Today, Explained - The Survivors

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

Dantrell Blake traveled from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to join hundreds of thousands for the March of Our Lives on Saturday. Sean Rameswaram spent the day with the survivor of gun violence to find out why he needed to see the march for himself. Also, a Columbine survivor advises a Parkland survivor how to deal with life after a mass shooting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What can your data tell you? The people at Google say it can make your business work better. With Google Cloud Platform, you can use machines to build better products. Learn more at g.co.getcloud.ai I met Dantrell Blake at his hotel in D.C. Saturday morning. He was just finishing up his breakfast. How's that D.C. breakfast compared to that Chicago breakfast? It's not good at all, man.

You can't give like Chicago, man. They season everything, you know, make everything taste good. What do they put on the eggs out in Chicago? Man, salt, you know, black pepper, man, you know, regular season. My finger licking good. Butter, you know, you can't forget the butter. Dant Butter. You know, y'all can't forget the butter. Dantrell definitely did not come to D.C. for the eggs. I came to be, like, I guess a part of something big.

You know, like, I ain't never been to a march. I'm tired of gun violence, and I'm ready for a change to come out. And I guess I feel like there's going to be a way to, you feel me, start something to lead on to another change or to dive down some violence. So I want to be a part of it. Like a couple of hundred thousand other people, Dantrell was getting ready to head out to the march for our lives. Unlike a lot of them, he was a survivor of gun violence. I still got the bullet in my leg. I got shot with an AK-223.

Dantrell's 21, but he looks like he could still be in high school. He's probably about 5'5". He's got these long, skinny dreads with frosted tips. He lives in Englewood on Chicago's South Side, and he's been around guns and gangs his entire life. I grew up around it. I was in it. Seeing people get shot, been around guns, you know, been shot. So, like, it's like every day it's somebody, you feel me, either getting shot, shot at.

You see it, like, broad daylight, people shooting at each other. It was like our lifestyle we was living, you know, because it was like our environment was used to it, you feel me? Like, we grew up doing them type of things and seeing it. So, we thought it was cool and fun. So, we just joined it and did what we had to do, you feel me? Like, to feel protected, basically. Joining a gang wasn't really a choice. His dad was in one, his cousins were in gangs,

his friends were in them. If you didn't belong to one, you were vulnerable. And guns were everywhere. Dantrell found his first when he was 10. And I found, I actually, like, was playing around the neighborhood, and it was like an abandoned building. And we went in, and, like, the window was open and stuff.

Like, and I guess somebody hid their gun, and we ended up finding it. You know, like, some shorties, though. You feel me? Like, I picked it up and stuff, you know, took it out. But, like, it was crazy. You know, I didn't do nothing crazy with it because I didn't really know what I was doing. I know I got a gun. That's all I knew.

Things got real not long after that. Dentrell was getting into trouble, getting into fights, representing his gang, and people were getting shot all around him. But he didn't really stop to reflect on it until 2014. That's when his friend India Martin was murdered. She was 14 when she got killed by another female. Was she just a bystander to something? They was in a fight, so it was was gonna be like a big rival fight.

One side against the other side, basically. And I ain't go to school that day, because I would've been on the other side with India now, though. Because that's my side of the neighborhood I'm from. But they folks been fighting and stuff like that. Then the girl's uncle gave her a gun, and she ran over there and ended up shooting her. But when that happened, that took me to

a point where I like, damn, like, I was traumatized, you feel me? Like, real life gone. Like, I had some feelings for her, you feel me? And the year after that, on a sunny Saturday morning in Chicago, just walking through his neighborhood with a friend, Dantrell was almost murdered himself. I just heard some footsteps stop.

Then I looked, I turned around and looked at them. They both looked at each other. They didn't say nothing. They just looked at each other, and then they looked at us again. Then they got to lifting up their hoodies. One of them had a Desert Eagle. One of them had an AK. The one with the AK came after me.

But I answered. As soon as I seen the guns, my eyes got bucked. I turned around, did a whole 360, and got to running. I got away. Before he even got to shooting, I got like five feet away. Then that's when the shots started going off. I hold my shot. Dantrell took a bullet in the leg.

It's the one that's still there. When he was in the hospital, a social worker reached out to him and tried to convince him to get out of his gang, to stay alive. And Dantrell was ready. One of the first changes he made was to his music. Dantrell is a rapper. Ain't no nigga quiet, man, my ass straight red like fire. Walk up on you slow and quiet.

