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As a Parkland Shooting Survivor, This Is What I Want Brett Kavanaugh to Know About Gun Violence


A stark image stood out in a tumultuous week of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh: The judge declining to shake hands with a man who lost a child in the tragic Parkland, Florida school shooting in February.

Kavanaugh walked away from the father of Jaime Guttenberg, who was among 17 people murdered in the Valentine’s Day rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The encounter sparked a range of responses from Twitter users, with many suggesting that it was a visual representation of where conservatives stand on gun control reform.

But on Friday, the issue of gun violence was upon Kavanaugh again when the Senate Judiciary Committee heard an emotional testimony from Stoneman Douglas survivor Aalayah Eastmond.

Kavanaugh has defended his dissent in a case related to a ban on semi-automatic rifles—the weapon of choice in the Parkland slayings. Still, the judge, whose two daughters joined him (for a time) at the hearings, says he knows the U.S. must address gun violence.

Not convinced: Eastmond, who spoke at the March For Our Lives rally and became a youth advocate with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and student-led Team ENOUGH.

Eastmond was appalled by the judge’s refusal to engage with Jaime’s dad at the hearing: “The amount of disrespect is unimaginable, and this is who, ‘so-called President’ nominated,” tweeted the Parkland senior. “See you Friday Kavanaugh.”

At the hearing, she used the horror she had seen at her own school (she hid under the body of a dead classmate to survive the shooting), and also the loss of an uncle to a shooting in Brooklyn, New York, to raise questions about Kavanaugh’s views on gun control: “As you make your final decision, think about it as if you had to justify and defend your choice to those who we lost to gun violence,” she urged the committee in her prepared remarks.

On the eve of her Senate testimony, Eastmond talked to Glamour about her decision to speak against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Here are the highlights, in her own words.

I’m here to testify at Kavanaugh’s hearing [so] people can understand that gun violence is an everyday problem… Lives are being taken every day. And not only that, but lives in urban communities, every day.

I was there on February 14th. And I was in Room 1214, which was the third classroom the shooter shot into, and I had to hide underneath one of my deceased classmate’s bodies to survive. That is the story that I’m sharing [so] people can understand that it’s not, you know, normal. And it shouldn’t be normalized.

I saw things that nobody should have seen and that nobody should have to see in their lifetime. Being in school, [a] place where you should feel safe and you’re learning—in fact, I was in Holocaust History [class], learning about hate and terror. And just to experience that right after going over [a] hate groups project was just unimaginable, and a coincidence.

Hearing gunshots and not knowing what gunshots sound like. Not knowing what to do and then just thinking in a survival-mode type of way to do what I did, which was hide underneath a body. Smelling the gunpowder and seeing the smoke, and seeing the red on the floor and having flesh and body matter in my hair. At the age of 17 in school — [well] I was 16 at the time — that shouldn’t be.

I shouldn’t have to be talking about this, and I’m not the only one that has this story. There’s people all over the country that share similar stories.

It’s something that nobody wants to talk about — and it’s something that I am forced to talk about every day. [It’s] not only just what I experienced, but the fact that black and brown youth are disproportionately impacted by gun violence every day.

I don’t think [Kavanaugh] should be [a] Supreme Court judge. Period. [If] we’re gonna have a judge on the highest court of the land, they need to be a judge that recognizes the issue of gun violence and the epidemic that the youth is experiencing every day, and he doesn’t recognize that it’s a problem, so I don’t think he should be getting that seat.

[Based on] his comments towards the Second Amendment, he doesn’t believe it should be altered or changed at all because it’s “a well-regulated militia” and everybody deserves the right to own a gun. But I disagree, because your freedom to own a gun is not more important than my freedom to live.

If he doesn’t have the decency to shake a hand of a father of a victim, he definitely will not have the decency to make changes and decisions that will impact the lives of people every day… I honestly just think we need a different nominee. I think we’ve seen enough of Kavanaugh, and I don’t think we should wait any longer for him to say anything else, because we clearly know what his stance is on the Second Amendment and other things as well.

I’m sure Fred Guttenberg [father of Parkland student Jaime Guttenberg] would have loved to bring his daughter.

Fred had a daughter, too, that lost her life on February 14. And I don’t appreciate Kavanaugh not addressing that. I feel like he will [not] recognize that it’s an issue until he loses one of his kids, or until he loses a family member, so he understands the pain and the way that it impacts you and that it’s senseless.

So that’s how I look at it: [Kavanaugh] can bring his kids wherever, but don’t wait until your kids are gone for you to care.

I have faith that he will not [be confirmed]. I hope he doesn’t, but I can’t tell the future. All I know is that we’re [going] to share our stories and our views and opinions on him, and hopefully they hear us out and they take action.

At times, it’s frustrating, because I shouldn’t have this story and I shouldn’t have had to experienced that. But it is important that I share my story, so people can again get a different perspective and understand that it is an issue that impacts everybody — no matter the color of their skin or where they live. It is a problem in America, and it needs to be fixed.

Right now, I’m okay, because I have my fellow Team ENOUGH members supporting me here. So I’m not worried, and I know that we are stronger than Kavanaugh and any of his views, and I know that we can take him down, no matter what.

You can watch Eastmond’s full testimony, here.

Celeste Katz is senior politics reporter for Glamour. Send news tips, questions, and comments to celeste_katz@condenast.com.

MORE: Piper Perabo: ‘It Was a Privilege’ to Get Arrested for Protesting Brett Kavanaugh Hearings





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Jennifer Aniston Is Teaming Up With Parkland Survivors to Speak Out About Gun Control


Jennifer Aniston has been one of the most famous women in the world since the ’90s. But while the press was focused on her personal life and Friends fame, few established where Aniston stands on important issues. When you speak to Aniston, though, it’s clear she feels passionately—about gun control, about our country’s future, and about finding the right moment to speak out.

