by Dave Cullen
The best count of actual sibling marches that took place in the United States comes from the Washington Post data, published in “Did You Attend the March for Our Lives?” The number given in the article is smaller than the figure stated in this chapter, because 84 of the marches were abroad.
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Matt told me most of the Cold Beak stories, and Dylan filled in more.
13. Harvard
I did not attend the Harvard conference. Most of the information in this chapter comes from my interviews with John Della Volpe, as do all quotes from him in the book. He also sent me the slideshow cited, and I pulled the passages directly from it. I interviewed him by phone in June, with several follow-ups. I talked to the kids about it as well.
His key polling question—“Does political involvement have any tangible results?”—has changed wording over the years, so I paraphrased him. His most recent statement, to which he asks potential voters to respond on a five-point scale, is “Political involvement rarely has any tangible results.”
Like Della Volpe, I wondered for a while whether Alfonso and David had choreographed that one-two punch. I was going to ask them about it when I saw them both at a community barbeque on the Road to Change tour in Aurora, Colorado, in July, but I could never get them together. (They move around!) I was talking to Alfonso as he was about to board the bus after the event, and David was off riding a bike to decompress. Just then, David rode up, so I asked them the moment I had them together. They both laughed out loud. It had been a last-minute situation.
14. March for Their Lives
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In the weeks leading up to the march, I thought about how I wanted to cover it. I figured there would be all sorts of reporting on Emma’s day, and David’s (a documentary crew was scheduled to follow him around). I was most curious what it would be like for someone not quite at the center of the organizing, outside the media storm. I knew immediately who I wanted. I pitched Daniel Duff the idea of spending the day with him and whoever he was going with: from first thing in the morning, through the day. He was game and checked with his family, and they agreed too. Vanity Fair also liked the idea, and sent a great photographer, Justin Bishop, to capture it visually. (My assignment was just to write extended captions, but it turned into a piece.) We knew it would be a crazy day, so my writer friend Matt Alston agreed to come down with us and help. He was working on a profile on me, and by sticking by my side, he could help me out and get a firsthand look at my process. 42 West gave us all access to the media interview tent.
Joan Walsh was Salon’s news editor when Columbine was attacked, and she edited nearly all the four dozen stories I published for it. (About two-thirds of those concerned Columbine.) That was my first time back into journalism since college, and she was really helpful in guiding me and honing my stories, and has been one of the major influences on my work. Joan was at Salon’s main office in San Francisco, so we did it all by email and phone, and didn’t meet in person for more than a year. We are now friends, and she is now national affairs correspondent for The Nation and a CNN political analyst. We coaxed the 42 West people to position us together in the interview tent, and we spent a good chunk of the day together, sharing findings, impressions, and ideas. Joan is one of the wisest people I know, and a great mentor, and we have been on this larger story together for nearly twenty years. She was incredibly helpful as a sounding board. She has also been covering civil rights issues within the African American community for decades, and that insight was invaluable.
We agreed to meet Daniel and his family at their hotel lobby a bit before eight a.m. and head to breakfast. It (stupidly) had not occurred to me that all the MFOL kids would be staying there, so I was surprised to see most of them in the lobby. I decided to give them their space. Some of them were clearly just waking up, and we were in their home for the day, and they didn’t need to deal with media yet. I just nodded and said hi when they came over to see Daniel, and tried to observe as inconspicuously as possible.
Brendan Duff played a major role in MFOL, but he kept such a low profile that I was not even aware he was part of it until I met him with Daniel at breakfast. Brendan was the key adviser on media and image early on, which was critical. The entire family has an interesting story. Brendan and Connor Duff were both in North Carolina when the shooting happened, but they were determined to come home immediately. The Duffs had moved to Parkland from New Jersey only a few years earlier, after Connor graduated from high school, so he had less of a connection to Douglas. But he wanted to be there for Daniel, and for Brendan, whose good friends had been traumatized. I had every intention of telling much more of Brendan’s story, and the family’s, but I just had too much material, and was never able to backtrack. (I also stayed in contact with the other kids by running into them at events, and Brendan was away at college.)
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Most of the technical specs for the stage and equipment come from the National Park Service’s event permit, with a bit from the group’s application. The rest was from my observations.
David Hogg explained the orange $1.05 tags in his speech. They were used at later events as well.
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I hated that the press area sealed us off from the crowd, but it gave us a good view of the stage, plus the Jumbotron for close-up detail. There was a metal barricade that separated us from the crowd, so we spent most of the rally leaned up against it, so we could watch them react and chat with the people inches from us on the other side. I wanted to get an immersive sense of the event, though, and to see what it was like for people several blocks back. So midway through, Matt and I took one long, slow walk all the way to the back (around Twelfth Street). We stopped along the way to gauge responses and chat with revelers here and there. I was slightly surprised to see the excitement level nearly as high all through. (Anyone who’s been to a concert knows how different being in the back can feel. I’m glad we did it, but we couldn’t always see or hear what was happening onstage during the trip to the rear. We missed Sam Fuentes throwing up. I heard about it back in the media area, and watched it later online to write that scene. The walk took twenty to thirty minutes, so we did that only once.)
