The teen survivors of last month’s horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become the nation’s leading advocates for gun control, partly thanks to their savvy, heartfelt harnessing of social media. 17-year-old David Hogg has nearly 500K followers on Twitter, recently taking to the platform to find a challenger for the GOP candidate who called his schoolmate a “skinhead lesbian.” (He was successful, and the GOP candidate has now dropped out of the race.) Hogg’s slandered schoolmate, Emma González, now boasts 1.26M Twitter followers, thanks in part to her viral speech calling out President Trump and gun advocates.
But it’s not just social media that the students are dominating. This morning, Time magazine shared its latest cover story, which features Hogg, González, and three other MSD student activists, and bold white text reading “ENOUGH.” Nine of MSD’s approximately 3,000 students agreed to keep diaries in the aftermath of the shooting, and to share the entries with Time. The diaries are real, raw, and remind us that these are human teenagers, not superheroes. (Jaclyn Corin is even pictured barefoot.)
“I am not actually fine, but I don’t really want to get into it and they probably don’t want to hear about it,” writes Jose Iglesias, 17. “There are many people around the school who would definitely help if we wanted them to, but I feel like they only know things from their book. They didn’t actually go through what we did. My friends have been there for me since that day.”
Other entries describe the students’ hopes for the future. “I’ve always wanted to be a politician when I grow up,” writes Brandon Azbug, 17. “I’m definitely looking forward to voting. What I predict will happen — well, definitely in Broward County — is every politician who doesn’t act on changing the gun laws will be voted out. And I hope that the rest of the country will vote out people who aren’t willing to take the steps. Just because I can’t vote doesn’t mean I can’t make a difference.”
The MSD students have organized a gun control march in Washington, D.C. and cities across the country. The March for Our Lives takes place this Saturday, March 24. Find out how you can join and/or support the movement on the March for Our Lives website.