Parkland

by Dave Cullen

  French Woods was the name of the performing arts camp Cameron attended where he discovered his passion for drama. Campers attended and put on shows: ventriloquism, magic, circus. YouTube video of Cam there also helped me flesh out the scene.

  2

  Most of the backstory details on the Spring Awakening production before and after Valentine’s Day come from Christine Barclay, whom I interviewed and visited numerous times. (All her quotes in the book are from those interviews or from direct observations.) I also conferred with the kids about it, and attended the first two performances, a rehearsal and warm-ups before one of the shows, and the talk-back with Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater and the cast and crew after the opening-night performance. I also talked to Cam’s mom about her impressions of Christine Barclay, and how Cameron described their connection. All those impressions aligned.

  Most of Steven Sater’s quotes in this chapter actually come from the talk-back in May, but I felt they made more sense in this chapter, especially for readers not familiar with Spring Awakening. There are additional quotes from the talk-back in chapter 18. In all cases, I went over the quotes with Steven in November, and he elaborated on several and rephrased a few. I also asked Steven to look over my summary of his play, and he helped me get it right—especially where I was summarizing his intentions, based on his talk-back. (I tried to collapse a great deal into a short space, and I’m grateful for his help.)

  4

  Concerning the pervasive feeling after these tragedies: I have observed it and discussed it with trauma experts countless times over the past two decades. The Columbine example is portrayed in that book.

  6. Back to “Normal”

  1

  Daniel’s father, Brian, his two brothers, Brendan and Connor, and Connor’s girlfriend, Haley Richardson, came to the march in DC with him. My photographer and helper friend and I arranged to spend most of the day with them. Then the family had me over to their house for a sit-down interview in early May. Daniel, his dad, and his mom, Debbie Duff, attended that, along with Pippy, who was staying with them. Of course I interviewed Daniel throughout the year and chatted with him at events. All the quotes in the book from the family come from those various meetings.

  I know Robin Fudge Finegan from Columbine, and have used her as a source many times. She posted her remark as a comment on one of my Instagram posts about the kids.

  A large number of students talked to me about their anxiety returning to school. I chose a few incidents from Daniel and Jackie that were representative of what I heard. As always, I’ve tried to give you a sense of how this affected all the kids through the eyes of a handful.

  There was a lot of eye-rolling from Douglas kids about the Play-Doh. But everyone seemed thrilled with the comfort dogs.

  The basic facts behind the Washington Mall being previously booked were widely reported, and I consulted various news accounts. The application filed by Deena Katz provided the most significant details. Of course, Jackie’s reaction, summarizing the group’s response, comes from her directly. Others in the group described it similarly.

  7. Peace Warriors

  1

  We calculated the gun fatality numbers using data from the Gun Violence Archive online. I defined a “kid” as someone between the ages of zero and seventeen and included perpetrators of gun violence who were killed or injured in the act in my total.

  Delaney Tarr’s quote comes from Lisa Miller’s excellent New York magazine piece “On the Ground with Parkland Teens as They Plot a Revolution.” The kids were very open with journalists, including me, about their privilege. But I thought Delaney’s quote to Lisa was the most articulate I saw or heard, so I went with that one.

  2

  Everything about the meetings between the Chicago and Parkland kids comes from the kids from both groups, and from Father Pfleger. I first heard about it from Matt Deitsch on March 15. He and other MFOL kids talked to me about it several times, but I wanted to convey it from the perspective of the Chicago kids, so my account primarily relies on Alex King and D’Angelo McDade. (And on Father Pfleger for much of the origin.) Alex and D’Angelo also texted me pictures from the meeting, and Emma posted a few pictures online, which also helped with a few details, like the furniture in her house. (I’ve not been there.)

  Matt put me in touch with all three of them, but I was juggling a lot of stories and didn’t interview them until June, about a week before I was set to meet them all at the Peace March (all three by phone, and separately, D’Angelo in two installments). I stayed in touch with all of them, particularly Alex, who spent the next two months on the bus tour, so I ran into him throughout the summer. We chatted many times.

  During the meeting at Emma’s house, Alex and D’Angelo each told a powerful story of how gun violence affected them, which I recount here. No journalist was at the meeting, and I’m not aware of anyone recording it. So Alex and D’Angelo each re-created those moments for me, by retelling their story as they typically do. That is what appears here.

  The snatch of dialogue between D’Angelo and Emma at the end of the chapter comes from him. I ran it by Emma via her publicist through email, and she confirmed it was accurate.

  All quotes from Alex King and D’Angelo McDade in this book are from our interviews. (The exception would be snippets of their public speeches and statements at MFOL town halls. All of those quoted I witnessed in person.)

  Martin Luther King Jr.’s six principles of nonviolence are:

  Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.

  Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.

  Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.

  Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.

  Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.

  Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

  8. Strategy

  1

  I talked to many of the MFOL kids about the strategy formulation covered throughout this chapter, but Matt was the chief strategist, and I relied heavily on his account. David also had a lot of input.