Background on Naomi Wadler and her school walkout come from “A Parkland Father and . . .” (Alexandria News).
Media wasn’t permitted in the VIP area where Daniel was, so we had to part ways with him until after the rally. But our photographer, Justin, managed to score a wristband, so he spent most of it beside Daniel taking pictures and jotting notes. Justin provided most of the details of Daniel’s and Ryan’s experiences during the rally (which I confirmed with them later).
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I tell a fuller version of Linda Mauser’s story in the afterword of Columbine.
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I texted Daniel right after Emma finished, and we realized they were about to pass us on their way out. So we reconnected moments later, and they were elated, so I hit the record button on my iPhone to get their immediate impressions. Then we found both their dads and family members. We all walked over to the Capitol, but Daniel and Ryan were so amped up that they kept running ahead and then circling back to us. I stayed back with the dads and got their impressions for much of that time. We caught up with the boys at several stoplights, while they searched for their documentary team. I was beside them with the tape rolling when they stopped in traffic, and when they chatted up the cops.
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The Crowd Counting Consortium published its results on the march, along with historical comparisons, in “Did You Attend the March for Our Lives?” (Washington Post). I drew additional historical references—including on the Vietnam War and Iraq protests—from “This Is What We Learned . . .” by the same authors in this piece on the Women’s March.
The University of Maryland sociology professor Dana R. Fisher led a research team to gather very specific data on the composition of the Women’s March in 2017. They surveyed every fifth person in the crowd to compile a wealth of detail about who the
attendees were, why they came, and what their backgrounds were. It was very successful. Major demonstrations continued in the months that followed, so Fisher redeployed her team for every large protest in Washington from that date forward, and she was continuing her crowd analysis at least through October 2018. Her results on the MFOL march were published in “Here’s Who Actually Attended the March for Our Lives” (Washington Post). This is incredible data, and my source for crowd analysis.
The Trace’s data comes from the article “Parkland Generated Dramatically More News Coverage Than Most Mass Shootings.”
15. PTSD
All quotes and reflections from Dr. Frank Ochberg and Dr. Alyse Ley come from interviews with them. I have been consulting with Dr. Ochberg about trauma issues since 1999, when he played a big role at Columbine. I became an Ochberg Fellow at the nonprofit organization he founded, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. I first discussed the Parkland kids’ situation at length with both doctors during the ACIA conference in Las Vegas mentioned in the prologue in May—both individually and in panel discussions. It was enlightening to also involve two recent survivors of the Las Vegas tragedy, Chris and Jenny Babij, in that discussion, and for their real-time coping experience to inform it. I followed up with Dr. Ochberg periodically, and he helped vet portions of the manuscript medically and filled in and fleshed out many ideas in an interview in mid-November (though I of course take responsibility for the material in this book). I then followed up with Drs. Ochberg and Ley in separate lengthy interviews in late November. Dr. Ley followed with citations from the DSM-V.
16. Denver Noticed
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I again used the Crowd Counting Consortium’s (CCC) data for the sibling marches. However, a major distinction is necessary between estimates of the DC and the sibling marches. A wealth of different organizations weighed in with estimates of the DC march, and the consortium evaluated all of them to create both a range and a best guess. With the sibling marches, there were far fewer sources. The CCC relies on estimates published in local news outlets, and on Twitter posts in the cases of small demonstrations. Typically news reports are intentionally vague, with terms like “thousands” or “hundreds.” Local authorities used to estimate crowd sizes, but the numbers grew so politically charged that they stopped doing that years ago. So the CCC conservatively converts “hundreds,” “thousands,” and “tens of thousands” to “200,” “2,000,” and “20,000.” That can result in a gross undercount. Because much of this chapter is set in Denver, I dug a little deeper. Most local news reports used the “thousands” catch-all, but everyone I spoke to felt the actual number was toward the upper end of that range. Denver’s alternative weekly Westword was the only news outlet to offer a harder number, reporting “almost 100,000.”
I wanted to experience how the walkouts played out in many different places, but I could be in only one place at a time. For the first walkout, I decided it was most important to attend the Douglas event, and I used news accounts to gauge the impact nationwide. (That was just for background, and I didn’t describe any other walkouts in the book, but the New York Times had a thorough roundup of them, and the TV networks offered great video footage.) For the second walkout, I decided to risk something big happening in Parkland to check out what was happening further afield. Columbine’s choice to hold a walkout-related event a day early allowed me to experience it in two cities. I flew to Denver on April 17 and spent three days meeting with organizers and others related to their big event, watching them handle last-minute logistical details (like walking the site and choosing where to put the Porta-Potties, and so forth), interviewing the Parkland kids who had flown in, and then attending all the events on the nineteenth.
