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March 16, 2018

The #NeverAgain movement: What no one else is talking about

We’ve been watching the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, since the shooting that killed 14 of their peers and three staff members. A small group of MSD student leaders has taken center stage since the beginning, starting with Facebook posts and quickly moving to Twitter, where they have worked tirelessly to tell their stories and demand changes to our nation’s gun laws.

You can find articles about how the #NeverAgain movement started and where it’s headed next: a March 24 march on Washington. And it’s easy to find local #MarchForOurLives events to attend and ways to plug in. What hasn’t been told yet is the story about how students are supported by the adults in their lives: parents, educators, and role models. These groups are coming together as one team and, because of that, their impact is simply and utterly inspiring.

The most powerful equation

At The Social Institute, we don’t have much experience in policy change or gun reform. But we know firsthand the hard work and teamwork necessary to create change.

Students + parents + educators + role models =
a powerful force for change.

When we partner with schools, we encourage three groups — students, educators, and parents — to team up and talk about what it means to navigate social media positively. To create a sustainable, positive, and proactive approach to using social media positively, schools need all three to work together.

We found this same teamwork unfolding in Parkland and (now) around the world. It’s what’s making #NeverAgain so powerful.

Articulate, smart, social-media savvy student leaders

Many of the MSD student leaders behind #NeverAgain and #MarchForOurLives are involved in theater, are regular users of social media, and understand the need for purposeful organization and hard work. They came out swinging.

Proficient in social media

They were also familiar with how social media works and where they had to be. Thanks in part to President Trump, journalists pay attention to what’s happening on Twitter now: Tweets are regularly front-page news. So, MSD students leaders with accounts there began tweeting.

Student leaders who didn’t have a Twitter account created one and learned how to use the platform quickly and effectively (due partly to their proficiency on other social media platforms like Tumblr and Instagram):

Smart enough to know there’s more to learn

Just a couple months ago, one of them, Jaclyn Corin, completed a project about gun control for her AP composition-and-rhetoric class. She was prepared to talk, write, post, about it. But they were also smart enough to know that they don’t know everything.

Student leaders who didn’t have a Twitter account created one and learned how to use it quickly and effectively.

One of the first things they did was meet with students in Chicago who have lived with gun violence much longer than they have and without a spotlight. The teenagers also understood — so much so that one of them was able to articulate it to a journalist — that once they started speaking out, they no longer represented themselves online. They represented their school and the movement.

“The fact is that I have to represent our movement. It’s not just me tweeting whatever I want to tweet about. It has to be drawn back to who I am to the media, to who I am to the country.” – Delaney Tarr quoted in The New York Times

Willing to move fast

And they worked quickly. The shooting happened on February 14.

Before 5 PM on February 15, they’d started a Never Again MSD Facebook page and used quotes from other survivors — other student voices — as the first posts.

On February 18, after deciding a march on Washington was in order, they started a Go Fund Me page.   

That. Is. Fast.

+ Supportive, helpful, empowering parents and educators

Like the highest-paid advertising agencies, the MSD student leaders knew that they had to huddle up, lock arms, and start making thing happen. If anyone got in their way in real life, we haven’t read about it (and they haven’t let death threats or politicians claiming they were crisis actors phase them).

Parkland students meeting in a living room

Parkland students meeting in a living room (via BuzzFeed)

This kind of quick-thinking teamwork happens in what agencies call “war rooms.” After the school shooting, MSD student leaders instinctively gathered to concept and respond online in real time, not in “warm rooms” but in living rooms, living rooms owned by — and kept open late into the evening, sometimes overnight by — their parents. They even invited BuzzFeed. (Smart, these kids.)

Helping early and often

But parent involvement started even earlier. According to an article in The New Yorker, when Cameron Kasky’s dad picked him up from school, he used the downtime to write Facebook posts. A lot of Facebook posts, according to reporter Emily Wit:

“I’m safe,” he wrote in the first [update], posted two hours after the shooting. “Thank you to all the second amendment warriors who protected me.” For the rest of the day, in between posts about missing students and recalling the experience of hiding in a classroom with his brother, Kasky’s frustration grew: “Can’t sleep. Thinking about so many things. So angry that I’m not scared or nervous anymore . . . I’m just angry,” he wrote. “I just want people to understand what happened and understand that doing nothing will lead to nothing. Who’d have thought that concept was so difficult to grasp?”

Did his dad tell him to put away his phone, that now is NOT the time to post on Facebook? Maybe. We weren’t in the car. But from the number of Facebook posts reportedly shared by that evening alone, we feel confident suggesting that his dad didn’t try to stop him. Maybe he even encouraged it.

The students behind #NeverAgain weren’t suspended for publicly speaking up against major national politicians and journalists.

Once the press got involved, the MSD student leaders posting most often to social began working hand-in-hand and living-room-to-living-room with others who were taking interviews with reporters. There were sleepovers and long meetings in rec centers (who kept the lights on long after office hours).

Were parents coordinating rides? Providing lunches and dinners? Probably. No one stopped the student leaders from working through the night more than once.

Staying out of the students’ way

Their school leaders didn’t try to shut them down, either. They weren’t, for example, suspended for publicly speaking up against major national politicians and journalists.

Parents and educators weren’t taking kids’ devices away or blocking their wifi so that they could grieve or rest or whatever a teenager is supposed to do after they nearly died. They were and still are empowering them to use their mics to make some major changes.

+ Cyberbacking role models

Everyone knows what cyberbullying is. We talk more about cyberbacking, a big part of which is backing up people you see being bullied online. But equally important is encouraging others, period. The MSD student leaders are being cyberbacked left and right.

Supported by celebs

Their ideas and actions have been backed by countless celebrities.

Supported by their peers

They were and continue to be cyberbacked by thousands of other students around the world.

Supported by MSD alumni

The Chicago Tribune reported that MSD alums are helping out, too. Specifically, the article mentioned Jon Boehnker, who is helping the group with their organizing efforts, something he did with #BlackLivesMatter, too. And David Yakobivitch, who is coordinating flights, buses, and hotels for those attending March for Our Lives in Washington on the 24th.

And they’re just getting started.

What makes #NeverAgain powerful? The formula: students + parents + educators + role models. What makes our approach to social media education different? Same formula. Seeing it being played out on a global stage with the students’ ideas, voices, and actions leading the way? Simply and utterly inspiring.

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