Spark your brain just like some wires. Niggas dying every day. F-E-B, we never play. I'ma simply grab that K and let a hundred bullets spray. Fuck you, Stanley, you stinking in the alley like some garbage. Man, my team, we so retarded. Two turnt up to go retarded. Off the loud, I'm like a Martian. Those were what his verses sounded like before. Chicago drill music, gritty songs about gang life.

That was just like, you know, that's the lifestyle we was living. Talking about guns, drugs, getting high, or just females. But more so killing, because that was all we knew. Then his friend dies, he almost gets killing, like, because that was like all we knew. Then his friend dies. He almost gets killed and he wants to change. I don't know what the world is coming to. These babies getting snatched. A lot of kids getting whacked.

Families crying. It's a fact. I don't know what the world is coming to. Live my life. You feel my pain. Falling deeply in my veins. There's something you might regret. He changed his message, and people responded.

And they caught on to it. Like, it wasn't even recorded or nothing. Like, you see what I'm saying? And it was like we had a field day at the school. You know what that is, a field day, everybody outside. They got a DJ and stuff out there. And I just asked them, could I perform the song and stuff? And they called everybody around, and they played the beat for me.

And I just went in. And when I heard them, like, I ain't stopped, but I heard them singing it with me, like, the third time. Like, I just hear everybody singing, I don't know what the world is coming to. I'm like, wow. Like, you feel me? Like, I felt good. Like, teachers was coming up to me, like, after that, and students were like, man, like, you realize, you feel me? Like, it just went crazy.

So I'm like, I think this is the way, like, I should go. Because I feel good and I feel like real life, like this is me. Which brings us to the March for Our Lives on Saturday. Dantrell wanted to see it, but he also wanted to share his story with more people. Because according to Cook County Hospitals, almost 200 people have been shot in Chicago since the tragedy in Parkland, Florida. Man, mass shootings every day in Chicago. You want to put it like that? Yeah, I got a lot of experience, but not in school.

Dantrell is mad that the Parkland shooting is getting all this attention. He just wants to make sure people keep talking about gun control once this march is over. What I'm saying is, I ain't saying that's bad what they're doing. I'm saying is, don't be halfway with it. You feel me? Don't just be a part of this today and then after this, you feel me? You don't hear nothing else. Because trust me, after this, it's going to be more.

You feel me? Violence to come. Violence happens every day. When the march turned into the rally on Pennsylvania Avenue, Dentrell's face lit up. He was taking selfies with people. He was reading all the signs. He couldn't believe the turnout.

I see over eight different races. For one, I see babies out here. I see old people out here that look like they can't even walk, but they out here. You feel me? That's what this cause, what's going on. You feel me? I see everybody with a sign. I see smiles.

I just see a lot of good energy going on. I see some signs. You feel me? A little disrespectful. They say F the NRA and all this. You feel me? But man, you feel me? That's the movement. That's what they on. They say F the NRA and all this, you feel me. But man, you feel me, that's the movement. That's what they on.

You feel me, they're trying to get something to go on, something to happen. And any fears he had about people forgetting Chicago in this movement, in this moment, they were almost immediately allayed by the second speaker at the rally. I want to start off with a chant. Everybody repeat after me. Everyday shootings. Everyday shootings. Our everyday problems. Everyday problems. me. Everyday shootings are everyday problems.

His name was Trevon Bosley, and his brother was shot and killed while leaving church in Chicago. Make sure everybody in Washington hears us. Everyday shootings are everyday problems. It's time for the nation to realize gun violence is more than just a Chicago problem or a Parkland problem, but it is an American problem. We deserve a right to have a life of fear without fear of being gunned down. It's time to care about all communities equally. It's time to stop judging some communities as worthy and some communities as unworthy. It's time to stop judging youth that look like me or my brother that come from impoverished communities any different than anyone else.

After the rally was over, Dantrell was feeling great about his peers, but he hoped to see more from everyone else. This is going to wake a lot of grown, older people up, because at the end of the day, this should have been the way they should be thinking. You feel me? It shouldn't take no kids, no high schoolers, no youth, you feel me, to be having this mindset and to want to change and want to realize and make this movement happen. It should already be set up and people hear it. Y'all got to jump in that lane. Jump in that lane. Make something happen. You feel me? In a moment, two more survivors.

