tv Dave Cullen Parkland CSPAN March 4, 2019 6:45am-7:48am EST
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[inaudible] widowers solomont for i fell in love with the bobcats that summer. and then the giant flood came and filled the building with mud. i mean, they're cats. they know how to survive floods. the more frightening thing was said afterwards the whole area was turned into a superfund site because all of the explosives they were making out there spread all over everything. they said there is a danger of inhaling explosives out there and they left worrying about the kittens inhaling explosives. >> well, you can read that story and more in the book "a girl's guide to >> another one that was a little
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more -- >> are we ready? hello, everyone. welcome to the 2019 tucson festival of books. this panel is parkland, never again. it will end in one hour. please send your questions for a panelist. we have make setup on both sides of the isles so you can come up to the microphones and ask your questions. we will have about 15 to 20 minutes at the end for you to do that. the festival organizers would like to thank c-span booktv for sponsoring this location as well as diamond ventures for sponsoring the upcoming panel discussion. a couple things to keep in mind. dave will be signing his books. >> i didn't mean to distract. go ahead.
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[laughter] .. i should be taking place at half an hour after the spindle ends. just be on the lookout for that at 5:30 p.m. at the university of arizona bookstore. book sales at the festival up as supporter festival in the literacy program funds so please do buy a copy of his book. you can also keep this event free and open to everyone by becoming a friend of the festival when by sponsor the 2020 festival of books in tucson. also please stop by the front booth or go online to tucson books.org for more information. last but not least, that would be wonderful if you cannot do that. [laughter] >> i did that as well i don't know if you heard. >> thank you.
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it is my incredible honor to introduce dave. for the present and future of gun politics and policy and violence. so dave's presents us with might be the book end of an era of school shootings in the u.s. starting with the award-winning book of columbine. nearly 500 page book that unravels the columbine shooting for families and victims. for communities of survivors in american society more broadly. we are here to talk about his newest book parkland which is written over the course of the parkland shooting on valentine's day 2018. this book is wrapped around the parkland students who ruffle with the trauma and politics of
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surviving in active shooting and created a movement in the process. columbine was a chilling account of mass murder, parkland was something very different. with the washington post called one of the most uplifting books you will read all year. please join me in welcoming dave. [applause] >> thank you. it is good to be here. i was trained to figure out whether i've been here before because actually after the horrible incident with gabby gifford i work with a group out of columbia university which is also great to support. and they asked me to it come here -- i don't know the word, a local journalist were traumatized by it. and met with one of their houses up in the hills with several of them. and they try to do something with the festival that year end i'm not sure whether i did and i can't remember if this is my first run or not. that was a really powerful experience and i know just from that, i get just a little taste
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of what you went there. i am sorry, you have to be one of the communities hit by this. in one of the communities on the list, alyssa keeps going ridiculously longer. now when somebody says aurora, we are to see which one. and now we have victims of multiple shootings in the parkland we said never again knowing that would be the last one, but that is what they're shooting for and hopefully in the semi- near future will be the truth. that is the goal. not just because you said nice things, i think the review i got everything that are trying to do. in -- i just thought i wanted to read her book.
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i do want to read her book i am hopeful. >> thank you. i want to start with this question and start with your process of going from writing a book that took you ten years to write about columbine. [inaudible] >> it's not working? [inaudible] >> sorry. [inaudible] >> great. am i good? can you hear me? i want to talk about the question of trauma and secondary trauma that you experienced first in the course of writing columbine and the becoming the leading expert on active shootings and this became a full-time job talking about this. you write really profoundly at the beginning of parkland about what to begin to cover these active shootings.
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i want to know a little bit more about that process of moving to these two bookends and how parkland helps you grapple with that. what you learne learned from the students that you researched and that -- >> unfortunately i have the most disgusting job in journalism. sort of journalist -- i become the mass murder guy, i have two bouts of secondary pt, i didn't know that was a thing or of a diagnosis. until it knocked me down the first year. it was pretty bad. but it was way worse seven years later. and here is something that i also want to say that anybody that has been hit by any kind of trauma. doctor frank weizen of the book, he is a godfather that she was on the committee that was created with the diagnosis code. he is a mentor of mine.
