches ended, all those groups came together to brainstorm the road ahead. They settled on one big venture to throw their collective weight behind: a rally just outside Columbine, on April 19, the eve of the anniversary, the day before the second national walkout. Columbine kids couldn’t walk out on April 20, because that is a solemn day in the area, and classes have never been conducted on that day since. But there was another reason.