Then I caught a six a.m. direct flight to Austin, to take part in its walkout rally. Nine local high schools organized a joint rally on the steps of the Texas State Capitol, busing in students from some of the further schools. Full disclosure: Cecilia Cosby, the daughter of old friends, is now in high school and was one of the organizers. She asked me to speak at the rally, and I accepted. (I was not paid, but the organizers offered to cover my travel expenses, and ended up purchasing a flight one way. Vanity Fair covered most of my travel, since I tacked it on to the Columbine trip I was covering for them.) The gist of my speech was:
The Parkland kids have demonstrated so much more power than parents of survivors, because when adults see their teen faces, we see our own kids. Similarly, you [Austin kids] have a different kind of power: when adults see you, we see future targets, kids in power. You all are the face of this movement. Use that power as you see fit.
The Austin event drew several thousand and was very powerful. I had hoped to include it in this book overtly, but it was also crowded out. (Most of my reporting was crowded out. There was room for only a small fraction of it.) The Austin trip was great for perspective, though. It gave me a chance to witness how MFOL was affecting kids in cities where they hadn’t been (i.e., most cities). I spoke to the Austin organizers and to dozens of kids who came out to the event. Many came up to talk to me immediately afterward.
Austin also gave me an added behind-the-scenes peek for several reasons. I know how long the various groups had been organizing, because Cecilia first emailed me on February 27: just thirteen days after the Parkland attack, and nearly two months before her event. It’s kind of extraordinary that by then, the Austin high schools had already formed their alliance and were deep enough into planning that Cecilia had taken on the role of fund-raising and acquiring speakers, had a budget to do so, and was lining up speakers. Of course I also had backstage access during the event, but the biggest insight came via Cecilia’s parents, Doug and Monica Cosby. I often interview parents, but of course they tend to be highly protective of their kids and wary of what they disclose to reporters. I have known Doug and Monica since we worked together as consultants at Arthur Andersen in the early 1990s. Monica actually worked for me on several jobs, and she is driven, and a perfectionist, and badly wanted to help the kids. It was amusing to hear her frustration at how adamantly they rebuffed all her attempts. The kids insisted they were doing this themselves. It was helpful to get the perspective of someone who would give me the unvarnished truth. (Cecilia even insisted on making the initial reach-out to me. She was born after I moved from Texas, and I had never met her or spoken to her before receiving her email in February.) I spoke to faculty members at some of the Austin schools, and while they told me they were offering advice and some logistical support, they assured me that the kids were just as firm with them on directing the project. This stance of kids organizing themselves, on their own terms, was central to the MFOL narrative, and it was interesting to see how profoundly that template had permeated distant communities, with whom the Parkland kids had no direct contact.
All the quotes from Colorado sources in this chapter and the next are from my interviews. Depictions of all Colorado events were from my direct observations, with one exception: because I was in Austin on April 20, I did not attend the service events. I spoke to Frank DeAngelis and the kids about what they had scheduled, and then confirmed those details with local news coverage.
The Denver sibling march and the April event outside Columbine were huge undertakings, and I talked to dozens of people involved in organizing them. I could name only a few in the text without confusing the narrative, so I focused on Emmy, Kaylee, and Madison, but I don’t want to give the impression they did it alone. Emmy’s copresident was Sam Craig, who deserves recognition.
Emmy’s group was originally organized under the name Jeffco Students United for Action—and that was still its name at the time of the events depicted here. However, the group soon rebranded itself as Jeffco Students Demand Action—which I use in the narrative to avoid confusion. (My researchers had trouble even verifying the original name ever existed. If you google to learn more, it’s the current name you’ll want to use.) The reason for the change
is actually interesting, and it was duplicated around the country, as kids learned the power of branding. Groups were sprouting around the country with their own creative names, but Students Demand Action quickly developed into a brand, with T-shirts, hashtags, a logo, principles, and so forth. When kids networked around their region and tweeted around the world, SDA was a known quantity, so large numbers of them quickly began to coalesce around the name.
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Full disclosure: the leaders of MFOL and the Columbine survivor community both knew I was connected with the other, and both sides reached out to me for contact names and numbers. In a strange coincidence, Frank DeAngelis and Jackie Corin texted me at almost the same time for help in reaching each other. (Frank didn’t specify Jackie in particular, but wanted to invite the MFOL leaders to the April 19 event. Jackie wanted to invite Frank to Douglas High to advise them on the grieving process.) That was the full extent of my role: helping connect them—and advising Frank that Jackie was a reliable person to use as a primary contact there. However, it gave me an early window into what the groups were planning long before they revealed it to media, and I kept in touch with both sides about the developments.
