The lanky 19-year-old with a mop of hair and a baby face sat in a small chair in a cramped conference room, wearing an orange hoodie, wind pants, and black Nikes. He wouldn’t look one bit out of place tossing a Frisbee 10 blocks away on Schenley Plaza, and by any reasonable estimation, that’s the kind of place he should be.
Instead, a year, three months and eight days after 14 of his classmates and three of his teachers were gunned down and his life was irrevocably changed, David Hogg on Wednesday was on the second floor of a building on Melwood Avenue in Oakland, talking with other people his age about activism and spreading a simple message – unite against gun violence.
“I’m not going to stop until I stop breathing,” he said. “Even if we don’t cross the finish line in this generation ... what I define as winning is giving people the chance to cross that finish line in the future, for kids that aren’t even here yet.”
Mr. Hogg, was a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, 2018, when a former student entered with an AR-15 rifle. In the immediate aftermath, Mr. Hogg he and a small cadre fellow students brought their grief and outrage to national media. On Wednesdy, he and Erica Ford, a New York-based anti-violence advocate, were guests at the fourth youth activism meeting at 1Hood Media, a collective of socially conscious Pittsburgh artists and activists.
“The only reason I went out and spoke in the first place was for people like my sister who lost so many friends that day,” he said. “The pain that she was going through, for the first time in my life, I felt empathy, really, really strongly for someone else. I felt my sister’s emotions so strongly.
“I want our shooting to be one that in future generations they would look back and say this is when they started creating a change and started uniting a movement to realize that mass shootings, everyday shootings, gun suicides and police brutality are all forms of gun violence.
“It may be different people that are pulling the trigger, but in the end it causes trauma and suffering.”
In the 15 months since the Parkland shootings, he, his family, and classmates have been the subject of numerous death threats as well as unceasing vitriol from gun advocates.
He simply dismisses them: “You just realize they’re bullies … the NRA has as much to do with gun violence as big tobacco has to do with lung cancer — they have everything to do with it.”
Asked what he might say to members of the Tree of Life Congregation and the Squirrel Hill community, who are less than seven months removed from a mass shooting that left 11 dead, Mr. Hogg took a long pause.
“It’s hard to say things about something that shouldn’t happen.”
Also Wednesday, Guns Down America and CeaseFirePA hosted a town hall discussion on potential solutions to gun violence with state Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Lincoln-Lemington, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, Greater Coalition of Pittsburgh Against Violence co-convener Tim Stevens and Guns Down America founder Igor Volsky at the Jeron X. Grayson Community Center in the Hill District.
Mr. Peduto said that if federal and state governments are reluctant to make changes to stop violence, people can push for change at the local level.
“There is a logic that would say that if people were waking up every morning and toasters were catching on fire and people were losing their lives, the first thing we would do is fix the toasters,” Mr. Peduto said. “For some reason, the logic doesn’t apply to this issue.”
Mr. Gainey said banks and corporations must also be held accountable. He said activists should refuse to do business with various companies and banks until they explain their plans to push for gun violence prevention. Guns Down America has created a campaign called “Is Your Bank Loaded?” to grade banks on their links to the gun industry.
“Banks have unique leverage with the gun industry, and they should not be doing business with the industry given its current business practices,” Mr. Volsky said. “Our hard-earned dollars that we put in those banks should not fund the gun industry, either.”
Dan Gigler: dgigler@post-gazette.com; Twitter @gigs412
First Published: May 23, 2019, 10:18 a.m.
Updated: May 23, 2019, 10:20 a.m.
