Bill Duryea is enterprise editor at Politico Magazine.

Few things in modern American life had become as predictable and dispiriting as the aftermath of mass shootings, an almost choreographed progression from grief to anger to silence in the span of several news cycles.

That all changed on February 14, after the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The survivors of the attack that killed 17 and wounded 14 others simply rejected the notion that the world would be allowed to move on to other business. They stepped confidently into the spotlight, seized every microphone and stage and social-media feed they could find and essentially never let the cameras turn away. They mixed grievance and grief into a nonstop counterattack on the politicians who they believed had valued gun lobby donations more than the lives of their constituents.


The results were as extraordinary as they were unprecedented: Within a month, the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature had passed the first gun-control measures in a generation; within two months, the students had staged a massive rally in Washington that spawned simultaneous protests nationwide. And they weren’t done. This summer nearly three dozen of the students, including some recent graduates of the school, joined together for a 20-state tour dubbed “Road to Change,” registering voters in time for the midterm elections.

This year, Politico Magazine named the Parkland teens No. 2 on our annual Politico 50 list of the people reshaping American politics, and we caught up with a handful of the students as they took a break around the July 4 holiday. Co-founders of March for Our lives Jaclyn Corin, 17, and Cameron Kasky,17; Matt Deitsch, 20, a chief strategist for the group; Jammal Lemy, 20, creative director; and social media specialist Kyrah Simon, 17, talked about the challenge of sustaining their early successes, enduring personal attacks, the difference between “gun control” and “violence prevention,” and how they have handled news of other mass shootings even as they push their “Never Again” message.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.



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Politico Magazine: One of the things that people noted is the speed at which you were able to stand up this movement. Within a month of the shooting, the Florida governor had signed the first gun control legislation in 20 years in that state. Three weeks after that, you were marching in Washington. Can you sustain that pace? And what do you think some of the challenges are going to be to continue to achieve realistic or meaningful legislation?

Cameron Kasky: I believe that as long as the American people are able to defeat their apathy, which fortunately has been, I think, receding this year as more and more people are realizing the importance of this election, there will always be momentum in the push for effective change in this country. The students at Stoneman Douglas, we didn’t expose the country to the gun violence problem. Everybody knew about that. What we did effectively was, we shined a light on just how rigged the game is, especially when it comes to money from special interest groups. Now, more and more people are really looking into this and saying, “This is where my politician is taking money from.” I believe that has effectively become more of a concern than ever, and as long as politicians continue to be unjust, it will always be.

POLITICO 50: Parkland Teens The March For Our Lives teens on their swing through Washington, D.C. during their Road to Change tour.

Jaclyn Corin: What we do at March for Our Lives is we take every little success we see, every state law that’s passed, and we treat it as a huge victory. Since the shooting, we’ve had over 50 state-level laws passed that are progressive, and we aren’t going to stop, especially on the road to midterms, because we’re going to see huge changes, I believe, once we elect morally just leaders.

Matt Deitsch: By having an undivided message, that we are trying to prevent gun violence, we are able to educate more and more people every day. We had town halls in Kansas City that had nearly—or over 1,500 people. In Omaha, in Ferguson and St. Louis, and all these areas around the country, that didn’t have the biggest March for Our Lives sibling event, but we were able to have enough ears in that area to hear what we had to say. And we know for a fact what we’re saying could save lives, if implemented at the state and federal level. We have examples in which these policies have saved lives. I feel like we’re creating more and more educated voters who aren’t going to stand for the same bullshit anymore.

Politico Magazine: Matt, you mentioned some of the policies that have been enacted, some of the new legislation. What specifically are you referring to?

Deitsch: Well, the most impressive thing is the states that we’re able to get red flag laws passed, especially in the Republican-controlled states, because at the federal level, we haven’t seen any action. And same with universal background checks or raising the age; these are all things that the president had promised the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas that had gone into a listening session, and the federal government has been completely stagnant in that. But in the 50 other state laws that we’ve seen passed, we’ve just seen stricter permitting when it comes to certain weapons, and we’ve seen these red flag laws that allow for dangerous people to have their weapons removed for due process. We aren’t going to touch these law-abiding citizens, we’re not going to take away your guns, but we are going to make sure that these dangerous people have to go through the system.

Politico Magazine: Red flag laws came into play in Annapolis. Maryland has got a law on the books which hasn’t taken effect yet, but clearly, I think, the shooter there [who killed five people at the office of the Capital Gazette] would have been a candidate for that law. You were in North Dakota, right, some of you, when that happened? Can you talk to me about how you found out about it, and how you incorporated that into any of your events that day or in the following days?

Jammal Lemy: At that moment, we were actually meeting with the Young Republicans of North Dakota about a counter-protest they were planning against our town hall. And I just—it was just really ironic to see that we’re sitting with these people who don’t necessarily agree with us on the issue of gun law reform—and Matt and I, we just sat there, just thought to ourselves, “Like, what in the world is happening?”

Politico Magazine: How did that group respond to the news?

Deitsch: They said that they had firm stances on what they think security and safety looks like, and we sort of just presented the facts, like we said that we only support policies that we know would work. And they kept diverting. At one point, instead of talking about gun safety and gun storage laws, they wanted to talk about putting fencing around pools so less kids drown. And I was like, “Well, a lot of places already have those laws.” And they were like, “Oh, well, we didn’t know about that.” I’m like, “OK, yeah. So, why are you talking about that when we have policies that can save lives this way?” And a lot of the time, I think a lot of people just want it to be a political fight, even though they agreed with seven of our 10 main policy points, without digging deeper. And then, when we started digging deeper into them, they pretty much agreed with everything we had to say.

