Article by Casey Snell

“There has been a real powerful sense...

The future they were promised has been taken away from them.�

C o nt i n u e d

In February of 2018, hundreds of teenagers ran for their lives from the hallways and classrooms of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staff had been shot to death.

The following month, driven by the conviction that they should never have to run from guns again, they walked.

So did their peers. In New York City, in Chicago, in Atlanta and Santa Monica; at Columbine High School and in Newtown, Conn.; and in many more cities and towns, students left school by the hundreds and the thousands at 10 a.m., sometimes in defiance of school authorities, who seemed divided and even flummoxed about how to handle their emptying classrooms.

The first major coordinated action of the student-led movement for gun control marshaled the same elements that have defined it ever since the Parkland shooting: eloquent young voices, equipped with symbolism and social media savvy, riding a resolve as yet untouched by cynicism.

What you just read was an excerpt from an article published in The Atlantic four years ago about this sudden surprising rise in what everyone assumed would be a temporary, short battle. Since then there has been an extraordinary up-tick in the rise of political involvement in student. And this trend only continues to grow in all corners of the political arena. Gun control, climate change, fair

President of MVHS Liberal Action Club, Michael Love, comments on these movements.

“I mean you can see these students aren’t stopping either, they’re getting more involved and I doubt they will stop until they get what they want.

I mean... These are young kids -- very young kids that are getting involved not only at a college level, not only at a high school level, My little sister even! At her middle school they just held their environmental walkout to protest climate change.”

Writers from The Guardian agree in their article about new student activism found throughout Europe.

“This new breed of activism is spreading like wildfire across countries. The school climate strikes that have led to tens of thousands of young people taking to the streets around the world over recent months had already made their impact in the UK last fall. Thousands of pupils walked out of lessons at schools and colleges across the country amid growing concern about the escalating climate crisis. The movement started in August when the 16-year-old schoolgirl Greta Thunberg held a solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament. Now, up to 70,000 schoolchildren each week are taking part in similar protests in 270 cities worldwide.

Environmental and development groups together with students, trade unions and social movements walked out of the UN climate talks in protest at what they say is the slow speed and lack of ambition of the negotiations in Warsaw.”

It may seem like a stretch to find examples of activism halfway across the world, but we don’t even have to leave our own district to see the effects of this worldwide up-tick in student activism; some of the most ambitious young minds and projects can be found right here at Mountain View High School. In the past three years of my own MVHS student experience I’ve personally seen a lot of change, I can almost sense it in the air: they’re angry, they want to fight for what’s right. In my freshman year shootings and political issues were rarely talked about and the only club experience I had was The Queer Straight Alliance, but we had never been on the proactive end of things. It was in sophomore year after the Parkland shootings when everyone started to wake up. These students didn’t just limit themselves to walkouts, another prominent thing I saw happening after this shift in the balances of student influence was the sudden formation of far more political clubs. In the month directly following the #Enough walkout I saw the formation of the Liberal Action Club,Young Americans for Freedom, Force For Change, and Social Justice Club.

These students still weren’t satisfied; they still had work to do.

“Last year was by far the largest protest of students that I had seen during the school day. I’d seen quite a few other movements, outside the school day on weekends in general, marches and those kinds of things but the #Enough movement last year was the first one that I had really seen on a major level at a at a school. And let’s be honest it was nationwide” -MVHS principal David Grissom

You see it every day at MVHS: Liberal Action Club doing voter registration and calling their representatives, Women's Empowerment having a menstrual product drive, QSA holding events like Day of Silence and Trans Panel, or multiple clubs teaming up for something as big as the Trans Rights or Environmental Protection walkouts. These students are tired of waiting, running, and being powerless. They’ve taken it onto themselves to be a force for change.

During our follow-up interview David Grissom commented of the future of student activism: “They show no signs of slowing down. I think in the future we can expect even more student involvement. We have Trans Panel and Day of Silence coming up; there’s a Sanders rally happening is San Francisco this weekend. I think we as staff have an important role in supporting and educating our students. So many schools across the country try to suppress students and their beliefs” The future we were promised has been taken away from us. In George Orwell's 1984, the main character lives in an imperialistic suppressive dictatorship, but he knew if there was ever going to be change, it had to come from those who were the most threatened among them. His logic still holds true in today's society: the power lies with the Proles. Change isn’t coming from the policy makers, the figureheads; those in power continue to refuse action. But we as the next generation of powerful passionate elitists, we students have the power to change the world. Across the world students are refusing to be ignored and downtrodden: a generation determined to build something better, something bolder, something new.

About The Author

Casey Snell, is a student at Freestyle Academy where he studies film, photography and various other digital media art forms. Freestyle has given him the very special opportunity to study and pursue his passion. He expresses himself through colorful socks, peculiar non sequitur, and of course his art. In his free time he writes music and makes sketches which he posts on his Instagram. When he graduates he hopes to continue with his art through collage and beyond.