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i got help from him, because i was in deep trouble. and one of the things that stuck with me was he said, right now you feel like you are back in day one don't you. and i said yes. and this time it took me more than a year to get through, he said, everyone relapses. and you feel like now have to do a whole year whatever it was, that is so daunting and terrifying that almost being back there. you feel like you're back at square one because the feelings in your body are identical. you're transported back to that day one. but the truth is the key thing to remember is relapse is almost always dramatically shorter. so the year the first time, and a month, which is the key to remember that that's what got me through. it and every one of the parkland kids and all the survivors have
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a token -- you just think i don't know if i can do that a second time. you don't have to. the second time or the third time is usually much less. but that was a wake-up call for me. then that she told me some dark consequences is my dinner. for me i consider the killers -- i thought i was going to be part of the book but for me personally it wasn't. the survivors and spending time with them because i take that in and that's my process. that is what is dangerous for me. i used to feel really guilty. the columbine survivor still equipped feeling guilty. but when all of these things happen i hope my trigger thumb over the remote. as soon as they start showing the pictures and names of survivors in all the stories, i have to hit the pause or the mu and switch away.
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people who read the book, i didn't read it, i back checked the section for her on the murders. and she's a wonderful lady by the way. i started reading it, i started getting the stop when i knew i had to stop. a lot of other stuff it happened. but i'm going and without. so one of the things i can never go back to the scene of the crime, i go back to virginia tech, las vegas, and the one that we did in new york city, and on-site. but to -- i could separate time or distance but i definitely cannot go over to the scene of the crime and never expected to and never was going to do another book about a shooting. but i did do a book about a shooting, i did a book about the response of the shooting and the way out. saturday after parkland, my
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vanity fair -- i'm a freelancer but sometimes editor, and a friend of mine knows that i'm not allowed to go back. but he said are you ready to go back and i said i kinda wanted to. so i stop on it. on sunday i decided to in monday was on a plane. and then the first five minutes back in the park with them when i realized. [inaudible] and i was trying to figure out where my taxis. then it was icom down take a look around you, where with a small b they describe. and then there's a big trying cross right there with flowers and teddy bears and beads. and in the blink reaction and then another one over there. and then that is interesting, everyone had their own thing.
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whenever there together, their hokey stone, intact, here they just had a mountain. but then those giant angels over there that are lit up, i bet there are 17 of them. and then i'm like i'm in the memorial. then my legs gave down i was immediately on the ground. it was a columbine washing to me. from 19 years later i was there. then i was like what the hell did i do. i'm going to pay -- then i decided is going to get out of there and drive to the fort lauderdale airport going back and taking thoughts behind going to explain to mike. so is better that all of this. it actually reminded me for like ten minutes, and that's when my relapse only lasted ten minutes. it wasn't as bad -- it was
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really about that i met the saddest place on earth and i'm at the center of this horrid and everyone around me is in pain, and somehow the guilt also i'm not noticing that in being -- them on tv so i can't say it -- i put together and thought okay, i gotta go home and mis will go to the meeting. i'll go to the meeting and talk to these kids, then i thought okay i'm okay. then i had a couple smaller episodes, and not only do they go away, they healed me. by the end of the year i was talking to alfonso, one of the major characters, he just turned 17. he is one of the leaders. in the didn't realize i still had a lot of the pts and me.
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i didn't realize until the sadness in the cloud in my life. i am happy a lot of the time that i used to be real happy guy. and i'm more like that guy and i didn't know he was missing. >> while. >> but i think the kids like healing in america and taking stuff like that cut -- i'm so excited that they're doing something. when you spend time with high school kids they say some of the most brilliant and insightful things, and sometimes like no doesn't work that way, but then you think maybe it does. maybe i'm trapped in this way of thinking. but they are just wonderful to be around. >> can we go to that moment. that moment you are in the
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living room and suddenly surrounded by all these kids, they're figuring out all this basically on the fly and it's amazing, the energy. when did you realize this is different? >> before i got there. it happened on a tuesday, the next day by noon i thought it took longer but i look back at the e-mails and i was writing of piece of political the next day at noon. oddly enough and editor -- i posted i was going anderson cooper another debt -- darn thing, i don't want to say here. there are interesting people.