  It was Martin Luther King Jr.’s second principle that came up most commonly with the kids.

  2

  All quotes from Professor Robert J. Spitzer come from my interview with him.

  3

  Jackie made the rough calculation of thirty thousand miles for me in early June, so it includes only travel to that point.

  4

  Counts of NRA Twitter activity include only original tweets, not retweets.

  We searched the NRA’s official Twitter account from Valentine’s Day through mid-fall and found only one tweet that tagged David’s handle (from August), and none that tagged Emma.

  Wayne LaPierre’s comments come from “N.R.A. Chief, Wayne LaPierre . . .” (New York Times).

  The Times story I cite describing the debate on NRATV is “Where the N.R.A. Speaks First and Loudest.”

  5

  David Hogg’s comments come from our May 13 interview.

  The summary of the origins of the two National School Walkouts come from “Meet the Students Who . . .” (NPR) and the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER’s publicity materials.

  The Ashcroft in America Research Project is conducted by Lord Ashcroft Polls. Elise Jordan is a colleague and also a friend. I have discussed the results of her focus groups regularly with her for the past two years; they have been very helpful in reading the political climate, particularly with Trump voters. We had a lengthy conversation about the Mississippi and Memphis focus groups in March. Her quotes are from those conversations and a follow-up interview in November. The quotes from participants are from the Lord Ashcroft Polls site and her Time magazine article titled “I’ve Supported the Second Amendment My Whole Life. It’s Time for Reasonable Gun Control,” in March.

  9. Change the Ref

  1

  I interviewed Tío Manny (Manuel Oliver) in his office in Boca Raton in May. I later met him and
his wife, Patricia, at other events during the bus tour, and spoke to them then. Most of the information and quotes in this chapter, and the later episodes with the family, come from these conversations.

  Exceptions are noted here, with two big ones:

  Maria Alesia Sosa and Luis Velarde wrote an incredible piece for Univision, “Where Is My Son?” It is the basis for most of section 1, interspersed with my reporting in Columbine. I later confirmed the veracity of their account with Tío Manny. The Univision piece provided the last names of Sergeants Rossman and Brown, but I was unfortunately unable to track down their first names for inclusion in this book.

  My descriptions of the murals come from photos and videos of Manny creating them, as well as what he described to me. I was present in Chicago for the mural he created there, noted in chapter 18.

  2

  Tío Manny provided vivid descriptions of Joaquin, and he told me about the poem mentioned here. He directed me to the Eagle Eye’s special memorial issue for the Parkland victims for the precise wording and additional background. Some details and the quotes from Joaquin’s sister, Andrea Ghersi, and his teacher, Stacy Lippel, come from that issue.

  3

  Tío Manny’s account of dropping Guac off at school the morning of the shooting is from Manny and Patricia’s August interview with Democracy Now!

  4

  Tío Manny’s quote about giving a voice to Joaquin comes from his video message on the Posts Into Letters website.

  A 2005 study by the Congressional Management Foundation titled Communicating with Congress reports, “Nearly all staff surveyed (96%) reported that if their Member of Congress had not arrived at a firm decision, individualized postal letters would have ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ of influence on the Member’s decision.”

  The Posts Into Letters website keeps a running tally of all of the letters that have been sent to congresspeople through its app. As of November 2018, the tally stands at over 19,700 letters.

  Posts Into Letters won Silver Lions in the PR and Print categories and a Bronze Lion in the Direct category at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

  10. Exhausted

  1

  In this chapter, I tried to illustrate how various MFOL kids were dealing with the situation at a single point in time, about a month after the tragedy, and just over a week before the march on Washington. Therefore, nearly all the quotes in this chapter come from in-person interviews I did with them on successive days: Alfonso, Daniel, and Ryan together on March 12; David and then his parents, March 13; David and Lauren at the school walkout rally, March 14; Jackie, March 15; and Matt Deitsch, also March 15 (but separately). There were a few exceptions. The first is a few great quotes by David from published sources, noted in the main text. I also spoke to Daniel by phone several times that week in addition to the group interview.

  My first sit-down interview with David was in his kitchen, May 13, for just under an hour. I spent the next few hours with his parents, Rebecca and Kevin. They gave me their perspective, filled me in on David’s childhood, gave me a tour of the house, and showed me some of his favorite gadgets, like his first drone, and the newer model he had recently wanted badly and then gotten. Lauren was also there some of the afternoon, and we chatted just briefly. All the quotes from them in this chapter come from those interviews, except as noted. (And a few are from the rally the next day, where I ran into David and Lauren again.)

  The Outline piece on David was written by Gaby Del Valle.

  2

  Beth González’s comments are quoted from her interview with 60 Minutes that aired March 18.

  4

  David’s comments on meeting Michael Bloomberg come from Lisa Miller’s excellent profile on David for New York magazine. (It’s easily the best profile of him I’ve read.)

