Today, Explained - Graduating Marjory Stoneman Douglas High

Episode Date: July 24, 2018

What’s up with the Parkland teens? Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School inspired over a million people to march for gun control a few months ago, but it’s been relatively quiet since. Turns out they’ve been busier than ever. David Hogg speaks to Sean Rameswaram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You ever look down at your phone and go, man, this phone would look way cooler if it just lit up like one solid color? There's a way to do that on the Uber app now. You can just turn your phone one color and hold it up so your driver can find you more easily. You can find out more at uber.com slash moving forward. On February 14th of 2018, I was in my high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and it was pretty much just like any other day. By the end of the day, I ended up in my AP Environmental Science classroom, and the door was open a little bit, and I heard a pop, and I look over at my friend and I say, hey, that sounded like a gunshot.

So we go and tell our teacher, and our teacher closes the door. But the second she closes the door, the fire alarm goes off, and we all start just walking out. As we're walking to our evacuation zone, there's a flood of people coming our way that are saying, like, don't come this way, don't come this way. He's coming this way. So I don't really know what they're talking about. So I start running with them. And as I'm running with them, I'm actually running towards the freshman building, not realizing where I was running towards. And there was a janitor that stopped me right before I got there and said, he's over here, like, don't come this way. And right as he said that, my former culinary teacher, Ashley Kurth, opened up her classroom and got about 60 students in her classroom in a matter of 30 seconds.

For the next two hours, I would be inside that classroom and not knowing who was dead or not. And eventually I made it out, but that day 17 classmates, teachers, dads, siblings, brothers and sisters just didn't. My name is David Hogg. I'm an 18-year-old that survived something that should have never happened, and I'm here to ensure that it doesn't happen again. From time to time,

I wonder what the Parkland kids are up to. Not because I expected them to solve America's gun problem, but because for a second there, it felt like they actually could. Enough is enough! Enough is enough! Here in Washington, D.C., hundreds of thousands joined their calls for gun reform. And around the world, 800 other events made this a truly global affair. They're calling this the largest youth-led protest since the Vietnam War era.

We can and we will change the world. Back in March, they got over a million people to march in hundreds of cities across the planet. But you couldn't help but wonder, what happens next? You may not hear about the Parkland kids as much as you used to, but it turns out they've been busier than ever. What we decided to do is go on what I'm currently on right now, which is called the road to change. We're going to congressional districts where there are people that are basically NRA sellouts, where youth can have the largest voter impact. We decided to go on the road to change more specifically because we just wanted to go out and talk to these people and see like

how they were doing and how we could help them five months after. I spoke to David Hogg from California where he and his friends had just stopped on their tour. I went to Steve Knight's district in California, Congressional District 25 here. He's gotten over $15,000 from the NRA for 18 to 29 year olds. They make up over 100,000 people within that congressional district. And if we were able to increase that any significant amount, we could probably change that election to either a Republican that's not owned by the NRA or a Democrat that's not owned by the NRA. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an issue about morally just leaders and leaders that actually represent their constituents and not special interests.

David, you just graduated, right? Yep. How did you and your friends decide to go out on tour this summer to go out to all these congressional districts? The main way that we organized it is all of March for Our Lives. It's 26 people that are between the ages of 14 to 20. What we're working on right now is building out all of March for Our Lives. It's 26 people that are between the ages of 14 to 20. What we're working on right now is building out all of our chapters across the country. And what I hope to have is in the next couple of years to have one March chapter in every

congressional district. So there's a teenager that is constantly nagging every congressman and every single senator from each state, kind of lobbying against them or talking to them specifically about gun violence. And that's what we've been doing right now. We have a March chapter in every congressional district in Arizona set up and led by the youth in Arizona because they know how those localized issues affect them. Tell me about where you've been so far. Like, how many states have you visited? I think we visited, uh, geez, you're gonna make me do this, uh, off the cuff. Give me a ballpark if you don't quite remember. Is it that many? Yeah, it's a lot. I know that we're going to over 20 states. Wow. And who do you ask them to vote for? Or do you not do that?