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>> in the living room. >> she had said, i was sick about the murder guy, that is interesting going around about that. and i was like 0 no thank you. i wanted little to do that. and then the next day i was like this might be different. how about if i did a piece on that she said sure. so then i was writing that before i went down there from afar. so i was on camera just for that i did them for reporting. and then i was in cameron's living your months later when i met his mom and she took me in. really -- my first time with them within the park getting ready to go to tallahassee. and then i was like okay, so i called david sunday. and then i got him on the cell phone and he put me on the cell phone with all the kids and they were in cameron's living room which i do know it's a thing. and he said the oddest thing, they just announced the march for our lives and our two before
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and all the sunday morning shows they did all of them. and i was thinking, five weeks, are they gonna blow this. it's not enough time. in their high school kids, they will do something but will it be a puny show of force and undermine the credibility, i don't know about this. and that's one of the things i wanted to find out, can they pull this off and how they can pull it off. in david system on the phone, well, were talking about lots of things, it's too late to get your scene of the book in tallahassee but you can fall behind us and i was like, tallahassee, i'm in washington. and he said over during this other thing too, and tomorrow does organizational meeting then we go the next day. and i'm thinking, oh my god you kids need to focus. you are doing this too. so i've taken the lead of that,
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and jack is doing that, and she's the hero of the book now. and unlike great, and here's the key thing, city have a planning thing, tomorrow we have an organizational meeting and just boring stuff, and i think that's what i do want to come to. and she's like 0 it's mission splits,. [laughter] i definitely want to go. i don't want to do the photo of thing i want to know how to get the governor. and when they sign the permission slips, i want to see the real stories of what it takes. and then when i was there at the park in the meeting. jackie is a big meeting. all these people outside and she cut her presence but shows his tiny little things, and she stood up on a chair and i'm like, this is a little girl, but
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she's got going on. and she always did. [inaudible] >> sorry. i'm gonna hold my mike and i do much better when i hold it. sorry thank you for letting me know. >> what we talk about the actual kids in the book, jackie, david, emma. as you know in the book david and emma become kind of the phase of the movement and not necessarily by efforts of their own but just in the way that they are filtered to the media. you are writing this book, you're doing this deep in-depth research and you are watching the media, pieces and crating a profile for these kids and who they are and what they want. sometimes this is very much a character sure depending on who is talking about them. what was most frustrating? i think it's very telling that jackie who is not indefinitely
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saving and but in terms of what everybody thanks of in terms of march of our lives. but the saving of her out in the book. what was was freshening of the part in doing the research in seeing these kids on the ground, and seeing them organizing, and seeing their public persona and character true who opted by the broader national debate of guns. >> well, leading up to the march, some of what they were doing, again i thought they were taking her off the ball but -- he is kind of the big force. and also may be in a different way. doctor was meeting with all and was finding that the kids were too. but it's all about making his connections with the groups, it was very clear what they were doing was really about urban violent. and they decided very early on that america freaks out every
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time there is a school shooting, as it should, where a bunch of affluent suburban white kids are killed. meanwhile, people of color are ten times as likely to diet of got gun violence in america. chicago, baltimore, d.c., berkeley, and oliver this is happening. in the cases cited right away, actually before this happened, and already thought that needed to change. what happened they will make something different. so leading up to the march, talking to the kids i'm like that's about number one, and that's keeper who they're picking as performers and speakers. and then i go to the march and see it has come to life. in the media is finally going to get it. i haven't seen anything about them in the media and half the performers and the speakers are
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color, they talk about the white and the black kids. and they have martin luther king's granddaughter who is ten or 11 years old and by the way is a knockout. and not everybody from his family has been. the like while this generation is got it. but that's all i ever saw. i didn't see a single or tv or radio piece -- they could not have made it more obvious and you did your story about the marching you completely missed that. i was like come on. the next big thing was the peace march in chicago, and it got some stories but for the most part they are doing this fantastic thing of taking his existing movement across in urban groups across america are dealing with this. they of users of this existing