Both of them made it out of mass shootings. One at Columbine and one at Parkland. This is Today Explained. Think of the Google Cloud Platform as a go-between. There's you, there's all this data swimming around out there, and then there's the Google cloud platform somewhere in between trying to make sense of it all. The platform uses artificial intelligence to cook up models for you. Those models predict so your business can thrive. And they're fast, and they can handle lots of data. Find out more about the Google cloud platform on the internet. g.co slash getcloudai. Today Explained, I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Carmen Lowe.

I'm a current senior at Douglas, class of 2018. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Parkland, Florida. She was there on February 14th, the day of the shooting. That day, like maybe 15 minutes before school ended, the fire alarm rang, and it was really weird for us because we had actually already had another fire drill during that morning. Then we start hearing this popping noise.

It sounds like something is being slammed on the floor really loudly. Of course, thinking back, those were the gunshots, but we didn't know that at the time. So the teachers were sensing that there was something wrong. So they pushed everyone back into the classrooms. Not even 10 seconds later, they tell us, we're on code red now, lockdown. And then we start hearing the helicopter units flying over us. And we were just like, there's no way this is the drill and that they're using helicopters. 10 minutes later, everyone's on their phones. And we just see that there's a bunch of news about how there's a shooting right

now and it's an active shooter so everyone starts freaking out basically one of the first classrooms that was shot at was one of our friends classrooms it was reoven who was um the psych ap psych teacher and that is the classroom where um friends from that class Carmen and Ben were in and so we found out that Carmen had been shot and we weren't sure whether she was alive or not but one of the rumors from some of the people who were in the room they were saying that they tried touching her and she didn't move afterwards I was at my friend's house and we were just worried about our friend Carmen because we hadn't heard back from her. And at some point there was a rumor that she was fine and she was stable. And it wasn't until 2 a.m. when there was a sort of confirmed list on who had passed away.

Yeah, I remember that next morning pretty well myself. It's tough. It's definitely tough. This is Jamie Amo. I'm a 2002 graduate of Columbine. She's also a survivor. I was a freshman, ninth grade. I was 15 years old when the shooting happened. 4-20, 1999. I had been kicked out of my math class as usual for being disruptive to my teacher. And I was supposed to serve a community service at lunch

time, which meant cleaning up the lunchroom in the cafeteria. I had wanted to go to the library to finish my Lord of the Rings paper, but, you know, community service calls. So I was in the cafeteria when the shooting started, and the shooting started outside so I could see through the windows what was happening. And when we were ordered to kind of run out of the cafeteria, the three, 400 people all running the same direction at once left me kind of jammed over to the side. So I ended up in the elevator, which only goes up the one floor, you know. And like I said earlier, when the doors opened, we were right outside the library when they were shooting inside. So closed the doors immediately, went back down and we were herded into the auditorium.

So I stayed in the auditorium for the duration of the shooting and heard the explosion in the cafeteria and periodic bursts of gunfire from this corner and that corner. And when we finally ran out of the school, what we know now is that the shooters had already taken their own lives and there was no reason for anyone to continue hiding in the school. But I got out hours before a lot of other people and had to see some of the stuff on the news. You know, the kind of footage that sticks with people that they saw 19 years ago, you know, I saw some of it and it still sticks with me and it's hard to watch that from the outside. But my actual experience in the school was pretty mild, all things considered. You know, that expression, time doesn't heal all the wounds um there's a lot of things that time

hasn't changed in terms of this kind of a trauma but 19 years later it's not as fresh the shock is gone as you go through the years um you'll have hard days and you'll have better days and some years will be better than other um but in the long term like yeah there's a lot of room for healing there's a lot of potential for peace to come but it's definitely a marathon not a sprint if that makes sense. So for a lot of us in this time, whenever someone asks, oh, what school are you from? We'll be like, oh, Douglas. And obviously people, because it's still a pretty fresh wound, they'll give us a sort of like, oh, like they don't know how to react with us.

So what reactions do you get when people ask you what your alma mater is now? Like, do they still treat you differently? Like, how do they react? It's still very much the same. When I still lived in Colorado, I still lived real close to Columbine and people in the community, you know, their surprised response was, you could tell there was some sympathy in there. After I moved to Pennsylvania, though, it definitely became like a, you know, oh, where'd you go to high school? And I would say, well, I didn't go to school around here. I'm from Colorado. And then that would kind of be the end of the conversation. But then when it would come up that I was there, it was very much like a, you know, I mean,

you can see the jaws drop and you can hear the gasp and it's very much like when you see a wreck on the side of a road. There's always questions and people, the first thing is always, were you there that day? You know, and some people are more delicate than others, but people have a natural curiosity and it doesn't go away. If you actually don't mind me asking, did you lose anyone close to you and how do you, or did you cope with the loss of your friend? Because for me personally, I actually

