hello my name is franklin tucker i'm the editor of the belmont tony and on february fourteenth a school shooting occurred at stone and douglas high school in miami seventeen students and staff were murdered by a former student who used a high powered assault rifle but  unlike other school killings such as columbine and sandy hook the reaction to this incidence of gun violence has been large and passionate with more than three hundred eight hundred fifty thousand students marching in washington d c and hundreds of thousands participating in a national walkout place on march twenty first at belmont high school and soldierly with the park when students thank you for coming thank you for having me here let me ask you this first question do you feel safe attending classes in belmont high school i mean on a on a day to day level yes i'm a high school there's really feels like there's nothing to fear but then that was the same that was the case was the same at murder stoneman douglas they were in a totally safe area florida they felt completely safe where they were and yet this happened so our movement was to was it happened because we know we feel things now but this could happen with anyone and it could be us next and there was a minor incident at our school that was very scary that happened but right after the marjorie sort of stoneman douglas shootings or someone made a joke that may or may not have been serious and it was kind of frightening that was a scary experience of things like i'm i'm safe like i live in belmont you know it's a great town and then you go to school and you come home and then you get an e mail and then it's like there's an incident and of disappointment not only in the country in general but in the school system and like fellow students as well like i definitely felt a sense of more than a shortage of the shoulders do you think it has to do with this generation that the had this happen to them i think it absolutely i think this generation is sped up especially with the past year that we've  had with our current political climate i think finally it took this year in the students to finally say we nurse just so tired we are just so sick of this and we need to change something and i think it's also the park students willingness to speak out about it because you know in a lot of these other shootings like you know like on a sandy hook was like young kids and so the only people who could speak about it were their parents and the fact that this happened i mean tocome you're wrong fourteen year olds are not very old but this happened to you know high schoolers and high schoolers in our generation who know how to speak their mind and are capable of mobilizing using like social networking and i think that's what really made the difference is it's like the leadership that sprung up from parkland  i agree with that i think that the feelings weren't any different but it was the people who who were affected and there and it happened that really have me that if so presses the three of you for you to get together i mean what was that you did do you have a somewhat activity were where you had to build organizations so we all know each other pretty well because your own feet are together so one evening i put out an instagram post that  fine me up but then somebody you have you already involved with human rights action yeah i don't i'm actually missing a human rights commission meeting right now sorry guys yeah because they have you know a wonderful list serv of people who are willing to help out with that kind of stuff and that certainly helps a lot in terms of like i don't resources yeah i mean we're all we're all kind of experienced in the field of of social justice i'm lydia is the president already with the with the theatre group so we all you know we've all had experience and so it was kind of this interesting chemistry of us like all basically exciting we need to do something and if you're a member of that all the other prominent  on which is more conservative then yes you well being a part of the mormon church i like growing up in that church i was with the mother that i had especially i was always how to speak my mind and so i was taught when something is wrong especially if i hear something in church and i'm like well i don't really agree with that i don't just sit there i don't just take it my mama taught me my dad always taught me that if you think something is wrong you have to say something about it you have to do something about it i'm not allowed to just sit this i think i mean the joke i've been making of my dad is that the inner character just loud so it makes him it makes it you know natural for some of us to get up and just raise our voices it's you know it's natural for me as an actor it's natural for george as a stage manager to just expect we fill the front area of our school and they were silent yeah like that was so over spackle it was incredible yeah the fact that we always accounted for was ok how do we deal with people talking through it do you know what happens people are respectful and was the constant worry of ours they were like aren't we just high schoolers are the worst so we have to just watch out for that and yet complete silence complete respect even people who didn't agree with their message were completely respectful it was amazing support we had from them yet so certainly a little bit about what you said i know that the public in the news media weren't allowed to be there so we really didn't get a chance to record your words what did you say ok so we started out when people walked out of the school we passed out orange ribbon pens and also sheets of paper and each sheet of paper had the name of one of the victims of one of the ten mass shootings since columbine at schools ten school mass shootings and had their age or what they taught and just like you