Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Parkland survivor David Hogg for Congress? In 2025, maybe
Anti-gun-violence activist and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting survivor David Hogg, 18, says he is considering a run for Congress when he is 25, according to a New York Magazine story.
The lengthy profile piece outlines Hogg’s activism since turning on his cellphone’s video camera while hiding in the immediate, chilling aftermath of the shooting that killed 17 people and wounded 17 others — and narrating from his point of view.
A future run for elected office would be another stepping stone for Hogg, whose life has been nearly non-stop for the past six months.
He graduated from Stoneman Douglas in May and planned to take a year off before starting college in 2019 and hopes to work on a presidential campaign in 2020.
Since the Feb. 14 massacre, the outspoken Hogg has also:
■ amassed about 868,000 followers on Twitter,
■ made regular appearances on television programs,
■ addressed an estimated 800,000 people who partic-
ipated in the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. March 24,
■ went on a Road To Change national bus tour to register young people to vote,
■ launched a Die-In protest at Publix supermarkets,
■ called for a spring break boycott in Florida,
■ and wrote a book #NeverAgain with his sister Lauren.
Hogg also has been a frequent target of harsh criticism and some veiled death threats requiring him to travel with bodyguards on the voter registration drive through 75 cities in two months during the summer.
He has criticized the National Rifle Association, politicians that accept money from the NRA, and companies that do business with the NRA.
Hogg also condemned President Donald Trump’s policies and said he refused a White House invitation to attend a listening session with several other MSD schoolmates and their families. “We don’t need to listen to President Trump,” Hogg told HBO’s Bill Maher. “President Trump needs to listen to the screams of the children and the screams of this nation.”
Hogg said he has a sevenyear plan that includes working on the mid-term elections, college, lots of reading, working on a presidential campaign in 2020, and then running for the House of Representatives when he’s constitutionally eligible.
Hogg would turn 25 on April 12, 2025.
“I want to be at least be part of the change in Congress,” he said. So why do it? “We really only remember a few hundred people, if that many, out of the billions that have ever lived,” Hogg told the magazine. “Is that what I was destined to become?”