The Parkland Students Talk Straight To America

Five students who survived the recent mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to discuss the social movement they are igniting around gun reform.

Jaclyn Corin, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, told host Chuck Todd, “We took 17 bullets to the heart. And we’re the only ones who can speak up. We have to be adults in this situation, because clearly people have failed us in the government. And we must make the change now because we’re the only ones that are going to.”

We expect school shootings, like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, to lead to renewed outcries for common-sense gun control. But what has been most striking about this particular tragedy and its aftermath is the collective role reversal in which the students, instead of the parents, are assuming the mantle of authority and leading the charge for change. As has been widely noted, these digital natives have skillfully used social media to build the case for their cause of gun reform, but equally instrumental has been the kind of speech they are using to articulate it.

Key to their success so far has been the way these students are coordinating their uses of “straight talk.”


Source : Hhuffingtonpost