Fla. shooting survivors plan national bus tour
Activists seek to motivate young adults to vote
PARKLAND, Fla. — A day after graduating, a group of Florida high school shooting survivors announced they’ll spend their summer crisscrossing the country, expanding their grass-roots activism from rallies and school walkouts to registering young voters to help accomplish their vision for stricter gun laws.
David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin and about two dozen other students stood together Monday in matching black “Road to Change” T-shirts, holding placards at a park just down the street from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed on Valentine’s Day.
In the months since the shooting, the students have rallied hundreds of thousands across the country to march for gun reform, including a massive turnout in Washington in March.
But the young activists say rallies won’t matter unless that energy is funneled into voting out lawmakers beholden to the National Rifle Association this November.
“This generation is the generation of students you will be reading about next in the textbooks. … These are students who are changing the game,” Kasky said. “It’s not just my friends and I from Stoneman Douglas High School. We are part of something so much greater. Students from all over the country are beginning to get up, rally, move in the right direction and realize just how important it is to exercise our freedom.”
He cited statistics noting voter turnout in the last midterm elections was the lowest since World War II. The students are planning more than 25 stops in a two-month tour.
Kasky said they’re focusing on the 4 million people turning 18 this year.
“Voting has so often become a chore to people. People have so often shrugged it off,” he said.
The students said they are funding the tour through donations but declined to say how much they’ve raised.
The tour will begin June 15 in Chicago, where the Florida students will join the Peace March, led by students from St. Sabina Academy.