Don’t bet against Emma as she puts Trump and insane US gun culture in her sights
ONE of the most common accusations levelled against millennials is that while they’re quick to mouth off on social media, they’re too lacking in life-experience to say anything worth listening to.
They can talk the talk, but they haven’t yet walked the walk, so to speak. Probably it was ever thus; is there anything in life as self-assured as a 16-year-old with a strong opinion?
So what happens when you pair youthful self-confidence with a far more elusive attribute: the stone-cold stamp of authority? Emma Gonzalez, that’s what. Emma is a 19-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 students and teachers were gunned to death on St Valentine’s Day. Barely three days later, Emma was front and centre of a group of students who organised a protest rally at the school and promptly burst into the collective consciousness.
Emma has a buzzcut and a neat line in damning rhetoric. I watched her deliver her 10-minute long speech live on TV and felt a cold shiver of hope. She was emotional but coherent, angry but rational, strident but compassionate.
“If the president wants to come up to meandtellmetomy face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it,” she told the crowd, her voice shaking with outrage, “I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”
For teenagers who’ve grown up with selfies, Snapchat and Instagram, public performance is second nature. They’re at ease in front of the camera and they’re never lost for words.
But Emma and her classmateshaveeven more to offer: they were there. They heard the gunshots ringing out in the corridors of their own high school as Nikolas Cruz went on his murderous rampage. And now they’re vowing that it will never happen again.
Yesterday the survivors, who’ve garnered financial support from Oprah and the Clooneys, marched on the Florida state capital to demand tighter gun control.
They’ll march on Washington on Saturday. They’ve planned a nationwide class walkout to mark the month’s anniversary of the shooting. It’ll be 17 minutes long, a minute for every life needlessly wiped out.
These amazing teenagers are sowing the seeds of a grassroots rebellion that will be difficult for even the most gun-loving politicians to ignore.
Before this tragedy happened, Emma was planning a career in environmental activism. Now she has a more pressing and personal cause to fight for.
Maybe these kids will finally succeed in reforming America’s criminally insane gun laws. “We are going to be the last mass shooting,” Emma Gonzalez told the crowd. “We are going to change the law.”
It was impossible not to takeheratherword.