MAINTAINING MOMENTUM
With summer looming, can students’ movement against gun violence sustain itself?
It happened again last week: another studentdriven protest against gun violence. In Santa Fe, some 500 activists took part in a demonstration against gun violence at the Roundhouse for National School Walkout day, held on the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, in which two students killed 13 people. Around the country, an estimated 150,000 students participated. The event followed a larger round of walkouts on March 14 in honor of 17 people killed in a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Time and time again, students have been at the forefront of activism. Student-led movements, such as the Greensboro sit-ins, the Tiananmen Square protests and now the Parkland Strong movement have elevated the platform for such activism. “Young people can be powerful agents of social change,” said a study published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society — especially since youth are particularly adept at using social media to enact that social change.
But will this new movement sustain itself, particularly with summer looming?
“I think that even if the people here today end up losing interest or our specific organization dies out, this idea and this concept will never die until change happens because we’ve started a movement, and it’s not just us,” said Camille Cooper, a New Mexico School for the Arts student who helped organize Friday’s demonstration. “So the movement itself won’t die.”
But one of her colleagues, Chloe Hanna, worries that “it won’t sustain itself.” Still, she hopes the summer months give organizers and activists more time to meet and plan more events for the fall. She and others, including Santa Fe school board President Steven Carrillo, believe students have to maintain the charge.
“Regardless of what the change is, students and their parents have to be the lead for change to happen,” Carrillo said. “Because ultimately, when people go online and click on a survey, it doesn’t mean a damn thing. It’s effortless, as opposed to grass-roots organizing. It accomplishes nothing. It has to be students and parents on the ground getting it done.”
Gretchen Brion-Meisels, a lecturer on preventive science and practices at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said youth around the world have often hit that ground running to get it done. “I think that there are many examples of youth-led movements for social justice that have been successful, and continue to be today,” she told Generation Next. “During the Civil Rights Movement, children and youth led many successful efforts to desegregate cities and schools. Over the last 10 years, youth in the Middle East have been at the forefront of fights for democracy. In the U.S., immigrant youth and their allies have led amazing movements to ensure that families without documentation have equal rights. There has been significant activism on the part of young people to demand that their cities and schools address violence and gun control. From Chicago to Parkland, youth activists are driving change.
“And although they don’t have everything that they want, I think they are certainly successful in creating a model for the rest of us.”
Monte del Sol Charter School student Lia Fukuda, the co-founder of Fight For Our Lives Santa Fe, is one of those young leaders who got involved in political activism just a few months ago. When the opportunity arose for her to moderate a youth mayoral forum at her school, something clicked. Now most of her energy goes into securing meetings with state politicians and other organizations, including a recent meeting with U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham. A recent political issue has been to make gun safety a bipartisan issue, and Fukuda hopes that all politicians follow through to help Fight For Our Lives Santa Fe’s main goal: “to get an emergency session with New Mexico’s Legislature, reduce gun violence not only in schools, but also in street violence, as well as suicide prevention.”
Still, youth can become disengaged quickly, promise to show up to protest a gun show and then not show (something that happened recently in Los Alamos) or, despite the potential to use social media, do a poor job of communicating what’s going on and when and where. For example, Fukuda said it’s obvious that not all students have “the time, energy or capability to attend the meetings and be involved.”
But those who do remain at the forefront of such activism, including Avonlea Ward, another New Mexico School for the Arts student who believes this movement will go for as long as it takes, despite summer break. “Maybe there won’t be another school shooting during summer break, but there will still be gun violence and there will still be threats, and people will still be thinking, ‘What’s going to happen in three months?’ ” she said. “And I think that is incredibly important for everybody to keep their minds on it and keep focused on what we’re trying to get down here.
“And don’t let it die down, because if we don’t let it die down, then it won’t.”
Generation Next staff reporter Sydney Pope contributed to this story.