The Origins of the Never Again Movement

(light music)

The most basic belief behind Never Again is

that there should never again be another massacre

in a high school by a school shooter.

That's a very simple idea many adults I think

find naive.

[Newscaster] At least 17 people are dead

in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday.

The world saw very quickly that the teenagers

of Majory Stoneman Douglas High School were not

just gonna accept thoughts and prayers.

They weren't gonna accept that kind of consolation.

They felt that what had happened to them

could have been prevented.

As I got there, many of the students from the high school

were there to console each other.

When you're in high school, your friends are really

the only people that understand you.

The first indication that I had that this was

following a different narrative was a tweet

that I saw re-tweeted from a student named Sara Chadwick.

She had responded to President Trump's condolences

with a defiant rejection of them.

She said, I don't want your condolences.

One of the students that had been active

on social media and speaking with the news media

was named Cameron Kasky.

And the night after the vigil, that happened

the day after the shooting, he invited some friends

from drama club mostly over to his house

to discuss how they could use their individual voices

to combine into a coherent message

and start a movement.

The name he came up with was Never Again,

which he felt was something that was non political.

They all got together and started discussing

how to come up with a coherent message

and a plan to reach lawmakers, to reach the public,

to boycott the NRA.

All of those things were on the table

from the very beginning.

This is one of the best public high schools in Florida.

It's an affluent community.

Jaclyn Corin, she's the junior class president,

she told me that she had written a 50-page project

just two months before on the issue of gun control

for her AP Composition and Rhetoric class,

where she'd had to go through and consider

all sides of the issue, consider how special interest groups

like the NRA, use their power to mobilize their base

and fund lawmakers.

They were very well versed in how this issue

plays out in the political arena.

One of the students that was emerging as an activist

was a senior named Emma Gonzalez, and she had appeared

in national news interviews, speaking very eloquently

about the need for gun control.

Emma Gonzalez came up on stage and spoke with just

so much raw emotion and a very pointed

and specific critique, where she made it clear

that she knew as much about policy as any lawmaker.

She was ready to go head to head with people

that claimed it was all right for anybody

to go in and buy an AR-15.

I'm asking your opinion as a representative of the NRA.

She was just immediately recognized

as a powerful voice and an iconic figure.

So by the sixth day, there were funerals every day

that week, the memorial in this public park

that had been set up had attracted people

from all over the country to help the students grieve.

And meanwhile the activism was taking place

at a very rapid pace.

Jaclyn Corin had put out a call to invite 100 students

up to Tallahassee to speak with state lawmakers

about the possibility of passing some gun control laws

in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy.

These students gathered in a parking lot outside

of a public supermarket, and they got on three buses

and caravanned the eight hours up to north Florida.

The student activists knew that they were going

to meet with one of the most pro-gun state legislatures

in the country.

Laws like the Stand Your Ground law, the Concealed

Weapon Law, many of these laws were pioneered

in Florida by a lobbyist named Marion Hammer.

After the students left for Tallahassee,

I decided to go by the high school.

There was a big crowd of young people,

and I started talking to a student named Catherine Silva.

And it turned out that she and her classmates

had marched to Parkland from West Boca Raton High School,

which was 12 miles away.

I realized then that the activism wasn't limited

to the students at Parkland.

(crowd chanting)

So I understood that the passion around this issue

was bigger than one school.

[Crowd] What do we want?

Gun Control.

When do we want it, now.

The state legislature in Florida is a very

old school place and these students,

with all their passion and all their urgency

were not gonna disrupt business as usual.

(crowd chanting)

They wanted to have a face-to-face conversation

where they shared their message that not everybody

should be able to buy a military-grade assault weapon.

I think the focus on activism prolonged

the news cycle of an event like this.

Usually the media would come and cover the tragedy

and cover the biography of the shooter,

and the biographies of the victims,

and then depart.

And the way in which certain of the students

became very well known personalities very quickly

also attracted the derision of people

who called them crisis actors.

The students handled with humor.

They were not scared of those messages.

I think it's also important to remember

that while there are a group of activist students

that are out there in front of the media,

I spoke with many students that were not on camera,

have not made this their life's mission,

but felt the same urgency about the need

to change national gun laws.

We have to ban assault rifles.

They were illegal in 2004 and they have

to be illegal again.

The teenagers have already influenced

so much change.

A boycott inspired by them resulted

in many major corporations canceling their discount

programs for NRA officers, proposals by even

very pro-gun lawmakers like Governor Rick Scott,

Senator Marco Rubio to enact some very minor forms

of gun control.

The NRA is very effective at mobilizing its constituency.

The anti-gun movement does not have the same ability

to write an email and bring out hundreds

of thousands of voters on election day.

If the students can change that, then I think

we will see some real change.

Because right now in Florida and also

in the federal government, pro-gun lawmakers

are in control.

[Group] Sensible gun laws now.

I know that wisdom can come from young people.

I mean when you look at many of our activist leaders

in the past, they were pretty young.

Like many other people, I've been moved

by their refusal to back down, the coherent message

that they've brought to the debate.