‘Telling our truth and our story’
Students: Adults helped only with rallies’ logistics
The teenagers brought eloquence, commitment and a determination to generate lasting change. Their adult allies contributed money and an array of skills, from media relations to event planning on a massive scale.
The gun-control rallies that seized the nation’s attention Saturday arose from an unusual combination of youthful idealism and adult professionalism, yielding events whose national impact may last well through this year’s midterm elections.
“We are minors, for the most part,” said Delaney Tarr, one of the speakers and organizers at the Washington, D.C. event. “We can’t file permits. I can’t, technically, check into a hotel on my own without an adult because I’m 17. We do need adults for those things that we’re too young for, for the technical aspect. But the heart and soul of this movement is in the youth.”
To many right-wing critics, the March for Our Lives rallies looked too slick and well-organized, with speeches that were too well-written and videos that no student could have produced –
evidence that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students were pawns, not leaders.
“Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous,” the National Rifle Association said, in a widely repeated Facebook statement posted Saturday, the day of the March for Our Lives rallies. “Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.”
Hollywood elites certainly played a big role, from the millions in celebrity contributions to the on-the-ground management of the Washington event by Deena Katz, a Los Angeles television producer. The New York and Los Angeles public relations firm 42 West contributed its services. A Stoneman Douglas alumni group raised more than $100,000 to send kids to Washington.
But while the students leaned on adults familiar with the political, financial and governmental levers that needed to be pulled, they say the idea that they were being manipulated is nonsense.
“I find it kind of amusing that the fact that we don’t want to be shot and killed makes us pawns,” Tarr said “The only reason we’re doing this is for those 17 dead and for everyone else who has died because of gun violence. But they, for whatever reason, have equated that with being pawns. My speech was my speech. It was not written by someone else for me. It was not the words of someone that I was told to say. It was true because that is what we were focusing on. We were focusing on telling our truth and our story.”
After the Feb. 14 shooting by expelled student Nikolas Cruz, which left 17 dead and 17 wounded, the national media descended on Parkland. Wendy Zipes Hunter, a celebrity booker who lives in Parkland, helped the students from the start in dealing with the news media, but she said her role was advisory only.
“I was a mentor and a resource,” she said. “They’re awesome. What you see is what you get. They’re incredibly focused, driven and inspiring. There were some adults who were able to help where they could, and I feel fortunate to be among them.”
A prominent coordinator of Saturday’s rallies was Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group founded by billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The organization gave $5,000 grants to more than 200 local organizers across the country and sent logistical teams to coordinate some of these events, including the one in Parkland that drew thousands of people.
For the Parkland rally, Everytown took care of setting up the stage, fencing, shuttle buses and other logistics, but the organization didn’t try to take control of the event, students said.
“They never tried to push any of their ideas,” said Casey Sherman, 17, a student organizer and speaker at the Parkland event. “When we first got on the phone with Everytown, we made clear if we had a large organization coming in to help, the kids’ voices had to come out on top. It was important that it still remained student-led. They immediately understood that. They made it clear that they never intended to take over. They were there just to give us help.”
Sari Kaufman, 15, another organizer, said it was the students who planned the program, reaching out to potential speakers such as Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the attack.
“We wrote all our own speeches,” she said. “We had one of our teachers look over them for grammar.”
For the event in the nation’s capital, gun-control groups such as Everytown and the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence contributed volunteers. “We had busloads of people going in and places for people to get signs,” said Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign. “We hosted a sign-making party. We didn’t tell anyone what to say or what to advocate for. I was as impressed as anyone with the kids’ ability to articulate and share their messages.”
Stoneman Douglas’ farflung alumni network contributed money and services, raising more than $100,000 for transportation, food and other expenses, said Craig Pugatch, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and one of the leaders of the alumni effort.
“The alumni came out in full force,” he said. “Our alumni are spread all across the country. We’ve got doctors, lawyers, PR teams, writers, professionals, journalists, you name it in the alumni group. And we called upon them and said, can your skills help, and if your skills can’t help we can certainly use your money, and if your money can’t help we’d like you to come volunteer.”
The money, combined with funds from the Giffords gun-control group and free flights from Delta Air Lines, helped send nearly 1,000 Stoneman Douglas students and chaperones to the event.
Jeff Foster, the Advanced Placement government teacher who has served as a mentor to the student activists, was backstage at the Washington rally and credited the adults with much of the professionalism of the event, from the quality of the videos to the logistics of the on-stage program.
“That was done by the adults in the room,” he said. “They had a roomful of very put-together people who were running behind the scenes. They did a rehearsal the night before. It wasn’t a school drama production, that’s for sure — not that the drama productions aren’t awesome at our school. It was professionally run.”
But the Stoneman Douglas students and the other young speakers were the soul of the rally, Foster said, with their words, their memories of the horror of that day and their ideas. He said he’s angered by the attacks claiming they were passive actors in a drama written by Democrats, gun-control groups or anyone else.
“I’m a Republican, and it’s pretty embarrassing,” he said. “I have a couple of conservative talk show hosts that I’ve spoken to that have my phone number, and they’ve texted me, saying stuff like they’re puppets for the left, and I’ve said that’s not true at all. I said just because it jibes with their beliefs, it doesn’t mean these kids are being used, but they keep saying and saying it. It’s embarrassing.”