  Though many of David’s quotes in this chapter come from my conversations with him, a few come from Miller’s piece.

  11. Walkout

  1

  All of section 1 is from my direct observations and real-time interviews. I watched the Douglas kids march out to the football field and back for their walkout from just outside the fence, along with the press and locals. I met Christopher Krok and the other Westglades students on the street as the Douglas kids were filing back in. I first interviewed Christopher and many of the others there (including big groups of the other junior ROTC kids), and then the big wave of students from Westglades arrived, and everyone started running. Where I wrote that reporters kept asking where they were going, I heard a few other reporters asking, but that was mainly me, asking over and over. I sprinted to the front of the pack and then let them start passing, and kept asking, and no one seemed to know, until that person finally yelled out “Pine Trails!”

  The police had told the media to park our cars along the side of that road, and we happened to be running right toward my rental car. So I stayed with the pack for a bit, interviewing kids on the move, then backtracked to my car and drove to the park so I could beat them there and watch it unfold from start to finish. It was nearly two miles away, so it took them a while, and I also had a chance to walk the field to gather impressions of the state of the memorials, and to take a lot of pictures. That’s when I noticed Peter Wang’s sign had come free and was lying on the ground.

  During and after the rally, I interviewed lots of other students, including all the ones quoted here. That’s when Susana Matta Valdivieso filled me in on all her planning for the prior month. Rabbi Melinda Bernstein and Angel Lopez gave me the background on what they had been doing. I spoke to dozens of Douglas students, and most said they’d gotten wind of the plan early that morning, but none of them thought it was actually going to happen. Lauren Hogg and others showed me the Instagram and Snapchat messages from that morning, which were still on their phones.

  We consulted local news reports just to fact-check the spelling of names (although most of the kids spelled them for me, sometimes I couldn’t read their writing later).

  2

  Jackie’s exchange with her math teacher was conveyed entirely by her, which she recited to me from memory the following day. (This was the same interview used in the prior chapter. We met after school, at a Starbucks nearby.)

  I cringed when Jackie told me about the friendships. It made me sad that it was happening, and it scared me that Jackie was sharing it with journalists (for the reason stated in the text). I decided to put it off the record for several months, to see how it played out, and I struggled for days about whether to advise Jackie to consider keeping that from people like me. Eventually, I decided that would be too intrusive, but I still wondered whether I made the right choice. These kids have never been in this position, and sometimes those of us with more life experience are in a better position to see the potential ramifications of certain decisions. In the end, Jackie was right, and as I made near-final edits over Thanksgiving, I decided it was safe to divulge.

  3

  This is the same group interview as that described in the prior chapter. We met on the patio of the restaurant at the Heron Bay Marriott (the same hotel that was used as a rendezvous point on Valentine’s Day). Daniel arrived first and I chatted with him for a while, then the others came. The entire session lasted about two hours.

  12. The Memes Men

  2

  I followed Jackie’s car to the MFOL office immediately after our Starbucks interview on March 15.

  That was the first time I met Matt and Dylan. I interviewed Matt that afternoon and Dylan the next day. All the quotes from them in this chapter are from those interviews.

  As soon as I met Matt and Dylan, I knew I wanted to feature them, at least in a magazine piece. In fact, I was in the final stages of a very different story for the online edition of Vanity Fair, to run less than a week later, as a preview to the march. I walked out so excited that I called my editor from the parking lot to say I wanted to drop that story and replace it with a much better story about these guys. He agreed. I would
continue to interview them and chat with them at events over the ensuing months.

  Pippy was also in the office that day, and I recognized her, because she had assisted Jackie on the Tallahassee trip and had helped me out before and during. (For what it’s worth, I wanted to feature Pippy as well. She said she doesn’t like to be the center of attention, and I could use little bits from her, but she didn’t want to be featured. She was very helpful over the course of the spring coordinating things. And she finally agreed to be part of my sit-down interview with the Duff family in May.)

  I spent a bit under two hours in the office that day, and less than two the following day. The kids gave me permission to take photos to use to describe the space later, and I took dozens, including close-ups of the Post-it notes and anything written on the wall, which is how I was able to reproduce it here. I also kept the tape running as we toured and narrated some of it as we walked—and asked Jackie about things.

  The photos were intended for documentation purposes, but Jackie later gave me permission to publish several on Vanity Fair’s website with my March 22 story.

  3

  Several of the kids told me about the Fight for Our Lives rebranding, under strict confidentiality. Not all of them were sure exactly when the change was going to happen, but I got the impression it was going to be at the DC march. As we were leaving the march, I asked Daniel about it, and he was a bit surprised too. He noted that many of them had tossed out “little Easter eggs,” and thought it would be coming soon. I asked some of the kids a week or two later (I can’t recall exactly who), and although they were unsure about timing, they were sure I should keep it quiet. I didn’t ask about it again for a few weeks, and by then they had let it go.