Shots Fired The Voices of Our Youth
march 14th
of 2018 is where my story begins
this was the day of the national student
school walkout where students from all
across the country
protested the ongoing gun violence that
occurs
every day in the united states
my fellow classmates and i walked out of
our classrooms and made calls to
representatives
these calls consisted of us stating our
name and the demands
that we would like to see taken to
mitigate the threat plaguing our
schools for a lot of individuals this is
just a very simple
service it’s a minor interruption in
your coursework
to create change but for me
it wasn’t so simple i like to think of
myself
as a really good student i had great
grades i was in a ton of clubs
and i was even on the student council
but it wasn’t until i was in a room with
my principal
signing a suspension paper that i began
to question who i was as a student
and whether or not i had rights in
school
now you see one of the representative
aides that i spoke with on the phone
called my school and said that i spoke
inappropriately which was enough of a
reason to get me suspended
and stripped of my position on student
council i was devastated
i remember going home crying because who
i was was a student
and to think about all of the effort
that i put into that school
to just get suspended and i never even
had a detention
prior to that
for a bit of context when i care deeply
about something
i might say a word or two that aren’t
the most appropriate
yes i said the f word
no the word was not filibuster or
finance fraud
but it was the f word the big one the
queen mother of dirty words the f
dash dash dash word
now i get it i could have said something
a little bit differently
but at the end of the day i didn’t and
because of who i am
i couldn’t just accept being suspended
over such a minor offense
especially considering two things the
first being if you’ve ever stepped foot
in a high school
you’ve heard worse things let’s just be
honest and the second reason is that we
use our anger and frustration to voice
our opinion over such needless death the
fact
that children are dying in hallways of
their schools
so we should be able to use these words
especially when we’re frustrated
and it’s really no surprise that
students live in fear
of being punished for speaking up about
their beliefs
whether it be students today or students
years ago we’ve constantly been having
to fight
a pretty good example of this is with
the court case tinker versus
des moines this court case goes all the
way back to february of 1969
and it consisted of students wearing
black armbands to signify an
end to the vietnam war and as you can
see
these individuals weren’t really
distracting it was just something that
they wore to sort of
signify an end to that war and the
principal
didn’t really view it that way the
principal said you all
should get suspended so they all got
suspended and these individuals were
questioning
why they got suspended they thought that
they had rights in school they thought
that they were able to speak their minds
freely
so their small court case eventually
made it all the way up to the supreme
court and the supreme court ruled on a
seven
to two decision on behalf of the
students
this was an amazing thing it set a
precedent for students rights it shows
that students have voices
that when you step on your school
grounds your rights don’t just dissipate
but rather you still have your voice
and these individuals set a precedent
for people like me today so fast forward
to
my uh situation i ended up calling the
american civil liberties union
and because like the students in tinker
versus des moines i felt that something
was very very off about my suspension
so i ended up meeting with a lot of
lawyers and these lawyers
sat me down and they asked me every
small detail what did your principal say
to you
how do they treat you when you’re in
that office what did you exactly say
and of course i answered all these
questions and then in a matter of hours
my local newspaper published some small
little thing about
my situation and i didn’t really think
much about it until i saw articles from
the la times
new york times huffington post and cnn
that i began to realize that it’s kind
of a big deal
and as all of you can kind of see this
flattering image of me will forever be
online
i was now part of this this narrative
this narrative consisted not just of
students like me
but of students all across the nation
you probably have heard of students like
david hogg
emma gonzalez cameron caskey and others
who all sort of led and created
something called a march for our lives
this march was to protest against this
ongoing gun violence
and these students eventually made it on
the cover of time magazine
and i really like the word enough
because
enough is enough one school shooting is
too much
i was inspired by these students which
allowed me to go out and want to
talk about gun violence and to call my
representatives and to walk out of my
classroom
and they created the march for our lives
so i always just wanted to participate
but it was really amazing and incredible
when the city organizers of the march
asked me to lead it so that’s what i did
it was an incredibly
amazing experience just looking out into
a sea of people
thousands of people and telling them my
story how i think that we can help
mitigate gun violence to the united
states
and the craziest part about all of this
is that
people were listening to me a high
schooler someone who had been suspended
so for the sake of this speech i just
put in a little
screenshot of it and as again all of you
can see
a flattering image of me yelling into a
microphone will also forever be
on the internet now
afterwards i had people walk up to me
they were asking me questions
how do you think that we could help
mitigate the problem some had me sign
stuff
which was kind of cool i guess and then
other people had a picture of me on
their
protest signs and some of the most
emotional experiences i’ve really ever
had
was when people were crying to me on my
shoulder about a person that they had
lost
to gun violence it was
it gave me a moment of clarity i should
say it gave me a moment of clarity
because i began to realize that
this whole movement consists of people
who support it
even though they don’t even really know
me they were asking me questions even
though this is the first time they had
even
heard about me now
it’s not just students like me like i
said it’s also
students from parkland and we as
individuals
continue to move forward so just because
i made
you know some national news and i helped
lead a march i still had to get that
suspension
off of my back and i had to get my
position on student council
back so i kept moving and pushing
forward after
i had served my suspension i went back
to school
i remember sitting in class one day when
i got called down to the office
so of course i’m nervous i’m walking
down i’m like which representative did i
call today
what word did i say and i ended up going
to the office and i said okay
what’s that what’s the deal and they
handed me a stack of envelopes so
i was very confused i put these in my
backpack and waited until i got home
and i got home and i opened these
envelopes and they were from people
