After last February’s shooting in Parkland, Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior Emma González put the nation’s political leaders on notice. Students wanted action, including major changes to gun policy, and they were committed to altering the very course of U.S. history so no others would have to experience the same terror they had when a gunman entered their school with an AR-15-style rifle and killed 17 people. As González announced in her “We Call BS” speech, “We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks.”
In the year since, the activists of the Parkland generation — Stoneman Douglas students and many thousands of their fellow teenagers — have been busy confronting a variety of threats to their collective future.
Within weeks of the tragedy in Parkland, high school and middle school students across the U.S. began organizing spontaneous walkouts and silent vigils. On March 14, an estimated 1 million students participated in 3,000 official school walkouts — in addition to the roughly 800 larger “March for Our Lives” rallies, 10 days later, which were coordinated by Parkland student leaders and their allies. They were almost certainly the largest high school protests in the country's long history of teen activism.
Then in April, students at more than 2,500 schools organized demonstrations as part of the National School Walkout. In Phoenix, students occupied the state capitol building. In Newark, New Jersey, young people protested on the steps of city hall. Teens in Washington, D.C., meanwhile, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and rallied at both the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
Additional youth protests throughout the year included 50-mile-long marches in Wisconsin and Massachusetts, civil disobedience against the National Rifle Association and NRA-linked corporations, and “die-ins” at the offices of U.S. senators, on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol building, and outside President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Meanwhile, Parkland students spent the summer traveling from coast to coast, meeting with other young activists, encouraging voter registration, and helping to bolster what is estimated to be the highest midterm election turnout for young people in a quarter-century.
To make lasting change, however, youth movements will have to keep up the pressure, both at the ballot box and in the streets. Public support for restrictions on the sale of firearms is still higher than it had been in almost 20 years, but it has declined since its peak last spring. In Florida, a lawmaker is already trying to roll back reforms that were passed after the Parkland shooting, while politicians in states such as Texas propose laws that could increase the number of guns in schools. Gun violence likely will be the issue that gets today’s teen activists into the history books, but it has not been the only item on their agenda. In the past year, teachers in more than a dozen states have engaged in strikes and other protests to demand things like better pay and more protections, smaller class sizes, the hiring of additional school counselors and nurses, and a move away from high-stakes testing — all issues that impact students directly.
Unsurprisingly, students were among the tens of thousands who picketed outside Los Angeles schools and marched on district headquarters last month. Student protester Antonio Torres told USA Today that he hoped the school district would “give not only us but the future generations, those resources that they deserve.”
“It’s not just about the teachers,” echoed another teen told HuffPost. “It’s about everyone.”
With support from students in states such as Oklahoma, New Jersey, and Arizona, the strikes have won a range of concessions, but there are emerging legislative efforts to make protests more difficult. In Oklahoma, for example, a proposed bill would permanently strip state certification from teachers who engage in walkouts.
Schools are often the primary focus of student activism, but young people are also engaged in a much bigger fight, one on a global scale.
Despite rapid loss of Antarctic ice, intensifying wildfires, the hottest years on record occurring in the past four years, and a dire warning from scientists that humans have only until 2040 to radically address climate change, politicians — particularly in the U.S. — have dragged their feet.
Young people are losing their patience. In August, Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old from Sweden, stayed home from school to protest inaction on climate change. Her strike has since spread to include thousands of students in at least 270 cities and towns worldwide. In recent weeks, more than 30,000 students in Belgium and 10,000 in Germany were among those to skip school and protest in what is now becoming a weekly event.
Back in the U.S., the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to stop Juliana v. United States, a case in which youth are suing the federal government to demand action on climate change. After years of delays, it will now proceed.
Public opinion among Americans shows increasing concern for the impacts of climate change, and there seems to be growing momentum for a massive government effort to confront the crisis. Among the groups pushing for a “Green New Deal” is the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led organization whose actions have included sit-ins at congressional offices.
Like gun violence and public education, climate justice is a fight over the future. It also has the ability to link multiple movements and issues. As 17-year-old Anna Brooks told Teen Vogue at last summer’s Youth Climate March, “Hunger, violence, racism, poverty — every kind of inequality that exists today is going to get worse as climate change dries up our resources.”
This young generation’s trajectory is not a given, however. In November, just a month after a deadly attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a photo of dozens of Baraboo, Wisconsin, high school students giving an apparent Nazi salute went viral. The picture, from the teens’ junior prom, was a reminder that the dangers of white nationalism may not be limited to acts of violence, such as those recently seen in Pittsburgh; Charlottesville, Virginia; or Portland, Oregon. (Students and teachers in Milwaukee, however, responded with their own group photo, which offered a counter-message of love and unity.)
These are all issues that concern young people in their own right. High school students, for example, participated in January’s Women’s March, attended protests against the Trump administration’s family separation policies, and, along with their teachers, helped organize Black Lives Matter at School events.
One year after Parkland, young activists are still making history. By marching together, they’re creating their future.
