Parkland
✒️ Author: Dave Cullen |. 📖 Published: 2019 | 🗓 Read: February 5, 2020 | 📄 Pages: 400
Summary
In March 2018, Dave Cullen went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because something radically different was happening. In nearly twenty years witnessing the mass shootings epidemic escalate, he was stunned and awed by the courage, anger, and conviction of the high school’s students. Refusing to allow adults and the media to shape their story, these remarkable adolescents took control, using their grief as a catalyst for change, transforming tragedy into a movement of astonishing hope that has galvanized a nation.
Cullen unfolds the story of Parkland through the voices of key participants whose diverse personalities and outlooks comprise every facet of the movement. Instead of taking us into the minds of the killer, he takes us into the hearts of the Douglas students as they cope with the common concerns of high school students everywhere—awaiting college acceptance letters, studying for mid-term exams, competing against their athletic rivals, putting together the yearbook, staging the musical Spring Awakening, enjoying prom and graduation—while moving forward from a horrific event that has altered them forever.
Why You Should Read
Parkland is an in-depth examination of this pivotal moment in American culture—and an up-close portrait that reveals what these extraordinary young people are like as kids. As it celebrates the passion of these astonishing students who are making history, this spellbinding book is an inspiring call to action for lasting change.
Notable Highlights
Parkland changed everything—for the survivors, for the nation, and definitely for me. I flew down the first weekend, but not to depict the carnage or the grief. What drew me was the group of extraordinary kids. I wanted to cover their response. There are strains of sadness woven into this story, but this is not an account of grief. These kids chose a story of hope.
---
The Onion famously reruns the same headline after every time: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
---
major reforms to the easy access to deadly weapons and ammunition; a targeted approach to mental health in the form of screening for teen depression, every semester, in every high school in the country; and a major change in the media’s coverage of these killers, which lionizes them in the eyes of unraveling future perps.
---
Yet in twenty years, America alone has lost 683 lives in 81 mass shootings, and we’ve done virtually nothing.
---
They made two crucial decisions immediately: speak with one voice, and hammer one topic.
---
That was the moment. February 15, 2018, 8:22 a.m. EST. David Hogg called out Adult America for letting our kids die. The uprising had begun.
---
The Parkland kids welcomed thoughts and prayers in addition to solutions, not instead.
---
These are not impulsive acts or bursts of rage; there is rarely a moment when the perpetrator flips from good to bad. It’s a long, slow simmer, a gradual evolution, or more often, a devolution.
---
From the perpetrator’s point of view, many of these attacks are best understood as vengeful suicides: a profound hunger for suicide, coupled with the overwhelming desire to lash out, to demonstrate pain and power in a final act.
---
Young turnout increased dramatically in the so-called battleground states, where the election was contested, and where the Obama campaigns concentrated most of their organizing to reach young people.
---
convince young voters politics matters, field candidates who address their concerns, and then do the grunt work to get to them.
---