We don't, we do not, we do not endorse people at all. March for our lives does not endorse people. We endorse policy. Honestly, if Democrats could have solved this, they would have. If Republicans could have solved this, they would have. It's the fact that Democrats and Republicans can't work across the aisle simply as fucking Americans to fix this and realize that kids are dying every day on streets across America. And it's going to be our generation that's going to stop that from happening because I'm not going to wash down my kid's blood from his school. Yeah. I wonder if this tour isn't about candidates, it's all about policies. What policies are you guys endorsing?

What are the conversations you're having? Extreme risk protection orders, universal background checks, not taking money from the NRA. And a lot of the time what I've done lately is in a lot of the open carry states, we have a lot, lot, lot of counter protesting against us. And what I love doing is just going out and speaking to them, people that are armed to the teeth with guns, pretty much with AR-15s, with Glocks, shotguns, you name it, they got it. What do they say to you? A lot of them think I'm trying to take their guns away, and that's not the case at all.

I think that was a major miscommunication that the NRA likes using against us a lot of times is to say that it's impossible to be for gun safety and for the Second Amendment. My dad owns a gun. Before I went on tour, I disassembled and reassembled his Glock twice to learn how they work so I can have these discussions, to learn about gun safety. Because it's possible to be for both.

And what we're starting to realize more and more is the majority of the country is on our side with this. A majority of the country feels that it is possible to practice your Second Amendment rights and practice the right to live. Because in the same way that we have a right to bear arms, we have a right to live. How does your dad feel about the tour and what you're asking from people right now? Oh, he fully supports me. My dad's former law enforcement, and he's a registered Republican. But he, on these gun issues, you know, he had two kids that lived through a mass shooting. That obviously changes a lot.

My dad specifically had a gun because of his former job with the FBI. And he always taught me about like gun safety, always safely stored it. And that's what responsible gun ownership looks like. And so you feel comfortable living in a house where there's a firearm still? Yes. Do you tell that to these people who show up to your open carry state rallies with guns? Do you say like, hey, by the way, I live with a gun?

I talk about that all the time. And most of the time, we do find a lot of common ground. A lot of them agree with extreme risk protection orders, which is basically through due process, you can have your guns taken away if you're a risk to yourself or others. A lot of them agree with universal background checks. Most of them agree with safe storage. And, you know, that's great. Because if we can find this common ground, we can have this discussion. And the things that we argue over, the best thing to say is just,

you know, that's what voting is for. You have no right to argue over politics if you don't vote. I'm sure you've convinced some people who come to your rallies to see you speak to register to vote and to register to vote for a candidate who might not be getting money from the NRA. Have you ever convinced one of these people who shows up to counter protest you to vote differently? Yeah, I think so in some ways. Tell me a story. There was this conversation that we had with a protester in Yeah, I think so in some ways. Tell me a story. There was this conversation that we had with a protester in Dallas, I think. And I essentially went out and like my friend Matt was with me. He went out and talked to him and I stood back for a little bit and then I came up

and he was like, where's that hog kid? And then I come up and for the next like 40 minutes, I have this discussion with him and several other people there. Mind you, they're all armed with like loaded AR-15s and guns. And I'm talking to them and saying like, look, I'm not trying to take your guns away. I think that there should be some regulation on, you know, if you're a, if you were a danger to yourself or others, I don't believe that you should be able to own a gun and that you should be, you should have your guns taken away through due process through an extreme risk protection order. And we found some agreement on that because we agreed that domestic abusers should not be armed. We also talked about universal background checks and they agreed on that.

And just having these small discussions doesn't mean that we necessarily bring them over to a different side of the debate because, you know, there's no debating that kids should be dying. And that's what we talk about a lot of the time is bringing it back to that sense of life. By the end of that conversation with that guy, he went from essentially wanting to like like, punch me with all of his friends to ending up, like, crying and, like, hugging it out. Back in March, David Hogg and his friends spoke before hundreds of thousands of people in D.C. Now they're out on the road speaking to dozens. In a minute, I ask him how he remains hopeful, and he accuses me of being hopeless.

I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. You may have heard that Uber is moving forward. One of the ways they're doing it is by implementing new features designed to take the stress out of your pickup. One of them is called Pickup Notes. In the Uber app, you can share a note with your driver on how to spot you if it's dark or if you're in a crowd, like letting the driver know that you're the person in the treehouse or you're the person who looks like they just went and saw The Incredibles 2 in costume.