Corin: This [Annapolis] shooting is just another example of how this is not just a school safety issue; it is a public safety issue, and the core of the problem is the gun problem. School safety measures aren’t going to fix this raging epidemic in our country. And I also want to weigh in on one of our policy points—disarming domestic abusers. The perpetrator actually pled guilty to harassing a woman a few years ago, and that wasn’t enough to bar him from purchasing a firearm. And one of our main points is disarming all domestic abusers. Keeping those violent individuals from obtaining something that can cause this mass destruction would definitely benefit our society as a whole.

Politico Magazine: I take your point. It’s not just about school shootings, but there was another school shooting, unfortunately, in Texas, about three months after Parkland. The response there among some students was interesting because, at least for a group of them, their concerns were less about gun control and more directed at the perpetrators and mental illness or whatever might have played a role in the crime. When you’re dealing with people who might have different cultural ideas about guns, and yet have very similar experiences to yours, how do you engage them?

Kasky: I believe that the students there are very brave to speak out, as are all shooting survivors, and whenever we’re connecting with students who don’t necessarily see eye to eye with us, the important thing to keep in mind is empathy, and realizing that we’re all human. And as long as we all respect each other, we can move forward with our goals, and try to make as many compromises as possible, and implement as many programs as we can.

Deitsch: Santa Fe students—and this is something that happens every time there’s a school shooting, just because of the technology—they reached out almost instantly as the shooting was happening. And we had March for Our Lives people from Houston and Dallas go down there with candles for the vigil, water and social workers and therapy dogs, just to be there for the students, regardless of what they thought politically had to happen. And then, after a few days without anything really inspiring them, they figured out what could be done to have prevented that shooting, and it was a 17-year old who took the family guns out. In Texas, if you’re 17 years old, you don’t legally need to have guns locked in your house. And you also don’t need to report on stolen guns in Texas, and also parents are less responsible because, in a lot of states, if you steal alcohol from a parent and cause recklessness, it’s a felony on the parents, but if it’s a gun, it’s not. And these were all policies that came out from the Santa Fe students that I feel like the community really rallied for.

Politico Magazine: Over the course of the March for Our Lives campaign, many of you have been subjected to pretty withering criticism from people who support the NRA, conservative Republicans, you name it. It’s been pretty ugly at times. How do you deal with the intensity of that kind of criticism?

Kasky: We believe in our mission. We are doing it for the people we’ve lost who no longer have a voice, and we are happy to move forward, no matter what people will say or do to us, as long as we are doing what we believe will save lives.

Corin: If we’re getting criticism and backlash, it means we’re doing something right. If we weren’t getting bad attention at all, then our movement wouldn’t go anywhere. It takes conversations to actually bring about change.

Kyrah Simon: I think that all negativity aimed toward human beings and children that are trying their best to be a part of an organization to make a change in the world—all that negativity is misdirected and misguided, and as an organization, we can’t really give attention toward hatred, and we really have to look toward the positive in everything.

Politico Magazine: I notice in a lot of the social media platforms that you all use, there’s sort of a difference in tone. Sometimes, it emphasizes the compassion and the empathy, and sometimes, it’s super sharp and punchy. This, that or the other Republican senator is “NRA property” or something like that. You’re on tour right now trying to register young voters; what tone works best with that age group?

Deitsch: People will say we are harsh with the NRA and with the NRA’s leadership. But NRA board members have said to shoot us if you saw us in the street, and when you have the NRA going on live TV saying that these policies would save lives, but gun rights are more important, you have to think: What is their value system? And so, when we—and when a celebrity says to drink a drink because they get paid to tell you that, but when a politician tells you to buy a weapon because they get paid to do that, too, why do we treat them any different, just because it’s a senator in front of their name? They’re still property of this company that is trying to sell you something. It’s not a demographic thing. I think young people have a better sense of what’s real or not on the internet, but I think that’s just because we’ve been in this field longer, that it’s really our guerrilla war on social media with young people, and that’s why young people are just very educated on these topics, because they’re not just getting their news from one source. They’re getting it from multiple angles, from different perspectives, and they can really see what is boiled down in the truth.

Politico Magazine: This campaign was probably nothing that you could have imagined being so intimately involved in a year ago, so where do you think you’re going to be 12 months from now?

Simon: I know that in my heart, I’ll be doing something with this organization, and we’ll be working toward the same goal, and especially this summer, there’s so much to look forward to; we have so many places that we’re going to, so many people we’re connecting with, voices that we’re sharing, voices we’re uplifting.

Corin: Twelve months from now, I’ll have graduated high school, hopefully going to college, and when it comes to March for Our Lives, hopefully, we’ll have significantly more March for Our Lives chapters, specifically in colleges where there are thousands of students that we can engage on this subject. So, I think that our message will only be even more widespread 12 months from now.

Deitsch: I just think it boils down into we’ll save a lot more lives, and we’ll continue to be saving lives 12 months from now. … Jammal, tell them what the shirt is going to do in 12 months.

Lemy: We designed a shirt that has a QR code on it, which takes you directly to our voter registration page. And it registers you to vote in under two minutes. So, within 12 months, I see a world where people are finding new interactive ways to become politically involved and to just vote, and to elect morally just leaders.