Boise noticed and Birmingham noticed. Each drew 5,000 marchers, and 15,000 to 25,000 turned out in Phoenix. They turned out in large, small, and medium towns all across America. In Denver, tens of thousands showed, nearly 100,000 according to one local news outlet. The Denver organizers were stunned. “On Facebook it was about thirty thousand who said they were coming, and it jumped so fast!” said Jessica Maher, one of the Denver organizers. Jessica was a college senior who had never done anything political in her life. Now she was director of political affairs for Never Again Colorado. The waves of supporters pouring into Civic Center Park and marching past the Colorado capitol dome on March 24 changed everything. This was real, she realized. This was powerful.
MFOL had mobilized on two fronts: inspiring millions of kids, and then recruiting them into a vast grassroots network. It was all about the network now: 762 potential affiliates had come of age that day. National media tacked on the sibling march story as an afterthought. The intersectional message got even less ink or air. The New Yorker, The Nation, and a few others noticed MFOL’s signal that they were fusing with the urban gun safety movement, but it was mostly mentioned in passing. But urban activists heard it loud and clear.
For sibling organizers, the march was already their second local event. Most had been involved with a walkout, and some had organized a die-in or other protest as well. They used each undertaking as a building block to grow their network, to learn from mistakes, and to gather momentum for the next one. The feverish pace had been a blessing and a curse. Now they had time—which could easily translate to boredom and fading interest. Time to map out eight months of initiatives to maintain excitement, register millions of young voters, and turn them out on Election Day.
In Denver, it began with Madison Rose. Madison was a college student who watched the Douglas students erupt on social media day one. That was all it took. Anger had been simmering for years. Why were adults just letting them die? That first night, Madison decided she wanted to organize a Denver march. Then Never Again announced its plan. Perfect, Madison said. She signed Denver up as a sibling.
Logistics were overwhelming—no one to delegate the permitting or grunt work. That forced Madison to reach out aggressively and cobble together a metrowide team. That proved surprisingly easy. New groups were mushrooming across the city and suburbs. She would eventually hook up with Emmy Adams and Kaylee Tyner, who were part of a fledgling network in the Jefferson County School District. Kaylee was a junior at Columbine High, and Emmy was a senior at Golden High. All of Jefferson County (Jeffco) still felt the Columbine scars, and Parkland had hit hard. “I just couldn’t take seeing the community have their hearts broken again,” Emmy said. “So I started by reaching out to people at my school, saying, ‘Hey, does anyone want to help me create some solutions?’ I thought like five people would show up to this meeting, and it ended up being over seventy kids. I was like, ‘OK, if we can get this many at Golden, we can spread this across the district.’” That turned into Jeffco Students Demand Action. It included students from every high school in the county.
Emmy became copresident, and the group organized the first school walkout across the county. They paired that with a rally after school that day, to bring all the young activists together. A big contingent from the group marched in Washington and networked with other cities. Most of the cities in America had a story like that.
When the marches ended, all those groups came together to brainstorm the road ahead. They settled on one big venture to throw their collective weight behind: a rally just outside Columbine, on April 19, the eve of the anniversary, the day before the second national walkout. Columbine kids couldn’t walk out on April 20, because that is a solemn day in the area, and classes have never been conducted on that day since. But there was another reason.
Grieving Douglas students did not all respond with activism. Most supported gun reform, came out to the occasional walkout or rally, but their priority was healing. The Columbine event helped some Douglas students do both.
It began with an invitation to the MFOL kids. Emmy, Madison, and the other organizers worked with the former Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis to honor them with a leadership award. The MFOL leaders had made a prior commitment, so the organizers invited a handful of other Douglas students they met at the DC march. Abiding Hope, a local church supporting the event, agreed to pay their way out. The Douglas kids would headline the rally, but that was not the primary objective. They would come for two to three days and just relax and breathe in the mountain air.
Word of the trip spread, and more students wanted to come—mostly low-income kids who could never afford a trip like this. The congregation had been through Columbine, and was happy to support them. More signed on, and eventually about fifty came.
The Douglas and Columbine students would perform a service day together on the anniversary: making a stone garden path at a local memory care facility, and upgrading the landscaping at Dave Sanders Memorial Softball Field just outside the school. It was named for the Columbine teacher who died saving students. The weather was gorgeous, the trees just leafing out for spring. Columbine students took them up to Lookout Mountain, and scrambled around Red Rocks Amphitheater. They were having a ball.
They were still playful when they got to the Columbine Memorial. They grew somber fast. The memorial is carved out of the shallow slope of Rebel Hill, which rises in Clement Park just past Dave Sanders Field. Beyond it, the sun was sinking, drifting toward the Rocky peaks. The Wall of Healing curves around the memorial’s border to enclose the quiet space. It is built of craggy russet bricks, matching the cobblestone path and the red clay earth all around. A central ring of memorial tablets commemorates the thirteen murdered nearby. The kids wandered among the young trees, running their fingers over the wall and tablets, feeling the inscriptions as they read. Many said it felt like chilling contact with the first generation to endure this—their first connection to kindred spirits. They marveled how tranquil they had grown. Everything felt different there. They wondered aloud: Was this a glimpse of their future? Serenity? Would it take nineteen years?
