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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, the young people of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School brought us a wave of national activism.

Students: No more violence, end gun violence. No more violence. Enough is enough, enough is enough.

Speaker 3: What do we want?

Students: Justice.

Speaker 3: We'll we wait?

Students: No.

[crosstalk]

Melissa Harris-Perry: The Parkland, Florida teens took to social media. they spoke out on cable news, they testified before Congress, and they amassed one of the largest youth protests in US history. We recently spoke with one of the Parkland teens who's now a 20-something who was at the front and center of that movement.

David Hogg: Hi. I'm David Hogg, a co-founder of March For Our Lives and a current college student.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I started by asking David how much he and his peers are defined by that day four years ago.

David Hogg: The best way that I've learned to heal just as much as possible from what has happened, as I think some of my other classmates and people in Parkland in general have done to some extent, is remembering to let what happened to us not stop us from enjoying the things that we love and the things that we have left despite what happened that day. For me, that's really learning a lot of the time and hanging out with my friends and learning that to not feel guilty, to be a college student, to live my life, and do the things that I enjoy because I think for many of us, the survivor's guilt is a real thing. I think this adjustment has been one that's been completely transformative to me.

It's made me grow a lot as a person, and it's made me reflect a lot on what's happened over these past four years. Now that I'm 21 years old, I'm almost 22 and we started four years ago when I was 17, I've begun to process and realize the true magnitude of how incredible the work is that we've done and that we continue to do, but also how wrong it is that we had to do that as young people. That we really were just kids, and frankly, how ethically many of the adults in power at the time, not all of them but many of them failed us and how it's incumbent on our generations to work to become the adults that we had some of, but had far too few of.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is your 21 almost 22-year-old self saying to your 17-year-old self these days?

David Hogg: I think what my 21-year-old self is saying to my 17-year-old self is that what you went through is something that is not normal by any sense and that although it is important for us to focus on making this change, you can't let survivor's guilt and things like that drive everything that you do. You have to do it because you want to and you have to learn how to build a community of people around you and understand that taking care of yourself and doing the things that you enjoy and learning new things is not something to feel guilty about. It's an essential part of working in any movement.

That self-care aspect and learning to live my life despite everything that happened as I know for many of us that were co-founders of your organization and students in general, that's one of the bigger struggles. It's not about moving on, it's about adapting to a new horrifying normal where we continue to see gun violence every day on TV, but we have to learn how to mentally isolate ourselves from that and learn to enjoy the things that we do have left.

Melissa Harris-Perry: One of the guests for this show that I spoke with was someone who both met and talked with survivors of Columbine and then met and talked with survivors of Parkland. He said something that caught me a little bit off guard at the time that he said it. He said that the young people in Columbine were completely shocked. That it was an unprecedented experience prior, and that when he talked with young people at Parkland, that they had a sense of not that it was normal but that it was almost expected/ I'm wondering how you react to that.

David Hogg: I think, unfortunately, that's the incredibly dystopic reality that many most young people and older people too live in in the United States, especially in our schools but also in our communities on a daily basis where young people often talk about school shootings or the possibility of one happening. It's not that they necessarily expect it to happen to them, but they know that it happens everywhere.

I think when what happened in Parkland happened, we were obviously in a bit of shock, but to say that it would be completely unexpected that this could ever happen in the United States would just not be true. It's not like we necessarily expect it to happen to us, but we know it's going to some amount of people. When it does happen to you, it's not necessarily totally surprising because it continues to happen and it's horrifying.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It does continue to happen. It's been four years and yet Parkland is not like, "Oh, remember when that used to happen." It's instead-

David Hogg: Unfortunately.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -two year and the one year. Why are we failing to do anything?

David Hogg: I've thought a lot about this over the past couple of years. The answer that I've settled on is that when we turned out in 2018 when we went on the news and talked about what had happened and how ridiculous it is that we're in this situation and everything like that, we said the adults failed us. We said, "We need you to do your job because we're trying to do ours and study and get through our classes and do our homework. Our worry shouldn't be whether or not we're going to literally survive high school." The adults said to us in response, "Okay, help us change who is in power by voting and we did."