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network and are really glad to have them. that is a really powerful thing, and going into this march, a wider objective, and the media really hasn't noticed. >> so you have a really profound example of this. i believe it was at a dinner after one -- on the tour. it happened in suburban chicago and so i was wondering if you could tell us what that if it is as well as what we are doing existing the march for life tapping and connecting with. here we all go back a little b bit. >> two weeks after escaping high school, a meeting was put together where a group of chicago kids from the south side and the west side from a group called rave and peace workers from mongo. they were african-american kids
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from a couple different schools and came down and met emma's house for big ticket saturday. that is when it really quick. and then it was like now we got a partner. so then we saw the march on washington on tv. remember the two african-american kids that came out with duct tape across her mouth. one was orange and woman's green. they ripped them off and the medical that you are hearing right now, what you're saying premieres, white america, majority of america has not had a voice to now have a voice. that was alex king into the other heroes of the book. they are wonderful. they play a big role in this and they met emma's house and the kids were like in the kids were like okay the soda here. and then in chicago, the kids decided that they were gonna do
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this book for april and may. they were talking about it and then they said were gonna do this -- i was a lot of talk about it but a lot of stuff with me. we have an understanding. but then they were like i don't know what we're doing but were definitely starting with chicago. and they knew the media. it comes to the verse of that and then they had to get one chance. into the first night the kicko kickoff, it was amazing in the national media was there. in the second one was a suburb and it was a mostly white affluent and a little bit of an asian upscale asian population. in most other cities is just one part. and that's a bit of an odd place and then i thought why, so it was her first town hall and they brought like seven of the chicago kids and peace warriors on stage and seven of the march
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for life kids and seven of the suburban kids mostly girls will organize something at the high school. they had a great exchange and it was great to see through his perspective. his great interchange. one of the neighbor girls and said is anybody have any last roundups. in one of the peace lawyers made a plea for money and said we've been doing this we have this great program, we have no resources. we are dirt poor. here's our website, we are chicago strong if anybody wants to help out. five or $10, anything would help us. and it was a little tragic but he had to. but good for him. so that was the last thing, and then the girls pulled out one of
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the life-size giant cardboard, and then they were doing bake sales and carwashes and then they raised 1,200 dollars or something to care over the figure. and they presented it to the kids and cameron was one of the kids on the stage and he saw this happening and he took the microphone and said were in solidarity with our new partners from chicago strong organa donated to them. and jackie sell this coming and had the check and she'd been thinking ahead and she said not only that we are going to double. in almost look stage. and she said i had a few minutes warning but i can't believe that the kid was begging for money on the stage. and then they gave it to us. and they can still use money and donate other things but we are
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doing okay. they got like $2 million in first three days in oprah, and spielberg, give them another $2 million. that first week. and they were like how can they give it to the rich kids if there in their their own communities. this is what we talked about at dinner. the one thing i don't intend to embarrasses girls. and that's one of the few things of the book. i hope they don't read it i think it's for everybody. and the girl told him that that's a great idea never a test in that we were here. these two schools are 30 miles apart. and there in different universes in naperville is an affluent, pretty liberal, who want to help
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and i think like me i grew up in suburban chicago, i want to know how to help. i don't know black neighborhoods, we did have gangs regroup, i don't know -- they talk about the pipeline, i read about that, is not based on my experience i don't know how to solve these problems, and so i've always sort of thought i didn't know what to do, and then i go to the problems. it never occurred until these kids got in chicago and were talking about doing something creative, they told me how they wanted and how the techniques and they wanted to be succeeding, and they said bring those people together and jackie said we are gonna be in missouri tomorrow, we are literally driving across america and those people are going to be 30 miles away from the south side of chicago and hopefully remains of connections with those people
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and continue to do this and burning gaps and hopefully other people who have money in that room. and resources can be like, and make some connections. that is a big part of what they were doing and who ever knew anything about the reporting from these kids. anyone? >> we got one. good. >> democracy with amy goodman? >> oh yes, i do. she has black hair. i know faces but not names. oh good i'm glad she did that. that is good here. that is a big part is under the radar. it is under our radar. and emma has almost 1.7 million twitter followers. your kids might know a lot of the stuff. they have their own whole thing going on and i think a lot of them know.
