America didn't see it coming. But after 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School perished last week at the hands of yet another school shooter with an assault weapon, the kids of America had had enough. At a rally last weekend in Fort Lauderdale, survivors of that shooting put Republicans and the NRA on notice: your days are numbered. As shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez told the crowd,
Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS.
These student activists are yet another reminder that, when there's a vacuum of leadership at the top, leaders often come from the most unexpected places. On guns, our nation has been dreadfully in want of leadership on both sides of the aisle for a couple decades now—though Republicans in particular have quite literally become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Rifle Association. And it is Republicans who uniquely advocate for the status quo after every mass shooting.
But events last week provided a glaring demonstration that the person who now holds the highest office in the land is unequivocally, 100 percent useless when faced with mortal threats to our republic and our citizens. Following the massacre at Stoneman Douglas, Donald Trump—the low-information pr*sident—began by blaming the victims, tweeting that the shooter's "neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem."
"Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!" he admonished Thursday morning.
By the time he made brief remarks from the White House hours later, he seemed to have been advised that the shooting survivors were perhaps worthy of empathy. "No child, no teacher should ever be in danger in American schools," he offered. Then Trump went into hiding on the matter, failing to offer any meaningful solutions or even a road map to finding them initially. He reportedly even reduced his usual rounds of weekend golf because his aides must have informed him that it wouldn't look good.
When the furor didn't die down by Saturday morning and it became clear that multiple people had indeed warned authorities, Trump settled on the ultimate scapegoat: the FBI's Russia investigation.
"Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter," he tweeted. "They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion."
Understandably, Trump's myopia elicited well-deserved rage from the students. Here's just one among many responses to him:
"17 of my classmates are gone. That's 17 futures, 17 children, and 17 friends stolen. But you're right, it always has to be about you. How silly of me to forget. #neveragain"
While Trump was diddling around on twitter, Parkland student activists were doing more than tweeting—they were gathering steam at a Saturday rally that announced the emergence of a #NeverAgain movement more powerful than any of us had imagined. Trump has been playing catch up ever since, suddenly issuing a directive on bump stocks Tuesday and holding two gatherings on gun violence at the White House Wednesday and Thursday. The kids are not fooled—they want meaningful gun restrictions and they are heavily focused on voting Republicans out of office, because you can't negotiate with lawmakers who are bought and paid for by the NRA.
What is happening right before our eyes is a movement that could quite possibly enlist the biggest voting juggernaut since baby boomers to vote in larger-than-expected numbers in both 2018 and 2020. In fact, 2018 will mark the first year that the number of millennials eligible to vote will exceed the number of eligible baby boomer voters—by 2 percentage points. By 2020, eligible millennial voters will top baby boomers by fully six percentage points. Here’s a chart depicting eligible voters by generation, derived from analysis by the Center for American Progress:
The question, of course, is how many of them will show up to vote? If nothing else, the energy we are now seeing in student walkouts across the country is increasing political engagement among these young voters, and Democratic groups like Tom Steyer's NextGen America are already working to capitalize on that momentum.
The effort, which will include a national voter registration drive, will focus on states and districts represented by incumbent Republican lawmakers who have taken money from the National Rifle Association and voted against gun control measures.
The other effort to fill the gaping whole in leadership left by Trump came from Robert Mueller last week and his team's indictment of 13 Russians for deliberately sowing discord in the American electorate in support of electing Trump. While that indictment may seem like old news given Mueller's continued progress this week, it was really the first time since Trump was elected that anyone documented in great detail exactly what Russia did to sway the 2016 election, including its monthly budget of $1.2 million to make it happen.
What's interesting is that the indictments have relatively little meaning for the Russians Mueller fingered—they don't care that they broke U.S. law and neither does Vladimir Putin. Of course, they did! But the indictments effectively body blocked Trump from continuing to claim Russia didn't hack the election. Russia attacked the heart of our democracy—our electoral system—and compiling this information and presenting it to the American people is exactly what any responsible president of this country should be doing. Instead, it’s been left up to the special prosecutor investigating that president.
We are living in a time when the people in control of our government are demonstrating a dereliction of duty so egregious that it is arguably treasonable. What I have continually been looking for is who will step into that void in equally unimaginable ways. In the past couple weeks, we have witnessed two such examples.
Keep your eyes out for more of this. Leadership, especially in these times, will often present in unusual and unexpected ways, and it's worth noting when it does. As activists, we should work to capitalize on these openings because they are particularly important. (Support the kids!)
The people at the helm are asleep at the switch—busily prosecuting their own fantasy campaigns that have nothing to do with the actual oaths of office they have taken. While it's disheartening on one hand, it also makes them extremely vulnerable on the other. With luck and perseverance, they will suffer blows in their blind spots that are unrecoverable.