David Hogg - #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line

When you open your eyes but the nightmare doesnt go away, youve got no choice but to do something. Our first job now is to remember. Our second job is to act. Remember, act, repeat. Since that day, none of us are the same. But we are alive. And in memory of those who are not, we will remember and act for the rest of our lives.

Weve always been taught that as Americans, there is no problem that is out of our reach; that if we set our minds to it, we can solve anything. Anything except for our problem with gun violence. That cant be fixed. When that problem flares, its Hey, wow, thats terrible. Too bad theres nothing to be done about it. Like its an act of God, or a natural disaster, something beyond our control that we are helpless to do anything about. Which defies all logic and reason.

We live in Florida, a place which has some experience with natural disasters. What happened on Valentines Day 2018 was neither natural nor an act of God. What happened that day was man-madewhich means that as human beings, we have the capacity to do something about it.

Our generation has the obligation to do something about it.

In class, we learned about something called entropy. I guess you could say that entropy came to our school that day, and since the shootings, we have seen that there are powerful forces that thrive in chaos. Entropy is what the universe wants to happen. The story of existence and human civilization is the struggle against entropyworking to stick together, not fly apart. To cooperate, not fight. To love, not hate.

But Im getting ahead of myself.

I cant speak for everyone. If I was my freshman or sophomore or halfway-through-junior-year self, I would just sit here and explain everything. Thats how pretentious and overconfident I was, and probably still am, to some extent. But if theres one thing I learned from the shootings, its that my freshman or sophomore or halfway-through-junior-year self couldnt have survived that day. Thats the reason for this bookwe all had to find a way to survive, and we all had to come up with our own answers, but it turned out that all of our answers were just different facets of the same answer. Thats why the shootings made us stronger instead of destroying us.

So I could sit here and tell you the heroic tale of a kid who was so cool under fire and so passionate about justice that he whipped out his camera while the shooter was still shooting. But the truth is that I was thinking about something one of my teachers had been talking about a couple of days before: in the sweep of time billions of people have lived on this planet, yet the world only remembers a few hundred of them. This means that everybody else is just a background character who will be forgotten into the nothingness that is time and the universe. My teacher was talking about being humble, but Im way too myopic and self-involved for that. My thinking went more like this: Am I going to be just another background character? Is this what its all been leading up to? Just a bullet to the head? And I decided, Okay, I may be another background character, but if Im going to die Im going to die telling a damn good story that people need to hear.

Thats why I hit record. I was almost acting out the role that a journalist plays in a war zone, where you have to ask these questions and stay focused on one simple thing. Thats what kept me calm. And to be honest, except for one split second when the fear rushed through me, I really thought it was just a drill. Even after we knew it wasnt a drill, it was still so hard to accept the reality of it.

But heres the important thing: my sister, Lauren, was fourteen that day, and theres nothing myopic or self-involved about her. After the shooting stopped, she was crying so hysterically that I didnt want to be around her. Her friends had been murdered, and I couldnt stand being helpless to ease her pain. You could even say thats how this whole movement started, at least for meI was trying to avoid my sister.

Thats why I knew I couldnt write this book alone. So Im going to shut up now and let her take it from here.

WELL, I GUESS ILL START off with the day that it all happened. It was February 14, Valentines Day. If I had to describe the overall feeling before it started, Id tell you that it was a great day. Everybody was just so happy, giving each other chocolates and flowers and hugs, it was like the whole school was glowing. I remember joking with my friends like, Oh my God, if I see another couple asking each other out, Im gonna barf.

When the fire alarm went off, I was in TV Production, my last class of the day. Wed already had a fire drill that morning, so we thought it was just a Valentines Day prank. Everybody was laughing, and we took our time packing up our bags. I still remember yelling at my friend Sam to hurry up because we were taking forever, and its really weird for me to think that just across the campus, total hell was going on.

The first time that I kind of realized something was wrong was when we got to the bottom of the stairwell, because I looked out the window and across the bus loop and saw all this movement and realized that kids were running. Just from the look in those kids eyes, I knew something was wrong. I cant really describe it any other way than it was like a movie. Everything just seemed so bright. But the teachers had told us we were going to have a drill with blanks being fired and actors running around and kids pretending theyd been shot and stuff, so every kid around me was laughing and joking with their friends. But somehow inside of me, I knew something was really wrong. The other kids facesits awful to describe that look in their eyes. And I remember turning and glancing down the hallways and seeing more kids run by with their roses and their chocolates, girls screaming and boys just crying like Ive never seen before. Everybody around me thought it was a joke but I knew, I knew something was wrong. So I grabbed my four closest friends from that class, and even though they were smiling and stuff, I remember yelling, Guys, somethings wrong here. And they were like Lauren, its just a joke, its just a drill.

But I was so scared. I remember looking around me and paying really close attention to my surroundings because our dads an FBI agent and hes been in shootings before, so literally every single time wed go into a movie theater or mall, our parents would tell us to make sure we know where the exits are and if anything happens, to make sure to breathe. Try to relax so you dont panic.