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>> to come back to this question on what is actually being done on the ground, i think that everything that you just said has a really powerful way of thinking about or asking the question how do we measure the success of the movement against gun violence, do we passed something in congress, what kind of gun violence goes down. because it is obviously active shootings, suicides, homicides, there are many different categories of gun violence, they're all very different but all part of the same issue. and so one of the things listening to you, which is inspiring, they are actually teaching how to have a better movement against gun violence, right by instructing how you bring these different interest in waves of thinking about violence in solvang. can you tell us a little bit more about the peace warriors and what they do. >> sure. >> that is different. >> we can tell you one thing, we
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did a dry run which is a radio show remote. i was in florida doing a different festival yesterday and i learned a lot from you. >> a smart talk 10:30 a.m. >> it was great and you said you need to see this documentary called interrupters. and i said over the peace warriors get it. because everything coming out of your mouth, that is what alice and deangelo talk about. so i interviewed them separately before the peace march and i met them and ever since, they both talk about being interrupters were literally it's what it sounds like. anyway, when is a minor thing going down or somebody in the hallway or some stupid thing and then they strike back and then escalates, and then it
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interrupted. and before things happen one of my first questions was like you need a huge army of people to do that. and it's been months since i did this. they have like 400 or something and their goal was one quarter of the school population and they were like within ten or 20 of that. so they knew that, so there's ten or 20 of these in the school was like you not to be present where everything happens. but you have a quarter of the school and most of the time people are in groups of ones or twos, at least one or two of the peace warriors or maybe ten or gonna be there. and you can step in and de-escalate. you can be part of what they need to do. the other key principle of deangelo that he explains, people join gangs for reason. for me, it clicked and thought why do people take drugs, people
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take drugs because they like that. but drugs can be kind of fun. but they can also have a very terrible downside and mess up your life. but no one is ever going to stop every team for taking drugs or drinking beer. why does everybody drink beer, because they enjoy. but they talk about i could be fun to get drunk and here's the problem. the the same thing about gangs. they provide you money, usually some income from the various means. in a sense of belonging, a sense of hearing powerful. they give you all these things and people do for reason. and you have to know and accept this because that's what you're
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up against. and he says, read it give up all the same things. and we do. that is sort of like our starting point. you need income, we can get you job. and that's what it takes a group sometimes to establish relations with businesses in the community and trust that okay these are good kids, i can hire them and maybe make them a shift manager and get you a decent job seeking get money, and we do have a sense and all the same things that we give you two. this is a valuable option so number one, you better understand adversary. and outmanned them. no way out is another feature that leads them, he is the one that graduated in his first member the family. and that's really the key to understanding it and making it a powerful thing and not just don't join gangs, that works
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great. [laughter] and when david first talked to me about that, he's like we were looking to partner with groups that were always competing in their schools. in against all odds no resources, that were working. we are looking for the model that works not just what we would like to do or what we think with some good. as suburban white kid. but what is actually working in chicago, what's working in baltimore, in these groups make these model programs and get them the attention and the resources to expand them. it take them to other places. and when i heard you talk about the documentary. of course they weren't reinventing the wheel, they didn't take all the stuff up. they are learning from what is out there and stuff that i never heard of until last year. and they are abusing it. so now i want to get us more into the politics in the gun debate in the policy and all that. i want to actually revisit
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something that we talked about before which was the very ways in which the parkland students thought about and stuff that they wanted to accomplish their movement. at the very beginning this is not bipartisan, and looking at various policy demands, we will talk to anyone, we will talk to us. in various i think that they did a great job of showing how they continue to have the open minded throughout. and through the. in the book. but they were still boxed in and we knew better than them. who told them that this is a partisan issue and that they were dashed in one case they were campaigning for a candidate that they had no idea until they read the headline that this is actually happening. what were the frustrations in your own frustrations as you are watching this in creative and
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energetic moment where you have this group of kids and students who are realizing that another kind of gun phase as possible and they are still not actually still bumping up to the barrier of just how engraved we are about talking about the debate in a very cliché way. >> quite a few thoughts including one new thing from yesterday afternoon, i was with some of the families and i met emma's mom yesterday for the first time. at one of the houses, and i have some really interesting stories, one that blew my mind, couple things going on, one thing that she talked about was the kids that they knew right away that they wanted us to be bipartisan. this gave me like a red blue thing work people just take sides then we are screwed. it shouldn't be because they are the vast majority on their side. their different poles and background check poles, one poll
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is 97% almost always over 90%. but americans don't grant anything like that. so how can more than 90% of the country overwhelming numbers, including most gun owners for see it doesn't happen. we have systemic problems in the nra is number one. they realize the half of the countries against them, and we wanted to get out of that. and we want to be in the middle somewhere. that is why the book begins the phrase, gun country, they have to go there. i started there in the kids knew that. on the way across america, there is a strategic thinker and how did they choose the places and they been saying on any particular place that is all about the midterm. that's about ground one and has have an impact on the midterm. that is everything. and they showed me the map of where they're going in the summer and there was red states and supports.
