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Parkland’s Peace Activist, Emma González Emma González said, “They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS” (Chalene). This is saying that there are laws that could have prevented mass shootings. People are also saying that kids are too young to understand how the government works, and that is bad. This is bad because people in Congress don’t believe that people under the age of eighteen aren’t mature enough to vote. They need to depend on adults to vote for their views. Emma González is a peace activist who is fighting for tougher gun laws after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. Emma González was born in 1999 in Parkland, Florida. She has two older siblings (Lowery). While she was in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, she was the president of the Gay-Straight Alliance Club. On the day of the shooting, she was in the auditorium with many students when the fire alarm went off. Many students tried to leave through the hallway but were told to take refuge back in the auditorium. The police held the students there for until it was safe to leave. González graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the spring of 2018. She is currently a freshman at New College of Florida in Sarasota, Florida (Pearl). Emma González started this activism after the shooting of her school on February 14, 2018. Nikolas Cruz was the shooter. As Abrahamsen stated in The Murdering Mind, “Every homicide is unconsciously a suicide and every suicide is, in a sense, a psychological homicide. Typically, the killer is afraid of killing himself, afraid of dying and therefore he murders
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someone else” (Liberman 28). Cruz did not kill himself, but he tried to act like he was one of the victims. Three days after the shooting, she gave a speech about gun control in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In her speech, she was trying to emphasize that we need tougher gun laws and begged the lawmakers to change them. She said, “We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shootings in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting” (Chalene). She started a movement called “March For Our Lives” where people across the nation traveled to Washington D.C. to protest against gun control on March 24, 2018. Many people nationwide went to Washington D.C. to march. Mahatma Gandhi created a list of principles called the Gandhian principles. The Gandhian principles describe the works the Gandhi did during his life. Emma González follows sarvodaya, the uplifting of all, because she is trying to stop school shootings. This is sarvodaya because no one loses family members. She said, “I want to say that this is our opportunity to talk to President Trump, Governor Rick Scott, and State Senator Marco Rubio to make sure that they know we are talking directly to them and all other members of the United States government that are being funded by the NRA to tell them now is the time to get on the right side of this” (Rodriguez). Gonzalez also follows satyagraha. Satyagraha means the power of truth. Emma González uses this because she believes that there are too many school shootings. As Charles Patrick Ewing orated, she is also pushing for swaraj, which means self-rule. Gonzalez is trying to get politicians to make tougher gun laws to stop these school shootings from happening. González responded, "When we've had our say with the government—and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying 'it is what it is,' but if us students have learned anything, it's that if you
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don't study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it's time to start doing something” (Chalene). She does not follow swadeshi, economy, because she does not talk about the economy much. She focuses more on trying to stop school shootings and trying to ask people to make tougher gun laws to stop them. Gene Sharp founded the Albert Einstein Institution which is a non-profit organization devoted to the study of nonviolent actions. He studied and categorized a list of nonviolent methods, like walkouts, public speakings, etc. to make it easier for people to understand them. Some categories that make up his list are public assemblies, honoring the dead, symbolic public acts, and withdrawal from the social system (Arrow). Emma González does a lot of public speaking and marches, which are two of Sharpe’s Methods. She stated at the “March For Our Lives” rally, “Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands. No one understood the extent of what had happened. No one could believe that there were bodies in that building waiting to be identified for over a day” (Sheth). Emma also went on television a lot which is another of Sharpe’s Methods. She was on the Ellen Degeneres Show where she talked about gun control. She explained, "We're here, we're talking to you, this has never happened before. Those kids in previous shootings like Sandy Hook, many of them were so young or didn't make it out to tell their tales" (Hains). She has very strong views about teachers having guns. She and all of the US also participated in a National School Walkout in April 2018 to protest against gun violence in schools. Emma González wore an orange jumpsuit for the walkout stating, “I wore it today because our schools are looking more like prisons and bomb shelters and less like the learning institutes our parents had the privilege of enjoying" (Hardy).