was close with Carmen Shentrup. So, I mean, right now it's kind of difficult, like, to think about it. And, like, you kind of think about her every day. But, like, how do you go about, like, dealing with these thoughts and feelings? Well, for me, at the time that day, I felt like it wasn't that bad for me. None of my closest friends were killed. My family was intact. You know, my sister wasn't that bad for me. None of my closest friends were killed. My family was intact. My sister wasn't killed. But one of the victims, Stephen and I, we'd had classes together since kindergarten. I had friends in my grade whose siblings were killed and friends of friends. And it's so much bigger than just did you lose someone that was close to you because especially the nature of the community of high school people are all connected and so it's very much like when you throw a rock into the pond and the ripples spread out and they spread out in all the directions

and they'll go as far as they can go until something interrupts them what I wish we had done more of or what I had done more of is really tried to collect the memories of the people that we had lost um you know because at the time it was all so fresh and you could think of all of these days or moments that you would share together but 19 years later that stuff's gone. There's just a few bits and pieces left. And so I think if it comforts you to think of those memories that you shared, then absolutely share them with people that are feeling that same pain that you are.

And one day it might be speaking about the pain that you're feeling, and the next day it may just be focusing more on memories and trying to hold on to that. I think some of the hardest moments I've had to deal with so far are definitely the waiting period after what happened, because we didn't find out until really late that night who was like for sure had passed. And then the next day, everyone basically met up at the vigil at Pine Trails Park and everyone kind of just cried together. Like, because we didn't really understand. We can't comprehend like what happened, what, because we didn't think that it would. And then another moment would definitely be

the first day back at school, having to see that building fenced off from everyone. And then just going to class, like the first class that you have with one of the victims, it's just weird to see and know that no one's ever going to send that seed again. It's going to be that empty desk there. That's hard. Yeah. I mean, I totally relate to all of that. Well, the hardest part for me was making the decision, you know, all these years later to like seek therapy for this made me realize that it's OK, because for so long I felt like I didn't have a reason to feel traumatized.

You know, like my interaction, my experience that day is so minimal in comparison to everyone else. But learning that it's not about how it compares to other people. It's all about how it is for you as an individual. That's been probably the most helpful thing that's come of it in terms of how I can heal and continue to move forward. I actually did have this conversation with someone today that it's really nice to be able to talk to people, like just talk to anyone about it and people will be there for you like even strangers in school will come up and hug you now and of course the therapy dogs therapy dogs really actually do help um i know like the dogs just come by and everyone in the

hallways will like pet it as they walk by and everyone just has a smile on their face again um you guys need that You need those little moments. Yeah. I think everyone's just living in the moment, being happy with what they can get now. I guess there is one thing I know some of us are curious about is, well, I don't want to put any words in your mouth, but how do you feel about our response compared to your response?

Do you mean like how do, wait, how do we feel about when we reacted to how it happened to us and the action we did and didn't take? How is that to look back and reflect on from where you guys are now? I mean, I definitely wouldn't blame it on anyone who was a survivor from that school or like any of the students. I definitely don't think it's their fault. If I had to say what we think, we are kind of disappointed that it's taken so long for action to be taken and that legislators, even to this point, won't support us. And we really hope that after this change can be made. Yeah, I hope that you're right. There's a lot of us who feel like, and it's not helpful for us to think this way, but

there are some of us who think, what if we had done more? You know, what if we had been as vocal as you guys are being? And we didn't have social media and we were very much kind of at the beck and call of the media. They could print or air whatever they wanted and we didn't have a say. But there's some of us that wonder, you know, maybe if we had done more so long ago that maybe we wouldn't still be in this situation. And it's not helpful. Hindsight like that isn't beneficial. But I just hope you guys know that it's not that we didn't try, you know, and it's not that we didn't speak out. It's just nobody listened.

Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice. Aaron Feist would never call Kira Miss Sunshine. Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan. Scott Beagle would never joke around with Cameron at camp. Helena Ramsey would never hang out after school with Max. Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend Liam at lunch. Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan.

Elena Petty would never. Kara Lugren would never. Chris Hickson would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan. Alaina Petty would never. Kara Lugren would never. Chris Hickson would never. Luke Hoyer would never. Marquine Duque-Aguiano would never. Peter Wang would never. Alyssa Alhadaf would never. Jamie Guttenberg would never.

Meadow Pollock would never. All right. This is Today Explained.