know personal detail about them like what their school was like what year it was stuff like that  and so one of the first things we did after thanking everyone for coming was we took a moment of silence because the the victims of mass shootings are are real people and they have lives and sometimes it's hard you know to think about that because there were one hundred fifteen names across you know the students who came out but but they were one hundred fifty names or one hundred fifteen people and so we spent the first i think two or three minutes registration for lobbying the state house we ran through and then began to read the names i believe so we we also had been gathering student state yes you're right so we put a form out about a few weeks before the walkout just to say if anyone has anything they'd like to say like if you have a statement if you want to say something like let us know and so we went through the statements and we filtered through and got i don't know so once i think it was  time between each thing give everyone a second to reflect and think about the meaning of each statement and then we moved on to the names of the margin some and douglas victims i'll seventeen of them we gave you know something that was on the cards name age grade position at the school if they were a teacher and that we took of the rest of our time because we gave an ample you know a few seconds between each each name to reflect and to think and to remember that remember these lives that that mattered so much that now that we're fighting for and that was one of the really powerful moments when i started out reading the names except that i got to  and continue to move forward with this you know you hopefully this wasn't the walkout wasn't the end of what you were looking to do that's not really not that's not the end of our by we marched on the state house actually with a bunch of other students who walked out on the fourteenth we have snow either a danger to themselves or a danger to other people which just feel very important messages to some of the strictest gun laws but as students who spoke at that event were saying it's still not enough we still have a lot of gun deaths  and so another one that we also were lobbying for was a bill that increased funding for schools because the more funding that our public schools have the more resources that we can give students to hopefully prevent mass shootings because it's not just one it's not just one approach to fix this problem it has to come from many different angles so if you talk about the great number of support we lose some criticism you've got from like soledad's or on social media yes there were basically two kinds of criticism one was the violent angry spewing hatred that you know a couple of students had and after one or two i i i mean i engaged once or twice and i just shut it down because it was so much negativity and i you know i think i said i don't have time to sign  walkout to plan i don't have time to deal with these kids and then there's a second type of of of a structure obstruction of well ok well there was a second type of of disagreement where we had a couple of students who said i don't i'm not going to walk out because i believe in second amendment and i you know i disagree with your viewpoint however i respect what you're doing i respect who you're doing this for and so i you know i  as a person but not in support of your movement and those people with people that we really kind of you know we spoke to that were you know really wonderful that they said i can walk out with you i don't agree with you but this is your movement go forth and do it and that was great the other kind of all and he kind of took it and not ran with it but kind of said at first he said i didn't he didn't want to be a political thing but she said i we just want to honor the students we would not like it to be political and we were like oh ok that's not exactly what we had in mind but that's ok well we'll get back to you and then we talked about it and we were like that's not the message not only on what this is that's not what the walkout is leaders and also on a statewide council last year i did work a firm that basically gives pro bono work to help people gain citizenships sort of sort of been all around trying to make the frequently to our to discuss our goals and that we would think would be ok and then something would happen that we would say maybe he didn't quite understand our message we should go back and when he tried we'll try to can like with the media now with being  what the what the event was about but it certainly is something that was part of the and then you just go to a half miles down the road toward high school and they have the similar event and you could hear what the students were saying you could hear that the or or that hope that they on the other side of the plane to pond and dave rogers came and like we went and he no i said thank you guys for all coming out but i really wish that the other high school students could have seen that we have the community members behind us and we have the support of you know one of our representatives and i i think that that's really important you know i was talking a little bit about where do you go from here you know and campaigners like you were always told w change is going to come slowly does your group have the patience to the for this type of change where i mean it really you hear this all from whether it's you know the most extreme level which is from fox news and they're common haters or coming down just parents in a local local you say well maybe they're dreaming a little through too much and making those changes well i'm so this is an argument i actually have my parents and they are both activists and they are both they have they generation doesn't you know we don't demand the consarn is a well