This Is Much More Important Than We Realize

The violent thrashes of the news cycle continue to package and deliver an endless barrage of corruption cases, sex scandals, devastating weather, and conspiracy theories with such an exhausting pace and volume it’s tough to catch a breath.

Amidst all the madness, why have the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School captured our national attention? Why do they have their own CNN Town Hall meetings and million dollar donations from high profile artists and celebrities? What is special about this shooting and these victims?

Fractured, isolated, physically scarred, emotionally shattered, their pain and their individual calls for reform may have caused a brief stir on the surface of our cultural awareness but those ripples were soon overpowered by the next (un)presidential tweet, the next wave of outrage porn, the next sporting event; the next convenient distraction. Atomized, their voices were weak, and they were bowled over by structures of power.

What’s different about the tragedy in Parkland: the survivors feel something in common aside from their shared trauma. These people had bonds prior to the shooting. They were classmates, colleagues, relatives, business owners, patrons, and neighbors.

They’re a unified, determined community. Any differences and arbitrary distinctions prior to the shooting have taken a back seat to their common goal.

These brave citizens now find themselves at the center of a new struggle. Instead of staring down the barrel of an AR-15 they’re facing off with the NRA. They’re confronting an uncomfortable issue within a country that has more guns than people. And they have already started to affect change.

As Millennials (I hate this abused term, but you know exactly who I mean) and Gen Z become the largest cohort of the labor force and voters in the developed world, we sit on the precipice of the changing of the political guard. This valiant response in the aftermath of yet another tragic mass shooting could be a watershed moment for our democracy.

The struggle represents a hell of a lot more than guns. It transcends this one issue.

Millions of people across the country are witnessing a small group of determined, engaged, and united citizens going toe-to-toe with the swamprat henchmen of one of the most influential lobbying monoliths in history.

This same blueprint can be applied to critical battles with other industry interest groups whose tentacles besiege our government and detriment our daily lives.

We must channel their resolve in support of non-interventionism, universal healthcare, a living wage, renewable energy, and more. Issues no less deadly than gun reform… but that merely exert their violence in a less dramatic fashion, causing their destruction slowly over time.

This tragedy in Parkland feels representative of a greater movement, a level of political engagement and action I have never seen in my lifetime, and it should give everyone hope.

As Peter Finch’s character said in his iconic monologue from Network, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

No, we’re not going to take it. We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it our own.

Related posts:

The insight I got from the reading is that data visualization can largely influence people’s ways of reading and interpreting the data. By placing the data in a visual context, designers/data…

passei longas horas observando o céu. entristecia-me ver os aviões indo para longe, cruzando as nuvens vermelhas em direção ao sol. aviões sempre tem para onde voltar, mas nunca voam junto de outros…