To find out about all the other new features Uber's added to the app and to find out how Uber is moving forward, you can go to uber.com slash moving forward. so hundreds of thousands of people came out just a few months ago to support you guys students at marjorie stoneman students all over the country who face gun violence be it in a mass shooting or in everyday gun violence do you feel like some of that energy has dissipated since then? No, I feel like what's happened is like, I mean, I can't tell from an outsider's perspective, but I know like it's,

quite frankly, we're going through a lot of shit. Like we lived through a mass shooting and didn't take time to cope before then. And that doesn't mean that we've given up in any way, shape or form, and we haven't. We're constantly out working every day to make sure that we're able to have these conversations. And what we're going to be doing is more school walkouts. We're going to be having die-ins at congressional offices before midterms. We're going to be having voter registration events. We're going to be having more town halls with candidates, all of which are youth-led. And that's how we continue to get this attention. The thing that just really pisses me off is the fact that mass shootings happen

again and again. And that's how it continues to stay in people's eyes. And it's really fucked up and I hate it. but it continues again and again because people think this will not happen to them until it does and i can tell you it's like the worst nightmare that you never want to live um do you think do you think it's died because you sound kind of depressed at talking about it. No. No, that's why I was pleasantly surprised to see that you guys were still doing stuff. I've followed this issue for a long time.

I've reported on it. And when you guys organized after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman High, it felt different. And nothing happened politically. And that was surprising. No, no, no. But also. You're wrong there. You are wrong there. A lot happened politically. We've had over 54 gun laws passed in states since our school shooting. Florida now has an extremist protection order law so that the gunman at our school could have actually had his guns taken away from him through due process. We raised the age for assault rifles in our state and handguns

because you needed to be 21 to purchase a handgun in Florida. Now you also need to be 21 to purchase an assault rifle. And we made that happen. We are having major effects at the state level. And even if we aren't able to have this at the federal level, that's okay because a lot of these issues are very localized. I didn't mean to disparage the work that you guys have done on the state level. I suppose I should have said nothing happened at the federal level.

Just don't get it wrong. I know it's easy to stay focused on the negativity, but there's a lot of positive shit that has come out of this. The fact that youth voter registration in some districts has gone up that came out of the local people that were mobilized in part because of us in a lot of those areas. People don't talk about that.

Young people are tired of taking old people's shit. I guess it seemed like for a moment there, there might be some federal action, and there wasn't. That's all I really meant. Yeah, I thought that too from our fucking president who said he would ban bump stocks, raise the age to 21, and he literally said he would take guns without due process.

I don't even agree with that. That's crazy. I wonder if what's happened, your experiences in the past few months, not to mention touring across the country and talking to people about guns in America, has changed the way you feel about America. It has. It's changed the way I feel about politics, that's for sure.

All of these different places that we went, that others see as sad places that have no help, and that's not the case. The one place that is the most fucked up and depressing place I've been is the halls of Congress. It's just really sad because the one thing that we can fix so easily in this country, we can fix so many other things by fixing our Congress and voting. But until people like the people that are listening give a shit, none of it will change. Good stuff does not make headlines. Bad stuff does. But the reason

that bad stuff does is as a constant reminder of the change that we have to create to help stop that. And it may seem more divided than ever than it is right now, but you know what we did the last time that the country was really like this in the 60s? We ended the Vietnam War and we went to the fucking moon. I'm pretty sure we can end gun violence too. So speaking of education, you're going to go to college? You're going to skip that whole thing? No, I'm going to college. I have to go to college so I can run for Congress eventually.

That was my next question. When's that going to happen? You want to go work in the worst place you've ever been? You have to be the change that you want to see if you ever want to create it. So when do you think you're going to run for Congress? Do you actually have to go to college to run for Congress? No, but I want to so I'm not as stupid as our current politicians. David Hogg is a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

He's also an author. His book is called Hashtag Never Again. He wrote it with his sister Lauren. This is Today Explained. I'm no expert, but I can imagine one of the best parts about getting into your Uber for your ride home is actually getting into your Uber for your ride home. And Uber's trying to develop all sorts of new ways to make that actual moment easier. They want to take the stress out of your pickup. Learn more at uber.com slash movingforward.