used kid in your social media you demand everything at the fed every second we don't we're not demanding a law now that will outlaw all guns and that's why we're asking for but we're asking for a change to come faster than it has which is a pin sticking with slow slow rate or not at all or not or change has not been coming at all and that i think the main thing is that our generation is kind of sick of that y yeah i don't die on necessarily don't they're not much to ask for but we would like it to come sooner rather than later and i think the ones who see that change and who like take that change to heart and live through it every single day we would like to see it now and we believe that it's coming we believe we've seen it you know in this movement we've seen you we've seen people fighting we've seen you know change affected in some ways and so we believe that it's coming it's on its way and as far as movements go having a movement start in who said that the picture was like look i'm prepared to vote yes that's what you should be can agree on how much we actually sat down and we sat outside of our cafeteria and had up the the form and say here's how you can register to vote do it now or do it at home here's the number you can do it list and you know we if you want to you can just google the senators and the legislators who don't vote for you know they don't vote for gun control legislation and you can you can see those you know those  and make me shy away from moving there and i think that it is actually important to as and we're in this to have different take perspectives like for me as a person who is an activist and very like outspoken about what i believe them it's like outspoken feminists like gun control like gay rights like everything and so i am excited at the prospect of going to utah where it's so conservative because i'm the kind of person you i don't like this but i sometimes like to argue with you know i i would like to get into an to say here's why i think you're wrong you're wrong and here is why i would like to be able to make a change whether that be changing someone's mind or just changing their perspective or telling them my own story but as something as simple as that and a place as conservative as you talk like that is a win for me that that's like a huge thing that i'm excited to if you could just speak to the public about what your generation is going to try to do what would you say if you could just point to the people just look at the camera and say what the student is going to do in the next sixty years who so much stuff one i would say i know that  environmental changes they know it's no gun control but we have a problem with our environment and if we don't change it in the next sixty years like you said it will it will be an even  early on to see all right here's a problem here's how to change it here's what you can do and so you know our generation is one that sees problems and it's going to end is now is just working as hard as we can to say all right we don't like this now what can we do what steps can we take to fix it in our lifetimes i don't know who else here went to the pride parade right after gay rights was like gay marriage was legalized in massachusetts like five four or five so you know you know what it's what weren't raised i mean i remember i'm you i'm sure you would do that and i was you know i was going to rally and i was two years old because my parents are activists and you know being raised in that culture is one that just teaches you so early on ok you have to fight you can go to you know school five how do you skip school you go to the route you know or or know you go to school today even if you do feel think you know you have to graduate you have to get your education and you have to go learn how to fix this problem right you've got to just put all your time you're working your time into bettering something and even without going like i wasn't raised going to rallies and stuff just my parents are really those sort of people but they are the sort of people that go my dad's a lawyer so he'd go and speak out for people that need to be represented and do his active or activist work of that way so it sort of there are so many different ways in which to work towards change and all of those are so important and i think everyone is being exposed to one or multiple of those especially now since there is so much media going around pictures social media just makes it so much easier to access that all too does it also make it a little bit more cluttered out there you know you it's just become noise almost you know how do you prevent that from just being swamped over by what you know social media has become it's difficult for  sure yeah there's times when i'm just like i got a twitter i just just i love you know there's times when i see you know some sort of like you know this is this is this expos on whatever i'm just like also bookmark it but i can't right now  and i think the key with that it's kind of a lie with with people because when you create a unified movement out of all of that noise yes it makes it it makes it easier to kind of create one stream i guess in one way yeah and another important key for that is also deciding that you know you know deciding whether or not you want to take a single issue or whether you want to work towards a bunch of issues yeah and working towards a bunch of issues is pop it's possible you know it's difficult difficult but you know yeah you can do it yeah i mean i'm doing it this week and it's exhausting i know i'm here for this and then i had you know i pad presentation yesterday got genocide sums of work on kind of make sense of it all and push forward yeah well let me thank you very much for coming and talking or you know we say that after listening to the four of you i feel really good about the future of this