For Surely Someday...

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These Florida kids are not fucking around.

wolfnanaki

The kids’ response to the shooting has been something truly incredible.

Normally, it’s always been very young children and it’s only their parents that can speak about it. The narrative gets controlled, the conspiracy theorists talk about how it’s all an act, so much bullshit.

But these are kids who are active on social media, incredibly close to voting age, and they’re demanding their voices are heard. Every single thing that downplays, dismisses or conspiracies the shooting has been subverted by their efforts, and they’re not letting adults who’ve never lived what they lived through control the narrative.

“It was a conspiracy!” “No, we have video evidence of it happening.” “Shouldn’t you be calling 911 instead of making videos?” “We called 911 so many times they told us to stop.” “But he was a troubled child!” “We were ALL troubled, that’s no excuse.” And it just goes on like this.

Honestly, I’m so proud of my fellow Floridians.

systlin

I said to my husband the other day that “This one feels different”, referring to this precisely.

The whole energy around it feels different. These kids are not having this bullshit, and while they should not have to stand their ground and fight this battle, goddamn it they are going to. If the adults won’t, then goddamn it these kids will draw a fucking line and say ‘no, no more, this is bullshit’.

I don’t know what it means, or how it will play out long term. But there’s a sense around this whole tragedy that this one is different, and I hope, maybe, that means some actual change will come.

derinthemadscientist

Good kids. Good work. This is the kind of mindset that Gen Z is going to need to have. With enough of these kinds of kids, kids who not only refuse to be bullied and unjustly controlled by the state but who understand how to utilise their resources to protect themselves, the future has a chance.

If we want to drag ourselves out of the bullshit of the next decade or so, we need to be a generation who doesn’t dismiss the younger one. We need to rally behind and support them. They watched and learned from the best of us, the organisers and protestors and artists among us who would take no shit in a world that called us useless and entitled, and they’re going to be better at it, in greater numbers, with better resources and a determined, proactive mindset. Gen Z is doing amazing and we need to be there and help them keep being amazing. Without them, we weren’t good enough. We weren’t organised enough, and there weren’t enough of us. So now the kids have to get involved.

And if we’re lucky, the world is not going to be prepared for what’s hitting it.

shareblue.com

THE HERO THAT AMERICA NEEDS: Emma Gonzalez, a teen who survived massacre, rips the NRA, GOP, and Trump to pieces in emotional takedown

Emma Gonzalez directly called out Trump, the GOP, and the NRA for enabling the murder of children.

justinspoliticalcorner

Oliver Willis at Shareblue:

A Florida teenager who survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, issued a rousing call to action at a rally against gun violence.
Emma Gonzalez declared that the shooting at her school should be “the last mass shooting.”
And she responded directly to Trump’s tweet, which blamed students at the school for not reporting on the shooter’s behavior before the event.
“We did,” Gonzalez said, “time and time again, since he was in middle school.”
“We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue,” she continued. “He wouldn’t have harmed that many students with a knife.”
“How about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the shooter’s fault?” she demanded, and called out those who do deserve to shoulder that blame.
“[The people] who let him buy the guns in the first place. Those at the gun shows. The people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic. The people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew that he expressed homicidal tendencies. And I am not talking about the FBI. I am talking about the people that he lived with, I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.”
And Gonzalez again did not let Trump’s responsibility go unremarked upon
“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy, and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us that nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”
Gonzalez then called attention to the $30 million spent by the NRA in support of Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and how that translates onto each life lost to gun violence.
“That comes out to being $5800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?” She asked.
“To every politician who has taken donations from the NRA: Shame on you!”
The crowd erupted into a loud chant, echoing her cry: “Shame on you!”
Emma Gonzalez and her Florida community are not allowing Trump, the Republican Party, or the NRA to intimidate them into silence. They are speaking up to defend their families, and shaming those who enable this epidemic of violence.