These teenagers gave interviews that will provide politicians with pause because in their formative years they already have the correct message that the NRA will find challenging to assuage. They were not silent at the March For Our Lives. I interviewed them for Politics Done Right and KPFT 90.1 FM.
The teenagers speak at the March For Our Lives rally
Teenagers and the millennials are the future of this country, and that was clear from these interviews at the March For Our Lives rally.
Eighteen-year-old Miles Payson and his 16, 17, and 18-year-old cohort came on a mission. I asked Miles if he believes politicians would listen to young people their ages.
“Yes, I do,” Miles said with conviction. “I believe that we are the generation that can actually make a change.”
I told Miles and his cohort that the people in their generation do not vote. They were adamant that they would.
A group of young women from the University of Central Florida came to the rally to protest for gun control. One of the young women, Autumn is from South Carolina and said that she was tired of the killings. She referenced the Emmanuel AME Church massacre as a catalyst for her as well. The other girls in her group said Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre left an indelible impression on them. Autumn said that only when the country acknowledges that is has a problem with guns that they will be able to come up with solutions.
Other teenagers had similar concerns about being change agents. Nat and Jacob from Maine came to protest gun violence in the U.S. but specifically the NRA. He said the NRA’s biggest fear is the American people and once they expose them for who they are, a change will occur.
The impact of this new push could not be more evident as teenagers as young as fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen were not only at the rally but were able to articulate why they were there. The acknowledgment of fear many of them have was palpable. The sixteen-year-old told a story that was all too familiar, another lockdown at her school. She ends her interview with an appropriate message.
“In the words of Emma Gonzalez,” the seventeen-year-old said. “B.S.”
These teenagers could not be more precise about what they want. Change is coming. And these agents of change are not playing. They mean business.