We voted at one of the highest rates ever in American history in 2018, and we had some minor successes at the federal level granted we didn't change any, per se, at the federal level because of the filibuster and different aspects of Congress, but we did change them at the state level. We changed them in a deeply, deeply Republican legislature in Florida. That is a huge success.

On top of that, we got changes added to how gun violence prevention research is getting it actually funded, and making sure that things like the Dick Amendment don't get in the way of it and various other things like that. What I've thought about over these years is after we did turn out at record numbers and one of the highest rates ever in American history in 2018, and we also turned out at the highest rate ever in American history for young people in 2020, we elected some of the most pro-gun violence prevention to candidates in American history, Joe Biden being included.

What I've come to realize is that the movement is not broken, it's our government that's broken. It's our government that has been extremely corrupted because what I think about is a movement of millions of young people walking out from their high schools and voting and voting at such high rates and everything like that should have been able to change something, especially considering that we literally changed all the power in the House and the Senate and the presidency.

Melissa Harris-Perry: David, you talked a little bit about not having survivor's guilt or working through managing survivor's guilt, and being sure that you continue to do things that you love and finding new things. What are some of the new things that you've discovered that you love and care about?

David Hogg: For one, it's being a college student. Honestly, in my first year, I was not taking care of myself. I was still being driven a lot by the survivor's guilt that I had. I was traveling every weekend going to different states, trying to get the word out about the organization, trying to help build up our team more, and things like that. It just got to a point where, frankly, the trauma that I had not just from the shooting, but the death threats and everything that I know many students who don't get interviews on NPR, for example, have as well was really coming back to me.

I had to fully step back and realize I just need to focus on being a college student and realize that me doing the things that I love is a form of resistance, and it is part of the movement. What it took me realizing is that the movement of gun violence prevention is made up of all these individuals many of whom are survivors and have a massive amount of trauma of course. We have to realize if those individuals are not taking care of themselves, then the movement is not taking care of itself. In that sense, the most selfish thing you could do is to not live your life and not take care of yourself because then other people have to take care of you, and it detracts from other parts of the movement.

Learning to be a college student is one of those things along with picking up different hobbies, talking about history which is what I'm studying in school, especially American history and discussing that and meeting with my professors and hanging out with friends after class and going to parties and stuff like that. It's really about learning to be a college student and not feeling guilty about it. That's been the most healing, but also one of the most challenging things for me is learning to let go.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the worst question you can ever ask a college senior, but I'm going to ask you anyway. What's next for you?

David Hogg: For the time being into the foreseeable future from what I know but people change over time, I'm going to continue working with March For Our Lives as a board member and helping lead it. What our bigger emphasis is on is making sure that the organization doesn't necessarily need to have one person or two people or three people that are out front that are spokespeople for it because it's a movement of young people first and foremost. I'm not always necessarily going to be a young person, unfortunately.

Melissa Harris-Perry: [chuckles].

David Hogg: I think what's next is figuring out how to bring in more young people into the organization, or continuing to do that and train them up in the best way that they can be so they can be in these really higher-level leadership positions that most people are not in until they're often in their 40s or mid-50s. Serving on things like boards and things like that, and learning how to challenge those barriers that a lot of young people face because we are a youth-led organization, that is the whole goal of it. We have some slightly older young people that have graduated college that we employ to help make things happen while we're in college, but we're on the ground doing and everything like that.

I think what's next for me is I'm considering law school, but I'm also wary of how much it costs so I'm trying to figure out. I might take a couple of years off to try to save up for that if I decide to go. I don't know. I have a variety of interests that I'm curious in doing, one of which is social entrepreneurship and a number of other things. These are all things that are up in the air, I could change my mind tomorrow and decide to become something completely different because that's what, as I'm sure you can relate with, college is like. I think regardless, whatever it is, I will always be invested in March For Our Lives, and working in the movement to help change this issue.

Melissa Harris-Perry: David Hogg is a gun violence prevention activist and a co-founder of March For Our Lives. Thank you for joining The Takeaway.

David Hogg: Thank you.

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