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and i was like you are not winning the states in these districts. he said no, no. the actual that's not your only goal. because we are also thinking about the long-term. and they also suffer the beginning, to change the legislation we have to change the legislative course. and by changing them, and make them grow assigned. there's a hell of a lot of democrats and republicans and a lot of conservative republicans who are going to vote for most of the stuff. who would vote their conscience and their chicken in the printer and by the nra and its been viewed politically toxic so they are not. so we are going to change you, you gonna stand up and start supporting the stuff. so that is like track one. that's like winning the veil of thought. the track two, the really bigger thing that had to much more
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trouble with this. how do we get the majority of americans to somehow mean in the middle. this is really tough because if you think a spectrum of taking away all guns to right now, very little gun control. most of them would like to be around somewhere in the middle. everyone is afraid to take a step there. in the nra's tactic over the last few decades is don't give an inch and keep pushing and pushing it back. if we lose that shift domestic game. if they lose one they can take another and take another and pushed all the way to all guns revoked. not everybody believes that but they are free to this and the other thing most of the country wants to meet in the middle, but what terms each other to go to a step towards the middle. that is really the big tough nut to crack. the kids haven't figured that out, they been starting into the end, dashed i was talking to
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daniel last night, he hosted a lunch with the department families. i was talking to him about that and said do you even have a partner to talk to. the nra is so nutcase to their own membership and not speaking for their members. their membership wants to meet somewhere. and i can talk about the mississippi thing. but they want to be in the middle but who is a spokesman? and he said, i forget the group he said, and i said who's that, and he said the utah group. and i thought he was joking because there's a utah group that follows them around utah to intimidate them with guns blazing and have a home d with a tank with machine guns to scare the crab out of them.
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so i thought a choking, and he was like no. when we talk to those guys, when the kids talk to those guys, they agreed on 90% of it. almost all those guys who were there to scare the crab out of them and terrorism, were like we are really shocked we expected to hate you and everything that you said but we kind of agree with most of what you said. but there is this common ground. when that side went to gun country, we had to legitimately start a conversation and we had to have conversations with each other. and figure out who can talk to unlikely people. i thought he was joking, and the interesting thing about david and i thank you all probably know that he's angry young man who you seen on twitter and television that he's been coming down and he was really angry in this by the way was the guy, the
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anger is real and a part of them and twitter is easy --dash but in person when people come up to him and people find him just to have it out with david. i'm going to tell of david hagen be the hero, and he is just so disarming. it's like really, this becomes this mr. nice guy and mr. d escalator. it's weird that he has a personality. it's really kind of an amazing conversation with a lot of these guys. you have to have one on ones. the thing with the big groups, they were having conversations with some leaders and they were going back and thinking maybe we
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should actually be talking to these kids. that is a longer game. in the heart again. but i think that is a bigger game that is going to pay off. you need to p pushing the pressure on congress to move forward and to put pressure on people. but i think the other things in the conversations is going to be the long-range thing. who knows? i got my money on that being the bigger battle. >> yeah, so we have about 17 minutes left. if you have questions i would invite you to come up to one of the microphones in his integrity have questions. >> will try to give shorter answers. >> yes because we have 17 minutes. i have more questions but i will defer to our audience. would you like to start? >> thank you for coming to tucson. you've talked about the game and i use a different word,
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incrementalism. another great movement in this country that have been really successful have done it on an incremental basis. one of the things that i wonder about is what understanding these kids have of that principle in a longer game and number two, do they have any history before they were in this extraordinary circumstance of activism or community organization question because they seem to be very possessed and to a person, they promoted their interests themselves and this movement very, very well. i am wondering what their experience prior to what is happening was. >> on the second one first and you might have to remind me of the first one. they are all different but they had no experience.