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“Teachers do not need to be armed with guns to protect their classes, they need to be armed with a solid education in order to teach their classes. That’s the only thing that needs to be in their job description” (Rodriguez). This work is important because there are too many school shootings going on right now. Many people believe that teachers should be armed to stop these school shootings. This is a bad idea because what if the student grabs the gun when the teacher is not looking and shoots everybody else. We need to make tougher gun laws and keep guns away from the mentally ill people because they are the people who commit these shootings. She also exclaimed, “It’s amazing the universal support we’ve gotten. It’s proof that this isn’t red and blue, this isn’t generation versus generation—this is the 97 percent of people who believe we need to take steps here together” (Feller). Emma González has changed the world in many ways. Kids in school have the power to speak up. That is important because kids should not be afraid of going to school. They should have the power to speak up if they feel like something is going wrong. Secondly, Congress is now making tougher gun laws because of this incident. If Congress makes tougher gun laws, there will be fewer school shootings. This is also convincing that teachers should not have guns in their classrooms. If a teacher has a gun, it is a possibility that a student can get the gun and kill everybody in the classroom.
Work Cited
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Arrow, Ruaridh. “Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook”. BBC 2 1 Feb. 2011. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12522848 15 Dec. 2018.
Chalene, Aubrey. “The Top 10 Quotes From Parkland Mass Shooting Survivor Emma Gonzales (sic.) That Should Haunt Donald Trump In His Sleep.” Odyssey. 19 Feb. 2018. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/mass-shooting-survivor-emma-gonzales 7 Dec. 2018.
Feller, Madison. “Emma Gonzalez Shares the Story Behind Her Moving ‘We Call B.S.’ Gun Reform Speech”. ELLE 23 Feb. 2018. https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a18671363/parkland-students-shooting-ellen-degene res-emma-gonzalez/ 17 Dec. 2018.
Hains, Tim. “Parkland Student Emma Gonzalez: “We’re Not Saying No Guns, ‘But Regulate Semi-Automatic Weapons’” RealClear Politics 27 Feb. 2018. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/27/parkland_students_emma_gonzalez_were_n ot_saying_no_guns_but_regulate_semi-automatic_weapons.html 13 Dec. 2018.
Liberman A. Joseph. School Shootings: W hat Every Parent and Educator Needs To Know To Protect Our Children. United States of America. Citadel Press Kensington Publishing Corp. 2008.
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Lowery, Wesley. "Emma Gonzalez hated guns before. Now she's speaking out on behalf of her dead classmates." Washington Post 2 1 Feb. 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/emma-gonzalez-hated-guns-before-now-shes-speakin g-out-on-behalf-of-her-dead-classmates/2018/02/21/00aea98a-175d-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_st ory.html?utm_term=.642c5508cee2 6 Dec. 2018.
Pearl, Diana. "Everything to Know About Emma Gonzalez, the Florida School Shooting Survivor Fighting to End Gun Violence". People. 23 February 2018. website. https://people.com/crime/everything-to-know-about-emma-gonzalez-the-florida-school-shooting -survivor-fighting-for-gun-violence-prevention/ 13 Dec. 2018.
Rodriguez, Victoria. “11 Empowering Quotes From Emma González” Seventeen 15 Mar. 2018. https://www.seventeen.com/life/school/a19433627/emma-gonzalez-quotes/ 7 Dec. 2018.
Sheth, Sonam. “‘Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job’: Parkland student Emma Gonzalez sends a powerful message at the 'March for Our Lives' rally” Business Insider 2 4 Mar. 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/emma-gonzalez-six-minutes-speech-march-for-our-lives-rally2018-3 12 Dec. 2018.
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The Office of Congressman Ted Deutch “File: Emma Gonzalez meets with Congressman Ted Deutch.png Wikimedia Commons 19 Feb. 2018 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emma_Gonzalez_meets_with_Congressman_Ted_De utch.png 21 Dec. 2018.