Emma Gonzalez, 18, Cuban, senior at Stoneman Douglas High School. A passionate speech made her THE face of the protest:
“Politicians sitting in their gilded houses and chairs paid for by the gun lobby NRA tell us: nothing might have prevented something like this… we say: bullshit.”
Again and once more she resolutely wipes the tears from her eyes. That was three days following the school shooting that killed 17 people. The student Emma Gonzalez suddenly became the activist Emma Gonzalez. Painting, drawing, sewing – all her hobbies suddenly became unimportant. Because the young woman with the short hair has only one goal: to change the gun laws in her country. She thinks Trump’s proposal to arm teachers is completely wrong:
“My school had two weeks every year where they were out of paper. And now there’s going to be $400 million to train teachers to gun? Really? Really now?”
More followers than the gun lobby NRA
She doesn’t talk around it for long. She criticizes, accuses, demands. She now has more followers on Twitter than the powerful NRA gun lobby. Many are behind Emma. Others attack them. When a Republican politician, who actually had no opponent in the Maine election campaign, called Emma a skinhead lesbian, a 28-year-old woman decided to run once morest him. The man has since given up.
And Emma? Just keep going. Her mother Beth watches the rapid development in amazement and a little concerned, she says on CBS:
“I’m scared. It’s like she’s made wings out of wood and tape and she’s thrown off a building. We’re walking under her with a rescue net that she doesn’t want or thinks she doesn’t need.”
Activism instead of learning
Emma’s form of mourning: protesting, shaking up. Your life is upside down. If the massacre hadn’t happened, she would now simply be studying for her high school diploma. Emma was born in the year of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado:
“I can’t imagine a world without mass school shootings.”
But Emma and her classmates want to make sure that the students who come following her can go back to school without fear. For this she has been alive since February 14.