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jackie was leading up to the marching getting ready to give her speech and i was like what is the biggest group you've ever spoken to her and she said well, and my high school. and i was like well what is the biggest political event you've attended and she said the one at fort lauderdale where emma gave the speech which was pretty small. that is the person she ever attended. most of them, i think emma said she had been to a couple. i think she is really dashed might be the only one or one of the few. they were really good at media. david was a news director at the new station. they their own news station and he was like running it. and so i was like dashed you probably mostly no, during the lesson he started documentary. not just filling but interviewing the other kids. he said the reason is, if i die during this, i'm going to document what it's like to die and being afraid that you're going to die in your high school and i'm going to leave this
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record for this to shame america on what you're doing and what it's like. [applause] and then he got home and realized i need be role. who knows what the role is ? so that his parents are like no we are going back. so dave is a force of nature and then he took us back. [laughter] and he knew he had this amazing footage of what it's like and have so much more powerful and immediate age if you had it together, helicopters, police, all the sights and sounds and being able to know how to do the stuff. most of the kids or drama kids, some were news, some both. everyone in the group was one of those except sarah and jackie who was a junior class president who gets the creativeness.
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they are an amazing team. >> i do think that that point that they understand culture and understanding culture is more understanding than politics. >> and maybe that bought into the old ways of doing demonstrations because they sort of created their own. and toward the generation where they live. it's. >> so the other question was a incrementalism and how they think about the policy. >> i was ten days on the media was like it was a month, and i got a change of this in a month. i wasn't going to change in a month. for some mall i don't think we'll have an election in the next month. but i wondered what their time was and i was still being an idiot. and i asked jackie about ten days out for the first time, how long do you see this taking ? and she said, the civil rights movement took a generation. and this is probably going to take a generation. and i was like wow, months later
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the director of polling harvard institute, one of the smartest guys on the stuff was telling me it's probably going to take a generation, i was like jackie was timing on february. they are realistic. and with matt went through his long-range plan of how he vision the most likely scenario. but this was a working model. we make some changes, and we passed some laws. then we do another one, and the waif we don't succeed, we scrap those inducted out again. in one of the five demands is that the cbd are allowed to study the stuff. [applause] is a strategy that they're not. thank you. that's a long-term thing.
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we need to say that some that we thought were great ideas and some turned out to be lousy ideas. we need to be able to study what is working and not. and i want to be like science, the enlightenment. that is our model. you talk about reframing the issue from gun control. two gun safety. in a public safety issue where 40000 people each year. if we brought autodesk down we did the same thing with guns? >> one of the things that i hopefully never call gun control, i can't think of the guy on the right, he is the one who changed global warming to climate change. he figured out the like. he didn't scare people's much. but they figured out the language is crucial decades before we and gun control has a working cour control and who thl
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was to be controlled especially when your identity is caught up in this. the work control is the stupidest thing. but if you're trained to do something with your kid and you put control the word. their safety is how it's being rebranded. in terms of public safety, you are the part dashed i don't think that they think that way. but the same thing, they're not using the same lingo. this is how many kids are dying, and they are much more in-your-face about it, to me i think the reason is it doesn't have the same kind of emotional appeal. it's an intellectual appeal. and if you're in a college campus, there in-your-face and your kids are dying, you are sending your kids to school to die. they didn't say this, it's a dead child walking. the reason they hit record was
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because gun owners let love their children to and they are afraid to send new parents taking on. the emotional punch of the reality of what is going on here i think is more important framing it that way the public safety. >> i know something about the effect of parkland had because i'm a retired teacher who for 25 years that in vermont for two days after parkland a student turned in a another student whos good to come to the school and had plans of massacring many students there. also from that, vermont did get significant gun control. >> the republican governor who took on the nra and was threatened by them and he stood up to them and showed what a tiger he was. he won. in the nra was like maybe are
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not as powerful. that's one of the most powerful examples. if a republican kissing up to them. bernie sanders is the most rubles state. and that's why bernie sanders is laid on again. he went not think of vermont valley. >> to the parkland students know what happened? probably i never brought that up with them. >> the problem is there are so god damn many of them i don't talk about them all. the problem about rural coming up to say which one ? so a lot of them happen in the last year. i would say for sure especially dashed one of the early things when i was understanding the role he helped them come up with the demand and this is a video
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of helping them come up with things, how did you dashed the first begin with ulcerative ideas. we knew we wanted to focus on guns number one, but a lot of people had different ideas and sort of didn't even know. they were like i don't know what makes sense? and so i went online and did a lot of searching and searched for lots of different things and that about a dozen of the best articles and studies on this. it a list of great stuff and routed them to everybody and then they read them and then we met and debated and we were like oh my gosh these are like college students. they're like little sponges and bright kids. those kids are reading and i we can learn instead of just doing some dumping because we think that sounds cool or whatever. they didn't go half asked about this. they did the research. i put them in my answer and i was shocked that they did.