Gerardo Cadagan, a Douglas senior, said the memorial had taken him by surprise. He had not expected it to affect him so deeply. He had expected that to come later in the afternoon, when they were set to meet survivors who had lived through the ordeal there. He wasn’t sure how that would affect him either, but he was so desperate to meet someone who would understand. And to get away from that campus—it just reeked of death. He had a class in building 12 before Valentine’s Day. Now it was surrounded by an ominous fence, with cops moving in and out. “The scene of the crime, being around the building every day—just kind of brings the bad memories back,” he said. He couldn’t get enough of the crisp mountain air. Such a different feel from South Florida. Aspen trees, red clay earth, air so dry and thin and cool. The Rockies still had snow on their peaks. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “Florida’s flat. All of this to me is amazing.”
Some Douglas kids had soured on activism—or forgone it entirely, working with apolitical groups like Shine MSD, or hurling themselves into sports or arts or performing to distract from the darkness, and add joy and meaning to their lives. During a rehearsal break for Legally Blonde, four Douglas students stepped out to the boardwalk outside the studio to discuss their experience. They had all gone through lockdown in the drama room with the MFOL kids.
“I wanted to be very involved in the politics just because I’m so passionate about what I believe,” junior Melanie Weber said. She had made the Tallahassee trip, and two of the others had gone to the march. “But then I realized like how draining it was. I would rather put my time into doing something like Shine that would have raised money for a good cause and made people happy, instead of just yelling and screaming and politics and ‘You’re wrong!’ and stuff like that. I felt like it helped me more.”
Their grief had been erratic. “It comes out of nowhere,” freshman June Felman said.
“This is weird, but like the further away we get from it, the more real it seems,” Melanie said. “Now the shock is wearing off. It’s sinking in that it actually happened.”
June had gotten an emotional support dog, a Boston terrier, and that made a huge difference. “He’s four months old and he’s adorable,” she said. “Just having him around makes me happy.”
June described being irritated by random people asking prying questions: Where were they during the shooting, what did they go through, what was it like? “It’s a little invasive sometimes,” she said. It had happened earlier that day at the hair salon. It was close to the school, that was a clue, but the support dog was a total giveaway.
Most of them said they had not been to therapy.
“I went like, once,” June said.
“I’m too stubborn to go but my mom thinks I should start going,” Melanie said.
Junior Alex Athanasiou said he had conversations in his head about it. “I’m taking psychology classes. I’m trying to be my own therapist.” He was also trying to help his sister, who had been on the second floor of the freshman building, where it happened. “After a month of her being like really quiet, I kind of went to her room and I was like, ‘Hey,’ and we had this really long conversation.” After that, she began to open up about it more.
They were mostly depending on each other. “We’ve all gone through the same thing,” June said. “That will always link us forever.”
Some of them had soured on their peers. Melanie said she used to be friends with Jackie. And they were very touchy about the attention MFOL was getting. National media had been in and out of that studio for weeks, a film crew was shooting an entire documentary on Spring Awakening, Broadway stars had come down to coach that cast and then hang out with them, and no one bothered to speak to them. They had lived through the same tragedy. There were actually more survivors in their production of Legally Blonde than Spring Awakening, but their cast didn’t include Cameron.
“The twelve kids in Never Again are not the entire student body,” June said. “They weren’t even near the freshman building. Not to call them out, but like—”
“Call them out!” Melanie said, and June continued:
“None of them were in the freshman building, none of them lost anyone close to them, yet they’re oh, like, survivors.”
This was making the boys uncomfortable. She was going too far, Alex said. The MFOL kids had lost friends too.
“It just bothers me how they’re getting all the attention in the world, yet there are kids who were in the freshman building that like, their voices aren’t being heard,” June said.
Junior Brian Martinez defended them too. “I know a lot of people from the freshman building that prefer not to talk about it, so they prefer having others talk for them.”
“But there also are a lot of people who do want to talk about it, but they can’t because like all the media is obsessed with these twelve kids,” June said.
The MFOL kids were well aware of this criticism. They heard it every day, and caught the silences and scowls. Cam and Alex Wind were steps away inside the studio at that moment. Much of the team had drama class with these kids every day.
The Douglas group traveling to Columbine was supportive of the MFOL kids. Some came from undocumented families, so they were keeping a low media profile. Others just didn’t feel comfortable in the role. But they wanted gunmen to stop shooting them. Many echoed Brian’s sentiment appreciating the MFOL kids speaking up for them. They all appeared onstage at the Columbine rally that night, and a few gave rousing speeches.
The highlight of the trip was a meeting with Columbine survivors. About a dozen, plus a handful from other mass shootings, met them in a private session in the Columbine auditorium. Frank DeAngelis told them how pissed off he got at all the people telling him what he should feel. They were constantly trying to “help” by telling him that it was OK, pushing misguided “suggestions,” and generally telling him what to do. You’re probably feeling that right now, he said. That got a hearty laugh. They had all experienced it, endlessly. So DeAngelis said he wouldn’t push therapy on them, but he’d share what a Vietnam War vet told him: You’re a big mess, and if you don’t get help, you can’t help anyone else. DeAngelis loved the airplane oxygen mask analogy, and shared it with these kids: They always instruct you to put your own on before helping others. You’re useless if you don’t help yourself first.