Enter WE Day, an event that brings together young people dedicated to making a difference with world-renowned speakers, celebrities, and performers to kick off a year of social action. At this year’s event, which took place in California in April, Aniston teamed up with Parkland survivors Cameron Kasky and Jaclyn Corin. (A one-hour special about WE Day airs this Friday on ABC.)

For Aniston, it was a chance to work with future leaders. “It’s just an incredible thing to be amongst these young powerful people who are our future and making a difference,” she tells Glamour. “It’s wonderful to sit back and actually know that we’re going to be OK because of this generation.”

To say the actress was impressed by the young people she met, including Kasky and Corin, would be a massive understatement. “I think it’s just remarkable to watch what’s happened [after the Parkland shooting],” she says. “I just think, ‘Thank god.’ You know, as I watched what these kids were doing I told my team that I wanted to get involved, but I didn’t know what that looked like. Was it a documentary? What was it? I knew I didn’t want it to be celebrity-fueled. I wanted to hear the voices of these kids.”

“I think that growing up in the digital age or the social media age has given them a voice to connect people,” she continues. “Sometimes there’s just not that human contact thanks to phones, but this generation is using it in a different way. I really think that people from both parties are listening. It just feels different, like there has been an actual shift.”

As for the issue of gun control itself, Aniston is a long-time supporter. “We’ve been doing things for a while, like PSAs [about the issue], ads, and it hasn’t worked. I just don’t know why this is such a hard issue to fix,” she says. “It seems like it should be simpler. Nobody is trying to take away the right to bear arms. It’s just about adding a little structure around it and making it harder to buy a gun than to drive a car, you know?”

Of course, Kasky and Corin are happy to have Aniston on their side. “We’re so happy she’s working with us on this,” Kasky told Glamour. Corin agrees, “We’re grateful she’s using the platform that she’s created in another way to amplify the voices of the young people, because that’s what is really important.”

“We sometimes get starstruck,” Kasky continues. “Like there was one young woman from Memphis who has been helping the homeless people in that city, or thousands of others like her who are helping the world because they want to make it better.”

The pair, who are two of the leading voices in the March for Our Lives movement, shared strategies with some of other activists taking part in WE Day and spoke about their plans for community outreach, which took the form of the Road to Change bus tour across America this summer.

“The most important thing is getting to see other students who have seen what we’ve done and want to seek out the leadership positions that we were thrust into,” Kasky says. “That gives us energy, them stepping into the positions of leadership. Pleasant comments on the Internet are nice, but what really energizes us and keeps us going is seeing other kids taking action, like with the walkouts across the country on March 14.”

“We’re going to people, doing face-to-face educating, and making sure people are voting,” Corin adds. “That’s our plan for the summer and after—all the way through the midterms and beyond too.”

The WE Day 2018 special airs on ABC on August 17, 8 PM ET.



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Barack Obama Praises 5 Parkland Survivors In Powerful 'Time' Essay


For his entry in Time‘s 100 Most Influential People list, former President Barack Obama chose five student survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting on February 14 that left 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Singling out Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Emma González, and Alex Wind, Obama wrote a powerful essay on how the students are helping to change the conversation around gun control without the institutional backing of politicians.

“Seared by memories of seeing their friends murdered at a place they believed to be safe, these young leaders don’t intimidate easily,” he writes in the piece.

Obama begins by addressing the canned “thoughts and prayers” response used by many politicians in the wake of a mass shooting. “America’s response to mass shootings has long followed a predictable pattern. We mourn. Offer thoughts and prayers. Speculate about the motives,” he writes. “And then — even as no developed country endures a homicide rate like ours, a difference explained largely by pervasive accessibility to guns; even as the majority of gun owners support commonsense reforms — the political debate spirals into acrimony and paralysis.”

“This time, something different is happening,” he continues. “This time, our children are calling us to account.”

Obama went on to point out that although the student activists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School don’t have “the kind of lobbyists or big budgets for attack ads that their opponents do,” with most of them not even being able to vote yet, “they have the power so often inherent in youth: to see the world anew; to reject the old constraints, outdated conventions and cowardice too often dressed up as wisdom. The power to insist that America can be better.”

Writing that student leaders like Cameron, Jaclyn, David, Emma, and Alex don’t “intimidate easily,” Obama commends them for taking on the powerful opponents of gun control. “They see the NRA and its allies — whether mealymouthed politicians or mendacious commentators peddling conspiracy theories — as mere shills for those who make money selling weapons of war to whoever can pay,” he writes. “They’re as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry. And they live to mobilize their peers.”

“Already, they’ve had some success persuading statehouses and some of the biggest gun retailers to change,” he adds. “Now it gets harder. A Republican Congress remains unmoved. NRA scare tactics still sway much of the country. Progress will be slow and frustrating.”

As he wraps up the piece, the former POTUS gives readers a look into a future in which young activists like the Parkland students have effected powerful change. “But by bearing witness to carnage, by asking tough questions and demanding real answers, the Parkland students are shaking us out of our complacency,” he writes. “The NRA’s favored candidates are starting to fear they might lose. Law-abiding gun owners are starting to speak out. As these young leaders make common cause with African Americans and Latinos — the disproportionate victims of gun violence — and reach voting age, the possibilities of meaningful change will steadily grow.”

Previously, Barack and Michelle Obama wrote a letter to the student survivors, praising them for their powerful actions, including organizing the March for Our Lives after the shooting. “We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy,” the Obamas wrote. “Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but you’ve helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the country’s top priority. Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.”

You can read the rest of former president Obama’s Time 100 essay here.



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