all across the country people from new
york and
l.a and people who were telling me about
how much of a leader i am and how much
of an inspiration i was to them
so i have a couple of them and a couple
lines that i really like a law office
from los angeles said
you’re the kind of leader that we need
right now while you’re on your
suspension
get yourself something nice at starbucks
and then they threw in a gift card
that coffee was really good
and then another individual said
um they wrote my representative a letter
and then sent that letter to me so they
said
i was disturbed to read in the news
about you getting a student suspended
because you did not like what he said
you are a representative in a state
where the worst mass shooting occurred
58 people dead and 500 injured
i have given my information below in
case you want to get me suspended too
these letters gave me hope and i ended
up calling these individuals and
asking them why did you send me a letter
you don’t even know who i am you don’t
know who
i am as a person or anything you just
read some news article
and they told me well in the midst of
all the hate that you’ve been getting
it’s sometimes nice just to go grab a
drink at starbucks and relax
and i agree with that and i was truly
thinking about that because
while people may have read an article
about me in the news they didn’t
understand the
massive amount of hate that i was
getting in my dms and my private
messages
things like that people were calling me
ugly people were calling me
unintelligent
they said i looked like i had a mental
illness people were telling me
and sending me pictures of their
firearms asking if i was scared of them
and this isn’t just a singular incident
this was people
repeatedly doing this and different
people people that were young
that weren’t even of the age of 18
showing me pictures of guns that they
had and
people who were even in their 40s asking
and telling me
if we wanted to meet up so we could
square up so i was really confused
as to all this and it really beat me
down a lot i remember going home
just like i hate all of this hate that
i’ve been getting
but getting letters like this inspired
me it pushed me to move forward
but it wasn’t just letters like this it
was emails that were given to my school
so the huffington post
later released another article about all
of the emails that people had sent
to the school so i put a couple of them
in here
right now because that’s not working
i’ll just read off the screen
the first amendment allows anyone to
exercise it a public official
withers a word spoken by a student to a
staff member and i like this word
how quaint i thought that was kind of
professional
and then this individual a professor
said
why don’t you care it is rather clear
where the leadership resides in your
district
among the students themselves mr
christensen’s application to columbia
university more or less writes itself
and i wanted to include this one because
i truly feel that someone in the
education system standing up for me
is truly incredible it was someone who
engages with students on a day-to-day
basis someone
that wants to talk about the issue of
gun violence and who’s willing to write
an email to a school
and this person i also really like they
said
i ask you i ask that you imagine
yourself in the shoes of a parent
who lost a child to gun violence at the
school in parkland florida
if we do not allow our young people to
take a stain for the things that they
believe that
believe in that most people believe in
then what are we teaching them
we are teaching them that their voice
doesn’t matter so
these are just a couple of the dozens of
emails that people
sent to the school and these gave me
hope
it allowed me to keep moving forward it
pushed me to
want to be a better advocate because
people who didn’t even know me
were standing up for me
which is truly incredible eventually
the school published a letter that you
can find online that says mr
christensen’s
suspension has been overturned and he
gets his position back on student
council i was like
this is amazing i got it back this is
all that i wanted
it was something that that i was working
so hard to get
it was it was incredible having that
feeling but people would ask me
what now like you got it back like
you got your position back you you know
your suspension’s off your record what
are you going to do and i i paused
because i was really thinking about this
and
i realized that this wasn’t just a
one-time event for me
but rather it lit a fire underneath me
where i wanted to keep going
it was something that now i want to be a
better advocate i want to stand up for
more individuals
i want to keep fighting in this fight
but at the end of the day this fight may
include a punishment
but that’s the reason as to why we
protest we know that we might get in
trouble
sometime so we want to keep moving
forward and pushing
through that so for all of the students
in the room
know your rights tinker vs des moines
shows us
that we have rights in school that we
when we step onto school grounds
our rights don’t just disappear we still
are able to speak freely that we have
political freedom that we have the
political expression
to talk about threats plaguing our
schools
and even if you do get in trouble you
can do what i did
call the american civil liberties union
be able to talk to someone
be able to talk to a lawyer and ask them
did they violate my rights
if you are unclear and then you can
continue to push and move forward
there are dozens of examples of student
leaders
such as greta thundberg’s climate
movement putting pressure on politicians
to pass successful environmental
policies you can look at the hong kong
student protesters fighting for their
democracy every single day
you can also look at a video of a girl
on tick tock who
did a makeup video but the makeup video
uh also was spreading awareness
about the uh china persecuting muslims
in their country
or you can do what the parkland students
did like i referenced
earlier you can lead a march you can
call your representatives you can write
letters to your representatives
you can share a message because at the
end of the day it might be fun
to go on facebook or twitter and be like
you’re wrong
but that doesn’t really do anything
because at the end of the day it
probably just makes you more upset
all of the people that were threatening
me didn’t really get anywhere
because look at where i am today see so
by being able to push past that hate
push past that punishment you as an
individual can
create the change necessary and engage
now for all of the
adults in the room you should be willing
to listen
and i understand that you have a lot of
years of experience trust me my parents
tell me all the time
but we still have a voice too
because the difference when i grow up
and the difference when you grow up
grew up is that i have to do shooter
preparedness drills
i’ve had to push tables in front of
doors
i have had to hide in closets
i have had um
i’ve had to do these things and it’s
really sad because i have younger
siblings and they have to do these
things too
whether it be in elementary middle and
high school and even in college
so we all should listen to one another’s
opinion
and everyone has one so maybe
we should listen thank you
[Applause]
you