It took a little while for the Parkland students to warm up. Finally one of them broached a touchy subject they had all been thinking about: prom and graduation were coming, and . . . The words caught in his throat, and he barely got them out through his sobs. What he was asking—and he thought it sounded terrible—but would it be horrible to have fun?
“Grief is not a competition,” Kiki Leyba said. He had been a new teacher when the shooting started, and he still taught English down the hall. But it took them far too long to accept that, he said. Some of the survivors admitted they had gotten mad at peers who seemed to recover “too fast,” and enjoyed life too much. They regretted that. It’s hard enough. When a good day comes, take it. When prom comes, give yourself a break. Enjoy it as much as you can.
Leyba had traveled to Sandy Hook with his fellow teacher Paula Reed to help the staff there. He recounted an exchange in which one of the teachers said she just wanted to know when she would get her life back. Leyba didn’t know how to respond, but Reed did. Never, she said. That woman is gone. You are never getting her back. You will get past this, and you will do amazing things in your life, but it will be a different you from who you once were. And you will never begin that path out of the pain until you let go of that woman and say goodbye.
Kiki Leyba told some of the most poignant stories that session, but he omitted one. He had crashed his new car a few nights earlier, just as the Parkland kids were arriving.
“I’m worried about him,” his wife confided. “He’s in an April fog.” This happened every year. It took different forms, not usually a crash, but never good. His buddy Frank DeAngelis had crashed several cars in April, she said. Nineteen years later, the trauma was still reexerting itself. Your mind might claim it’s forgotten, but your body refuses. So Columbine survivors have told me a similar story, year after year: something feels odd, they can’t put their finger on it, then they realize it’s April. Cues are everywhere: spring thaw, green returning, senioritis, prom and graduation plans. Your body remembers.
The crash was on Leyba’s mind when he saw the kids. He had to drive another car to get there. The crumpled car was still in his driveway. He was too upset to call the insurance company—how could this still be happening? Maybe it was unrelated, but . . . he didn’t really believe that. He would never be over it, but he was OK. He was healthy and happy, and successful enough to replace that car.
Leyba chose to withhold that warning from the Parkland kids. Telling them this early would just be cruel. Two months out, they needed hope.
President Trump had proposed arming teachers. That was his big proposal to combat school shootings. The NRA loved it. Teachers were generally appalled. Paula Reed ridiculed the idea at the Columbine rally that evening. She was speaking on behalf of Columbine’s faculty survivors. Reed said a big change since 1999 was that she no longer feels completely safe at work. “Now, there are some people who think I’d feel a whole lot safer and so would my students if I were armed. Take a look at me. And imagine that I have a gun in a holster. And an angry young man, six feet tall or so, decides to wrestle that gun away from me. It’s not that hard to do. And people say to me, ‘Well, Paula, no one would require you to carry a gun.’ Well, what if I decide I want to? Does that change my stature? Does it change the ultimate outcome? Or does that just make me a five-foot-two middle-aged woman with questionable judgment and a sidearm?”
Reed recounted incidents in which armed teachers had injured students. In one case, a teacher had left the weapon in a school bathroom, where it was found by several elementary school kids. Several more troubling incidents had occurred just the prior month. A Georgia teacher was arrested after barricading himself in a classroom and firing a handgun out the window. A teacher in Seaside, California, had mistakenly fired his pistol during a gun safety class and injured a student. He was also a reserve police officer and Seaside’s mayor pro tem. And a resource officer in Alexandria, Virginia, had accidentally discharged his weapon in a middle school. Luckily, no one was hit. “As far as I can tell, more guns in school have not amounted to greater safety,” Reed said. “Quite the opposite.”
Reed described a former student lovingly, and read a letter she had written before she died. Rachel Scott was the first person murdered at Columbine. Following her tribute, Reed broke a Columbine taboo: discussing victim and attacker in the same speech. Survivors still found it offensive for their memories to cross. But Reed had taught both Rachel and Dylan Klebold, she said. “I cared about both of them, because I care about all of my students. I know that many people have terrifying memories of Dylan, and I am genuinely sorry for what they went through. But the only Dylan I ever knew was a sweet, shy sophomore. I think it’s important to understand that when we talk about arming teachers you’re not just asking me to protect the Rachels of this world. You’re asking me to kill the Dylans. Maybe that sounds easy to you, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t have protected Rachel if I could have, but I really can’t imagine shooting Dylan either. Not the Dylan I knew, anyway. I suppose I would have if I could have, and if I had to, but do you understand what you’re asking of me? You’re asking me to kill one of my students. It’s too much to ask. And so instead, I’m asking my elected leaders to make sure that no teacher ever has to lose a student to a school shooting again. Not any student at anyone’s hands, each other’s or mine. I’m asking our elected leaders to pass meaningful legislation to keep guns out of the hands of children and teenagers, and I hope that everyone here will do the same.”