Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Joe Kennedy takes up Parkland’s cause
‘Our nation’s heart is with Broward,’ congressman tells crowd
The hotel ballroom was packed, but the crowd fell silent. No murmuring. No forks clinking on plates. No servers moving.
The only sound was the voice of Congressman Joe Kennedy III, whose family has been profoundly affected by firearm violence, slowly reading the names of the students and adults killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.
Kennedy, who bears one of the most famous names in American politics, didn’t deliver a cookie-cutter political speech Saturday night at the Broward Democratic Party’s annual Obama Roosevelt Legacy Dinner.
Sometimes soft-spoken and quietly emotional, sometimes fired up and loudly passionate, Kennedy paid tribute to the 17 killed and 16 wounded in the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, praised the eruption of activism among student-survivors, and delivered a searing takedown of those who have repeatedly failed to act to curb gun violence as the toll from gun deaths has continued to grow.
He hailed Stoneman
Douglas students who “volunteer for the front lines while elected officials cower in the corner.”
Kennedy lamented the laws that have allowed weaponry “designed for the battlefield” to fell victims in mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.; a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas; the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, and, most recently, at Stoneman Douglas in Parkland.
“Our children wake up every morning where nearly 100 lives will be lost to guns by the time they go to bed,” Kennedy said. “And they hear a Republican Party say that is the price of freedom.”
“Our kids, our children become our conscience. As our country puts its future on their small but sturdy shoulders, as their spines prove twice as strong as the adults meant to protect them, they join the countless boys and girls throughout our history, forced to be heroes before their time,” Kennedy said.
“Our nation’s heart is with Broward County. There are no words for the tragedy your community has endured. There are no thoughts, no prayers, no promises, no platitudes that can possibly communicate how our hearts are broken alongside yours,” he said.
Kennedy, 37, is the grandson of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the great-nephew of President John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated. He is a thirdterm member of Congress from Massachusetts who delivered the Democratic Party’s response to President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address in January and is mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in the future.
Kennedy was lined up as the dinner headliner long before the Stoneman Douglas shooting, for what normally is an evening of political speeches, maneuvering and gossip. But on Saturday, the Stoneman Douglas massacre hung heavy over the event in large and small ways.
“I really feel a tangible difference,” said Jack Shifrel, a longtime activist in the Broward Democratic Party whose first political involvement was as a 22-year-old, living in New York and working on Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign.
At the VIP reception, politicians sought out Stoneman Douglas students. Candidates for governor touted their commitments to change gun laws. The junior class president delivered a speech to the dinner audience. And Kennedy met with a group of Stoneman Douglas students and recent alumni in a Pier 66 conference room before he spoke.
Much of the political talk was focused on how to effect change in the decades-long stalemate over proposals to tighten gun laws and in a burning desire to elect candidates who won’t kowtow to the gun-rights lobby.
Kennedy said the aftermath of the Parkland shooting would be different than others. He said Democrats would disprove the notion that gun violence is an issue that doesn’t generate votes. He said people who believe the National Rifle Association is too powerful to overcome are wrong.
Cynthia Busch, chairwoman of the Broward Democratic Party, said people are galvanized and ready to act. She urged party activists to participate in an effort to focus on lawmakers in November who don’t take action to tighten gun laws.
“No more deals. No more compromises. This is done. It is time to fight,” Busch said. “We are going to go after them. We are going to hold them accountable.”
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, whose Broward-Palm Beach county district includes Parkland, wondered aloud how history, and the future, might be different if the government had acted to tighten gun laws after other shootings.
“What if the president of the United States was able to focus on making our communities safer for more than one 24-hour news cycle,” Deutch said. “If we want to stand with the students of Stoneman Douglas, it is time for action.”
Each of the four Democratic candidates for Florida governor — Andrew Gillum, Gwen Graham, Chris King and Philip Levine — got two minutes at the microphone at the pre-dinner reception.
“I am in incensed with where we are today with gun control in the state of Florida,” Graham said, pledging to issue an executive order banning assault weapons immediately upon taking office if she becomes governor. Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, touted his record of tangling with the NRA over a city ban on guns in parks. Levine said the school shooting was a tragedy and King vowed to “stand up to the NRA.”
Even though they were at a political party function, several Stoneman Douglas students said they wanted action, not words.
“Everyone here’s going to say the right things. We’re more about action,” said Matthew Deitsch, 20, a 2016 Stoneman Douglas graduate who is now a student at California State University at Northridge.
His brother, Stoneman Douglas senior Ryan Deitsch, 18, said the student activists would take help from anyone willing to work for gun restrictions. “But we are not here to support and endorse candidates.”
Ryan Deitsch dismissed one of the mainstays of political dinners: a few words with a candidate or prominent elected official, followed by a picture. “We can smile and take pictures as much as we want, but until legislation is passed it doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
Jaclyn Corin, the junior-class president at Stoneman Douglas, described the day of the shooting and days since, and vowed the lives won’t be lost in vain — if lawmakers implement “common sense gun laws” including bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and universal background checks for gun buyers.
“We understand that we are just kinds and we understand that our demands might not become reality for a while. We will not look away. We will not let the perpetrators of mass shootings win. We will not let the National Rifle Association and its supporters win,” she said. “We will stop at nothing to make our voices heard and our wishes a reality.”