Meet the Vanderbilt student who is the force behind Nashville's March For Our Lives

On the back of Abby Brafman's neck, underneath a mess of long strawberry blond hair, is a newly emblazoned tattoo.

The number 17.

It represents the year she graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — and the number of people killed there.

Four victims were from the Jewish temple where Brafman's family belongs.

One was the daughter of her little brother's speech teacher.

Another was the best friend of a good friend.

"Everyone's connected," Brafman says.

She is counting on that. As a force for change.

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Brafman, a 19-year-old Vanderbilt University freshman, is the student behind Nashville's March for Our Lives — a national movement started by the students of Stoneman Douglas that advocates for public demonstrations to end gun violence.

On March 24, students who survived the shooting in Florida, along with supporters, plan to march in Washington, D.C. In a show of solidarity, similar marches are being organized in cities all across the country, including Nashville.

The Stoneman Douglas shooting replaced the 1999 Columbine High School massacre as the deadliest high school shooting in America.

This time, students aren’t waiting for the adults around them to make changes. They’re taking control, speaking out against the fear they face.

"I don't want to ever hear Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Florida," Brafman says, sitting at a quiet corner table in the freshman commons on Vanderbilt's campus.

"It's not just going to be a name that is rattled off. It's going to be, 'That was the city that changed America.'"

'I think people were hurt'

Brafman sat in her freshman biology-anthropology class last Wednesday when her phone rang.

It was her best friend from Stoneman Douglas. She didn't normally call. They usually talked by text. Brafman figured it must be important, so in the middle of the lecture room in Buttrick Hall, she answered.

"There's a shooting going on at Douglas," her friend said.

Brafman didn't understand. There had been lockdown drills at school before.

"There's an active shooter," her friend insisted in a panicked voice. "I think people were hurt."

Brafman left her school bag behind and hurried to the hallway.

She called another friend, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, but her ringer was off. She was in a classroom, the door barricaded by chairs.

"Can you turn on the news? Can you tell us what's going on?" she texted.

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As Brafman scanned the web, she saw images of armored tanks outside her high school. She couldn't comprehend the scene.

"No one had it straight," she said. "Everything was jumbled. It simply did not make any sense."

Brafman spent the next two hours in the stairwell, crying and texting and calling. In her room later that night, she was up until 2 a.m. going from her phone to Facebook to her computer to the TV and back again, trying to understand.

Brafman grew up in Parkland, Florida. She walked the hallways of Stoneman Douglas. Ate lunch outside in the school's huge courtyard. Served on its student government. Competed in its history bowl.

And when she graduated last spring, she said goodbye.

This weekend, she returned home to again say goodbye, in a much more painful way.

A room of 1,000 sobbing people

Congregation Kol Tikvah has always been a place of love and support for her.

On Friday, a day of funerals, it became a room of 1,000 people sobbing.

"I didn’t want my daughter there that day," Brafman's mother, Suzanne, said. "I don’t want any of these kids to have to witness that pain and feel so violated. Their innocence is gone."

By Saturday, people were starting to realize something was different about this shooting.

Sunday, those tears turned to anger.

"No one was crying anymore," Brafman said. "We were pissed."

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Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Stoneman Douglas who was Brafman's lab partner last year, delivered an impassioned speech at a gun control rally in Ft. Lauderdale.

The Washington Post said the people of Parkland had a new identity: "Furious activists."

That term got Brafman riled up.

As she was hugging her mom goodbye at the airport Sunday afternoon, she felt it.

"Something has to change, Mommy," she said. "Promise me something is going to change."

Her mother consoled her daughter and then, painfully, sent her on her way.

"From the time she got on the plane to the time she got off the plane, she had decided what that change was," Suzanne Brafman said.

Abby Brafman would lead Nashville's March For Our Lives.

The true force of Parkland

Slightly delirious and emotionally overwhelmed, Brafman hadn't even left the Nashville airport when she sat down in the food court on the concourse, opened up her laptop and started a Facebook event page for March For Our Lives Nashville.

She sent it to her friends at Vanderbilt, figuring maybe 50 of them would join her at a park with some posters on March 24.

When she woke up the next morning, nearly 2,000 people responded.

By Tuesday, that number had almost doubled.

"I've been so sad for the past few days, but now whenever I think of my town all I can do is smile," Brafman says. "Now that this has happened, the true force of Parkland is showing its face to the world."

'Inaction is painful'

The details of Nashville's March For Our Lives are still coming together.

Power Together TN, the group that organized the 2018 Nashville Women’s March, will be supporting and participating in the event.

“It's important and powerful that youth have stepped forcefully into this work of securing the safety of their schools,” said Darlene Leong Neal, Power Together TN organizer.

“We are working to secure a critical mass of participation for these actions. They raise awareness and empower young people and all people to insist the adults in charge take action on what should be considered a public health issue.”

Brafman sees the March as an effort to start an effective discussion about gun control, school safety and mental health. One that will make real change.

"Inaction is painful," she says. "It stabs at our hearts."

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com or on Twitter @jlbliss.