Us Kids
All of this is interconnected.
US KIDS is a documentary about the Parkland Kids who refused to grieve silently for their friends who died that day at Majory Stoneman High and instead went on a crusade to make sure that none of those friends that they lost would have died for nothing. That they would not be another landmark in the endless series of school shootings that Republican politicians, in league with the NRA, would feign grief with their saccharine mantra of “thought and prayers” and quickly move on to trying to shaft yet another segment of the population to serve their masters.
The film is directed by Kim A. Snyder (Peabody Award winning director of Newtown) and features Samantha Fuentes, Emma González, David Hogg, Jaclyn Corin, Cameron Kasky, Alex King, and Bria Smith along with many other young activists from around the country. It follows them through their media appearances after the shooting and then on to their cross country bus campaign to get out the youth vote.
The film is a fascinating study of activism that comes from a tragic event where the participants are struggling with whopping cases of survivor’s guilt, trauma, PTSD, and imposter syndrome. It starts watching Samantha Fuentes trying to convince herself to attend a school event and then goes into her memory of the day she was shot and then to video of Emma González making some of her most impassioned speeches. The film jumps right into the maelstrom of the beginnings of the Parkland activists fight and doesn’t really stop. The group that the students founded, Never Again MSD, held its first rally on February 17, three days after the shooting. They then organized a student walk out and eventually the March On Washington Event on March 24, a little over a month later. One cannot escape the thought that these students were being chased by the agony of the deaths that they could not prevent. In their grief, they had a uniquely clear view of how flawed the system is and how much of what politicians say and do in regards to mass shootings and guns is nothing but bullshit. The usual things that the politicians mock piously trot out, thoughts and prayers.
This anger was an electric current that sprang from the well of their grief and fed the motor that drove them. Instead of grieving, they sprang into action. Was this to avoid dealing with the grief? Perhaps, but it was also because the crime made them so angry that they couldn’t see doing anything else with their lives until they made changes to the toxic status quo. They had had enough. They knew that using their rage and their experience would reach young people and motivate them to rise up too.
One of the really encouraging things about what the Parkland activists did on their tour was when they met Black activists who were already trying to call attention to the danger to their communities in other cities, like Chicago and Minneapolis, and recognized that Black people live with the danger of being shot more often than most Americans, not just when their school falls prey to a mass shooter, they simply invited the Black activists to join the tour and the group. One of the recurrent themes among the Parkland activists is that they do not feel entitled to fame or worthy of being paid attention to and that they know that many other people, especially Black people and people of color have it much worse on a daily basis. In the tradition of activists from different classes and ethnic groups joining together to fight for human rights, they realized the importance and necessity of that unity. They realized very early on that together we are stronger.
The documentary is not simply a sympathetic portrayal of the activists. It shows, particularly in the case of Samantha Fuentes, who is undeniably the beating heart of the documentary, and Cameron Kasky, how much of an emotional toll this took on all of them. For Samantha Fuentes to allow herself to be shown as being that vulnerable is truly brave and also an indictment of the people who believe that vulnerability is weakness. Cameron Kasky also owns up to his confusion and his emotional trauma in a way that is also very brave, since our society is much harder on men showing emotions of sadness and depression than they are on women. While it’s really not considered acceptable to admit to having any kind of strong emotion for anyone, men and boys are particularly penalized for admitting that they don’t have full control of their emotions. Watching Fuentes’ PTSD being triggered while onstage was particularly enraging and disturbing. You can’t help but empathize with her terror and get a small but better understanding of what this kind of trauma does to a person. It’s horrific and it’s something that no one should ever have to feel. It makes you understand what drove these kids to do what they did.
What their activism and the documentary exposes is how immensely fucked up our system is and how we have all been manipulated into believing that somehow, multiple mass shootings every month is normal and a small price to pay for making the Second Amendment aka the right to bear arms more important than the right to life. That lobbying groups like the NRA have their leashes on many of our politicians, so tight that those politicians would let US citizens be murdered regularly. Because gun manufacturers needed more blood to justify increased gun sales of guns that have no place in any scenario other than a battlefield. What these activists realized was how important getting out the vote was, and most importantly, how crucial the youth vote was. They realized how important it was to organize and inform their fellow young people. Jaclyn Corin seems to be one of the group’s members who spends more time doing the organizational work and who made the bus tour possible. They all had their jobs and worked well together. This is the system of a successful political organization built by teenagers.
What became clear to me is that all of this is connected. I watched US KIDS for the first time back in January at the Sundance film festival and I just watched it again to refresh my memory this evening. Things have changed a lot since then. Now, mass shootings aren’t really the problem, but Covid 19 is. You might think that a movie about banning assault rifles and passing gun laws isn’t that relevant right now, but it is. The only reason mass shootings aren’t the problem right now is because we have been forced into a half-assed semi-quarantine where most schools are shut down and gatherings are forbidden. Now, we are more familiar with the rage and depression that the Parkland kids faced. We watched as New York City was under siege to a hellish surge of Covid 19 deaths in March and April. A surge where refrigerated trucks held the over flow of bodies from city hospitals. Helplessly, we see our whole country start to turn red with an uncontrolled pattern of infection. For the first time, we are all part of a high casualty event that our government is doing nothing to stop. If you remember, they have actually said that a certain amount of deaths are acceptable to “save the economy”. It was only a matter of time until they finally said that out loud. But our government and our politicians have been sacrificing children at schools and people in businesses to mass shooters for some time now. The Parkland Kids’ message that we need to get out the vote is even more important now and their activism was one of the many important building blocks that has gotten us to the current record turn out at the polls. Dealing with Covid 19 isn’t exactly the same thing as watching your friends and classmates die in front of you, but I think that many of us can relate to what the Parkland teens went through much better now.
Here is the message of the film, that even under pressure and while dealing with trauma, these kids could make a difference and they did. They still are. We can definitely do the same and we need to continue doing it into the future. The lesson that trauma teaches you is to be endlessly vigilant and the United States has been complacent for too long. But we can change our country and our lives. We matter, our lives matter, and we have to be responsible for telling politicians that they can’t bullshit us anymore. Watch this film and feel hope and the certainty that things don’t have to be the way they always been. That things can change and quite often, young people will lead the way.