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i don't know for sure because it and talk about it. sadly i didn't know about that one. or i didn't remember. i don't keep track of them all. i'm sorry. >> so i think maybe we should take the last two questions together if that's all right. then we can close out. we are very close out of time. >> why do you think you responded so different after parkland and after columbine. was it because there were so many after that? >> i can do it briefly. >> thank you for being here. my husband and i are both teachers and among our friends who are teachers and coworkers who are teachers keeping our students save is a huge concern for us. but a lot of us don't see what our rule in this whole process should be. do you have anything to say about the role of the teacher intake.
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>> i don't know. i am not an expert on that and i'm just going to admit. [laughter] to report and write a book dashed all he did was follow these kids and stay on them and learn about that and understand and write the book. i am not an expert on that. i don't have a good answer but i would subscribe to to mailing list march for our lives, and change the representative. and you will get a weekly e-mail with a lot of ideas and things to do. but jackie did the one from march the lives about two weeks ago that said, go to our site if you want to get involved. go to our site and plug in your
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zip code and you have two options, number one, it will give you a list of all the different groups in your geographic area. most areas there would be quite a few groups doing different things. see can pick the one that you want to do. do you want to interface with an african-american, or whatever you want. that's option number one. they're probably early groups in your area doing what you want to do. number two, if you don't like any of those start your own. there is a short form to fill out. their regional coordinators for march from our lives will get in touch with you in interview you and talk to you about what it will take nra she wanted to get on and help you walk through doing that. so those are two options. teachers i don't know, i would go there they would have
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something. if you look. [inaudible] >> if you look in the index and one of the chapters, if you go to barnes & noble or whatever, or an independent bookstore, you can buy it in half an hour. >> and get assigned. one everyone that i know of including me is the level of horror. the level of outreach, is not about that. this isn't going to change by one being more horrific in the different factors. there was a perfect storm of different factors. i'm going to give you three. number one, urgency.
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they did it the next day. david started that and we all remember that he started the next morning. they did not wait a minute. jackie had buses rolling to tallahassee 60s later with a hundred students on them. while they were planning this other thing in five weeks. that urgency is one. timing and a lot of ways, they did this into a year something that was article the resistance. there was so much anger and drive to do something in the total resistance also tells you that it's an unfocused thing and a negative. we want to do something but without an agenda and without an leader. we have talked to nancy and who with their group or what they do in congress but they are not our leaders. so the kindle was there but
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needed to be lit. the number one thing is a messenger. it had to be the kids. those kids were too young to speak for themselves. and we see moms, thank god for you moms and dads. you are a huge part of this but when we see you on tv we feel terrible for you, we feel outrage and sadness. we did not feel fear in a sense. we did not picture somebody pointing in year 15 at your head and blowing your brains out. when we see jackie or david or any high school kid who hasn' hs these speeches and being on tv thinking this is life or death, the picture that child getting her brains blown out. they are the targets. they have to be the messenger. the never occurred to us and they change the game by being the messenger themselves. [applause]
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