Microstory 904: Loud Nonvoting Activists

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Months ago, I was enjoying a vacation with my family when news broke of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I was horrified, of course, but also struck by how well-spoken many of the survivors were about what had happened. This wasn’t the first school shooting, nor was it the last, not even that month. We have been forced to surrender to the fact that school violence is just the way it is, but these students decided that that was not acceptable. I suddenly found myself awe-inspired by a handful of teenagers, many of whom were not yet old enough to vote in this country. We have always enjoyed a healthy dose of nonvoting activists, but these kids were taking it to the extreme, and I’m proud to call them my heroes. Old people have long complained of how annoying “kids these days are” and how they’re so much better. Well here’s a news flash. This planet is in shambles right now. The reason there are so many more disaster movies than there used to be is because we can see ourselves falling to all that. And you know whose fault that is? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the millennials, who are only now reaching positions of power. You need us, and the generation after us, because we’re the ones who are gonna clean up all this shit you’ve let build up. Several weeks ago, I found myself at a town hall meeting in Kansas City, Kansas, hosted by a couple organizations, one being March for Our Lives. The panel was composed exclusively of high school and college-aged people, and they were more eloquent than anyone in the so-called “GOP” could ever hope to be. They certainly made their point better than I am right now. So if you want to know more about what we need to do to change the world, I recommend you start paying attention to the loud nonvoting, and first-time voting, activists.