It was hot in the Allderdice High School library on Thursday afternoon.
Students, dressed in T-shirts and shorts, fanned themselves in the absence of air-conditioning.
For David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and an outspoken advocate for gun control, it was a perfect example of the kind of issue students should speak up about. What’s stopping Allderdice students from discussing the need for a cooling system with the principal and the school board?
“What I ask of you is to join us in this fight, whether it’s gun violence or any other issue, whether it’s air-conditioning at your school,” he told them.
Mr. Hogg, 19, and Erica Ford, an anti-violence activist from New York City, were hosted by the Allderdice chapter of Students Demand Action, a student-led initiative of Everytown for Gun Safety. About two dozen students stayed after school to pick their brains about how they can be advocates in their own community.
Allderdice was touched by community gun violence more than once this year. Eleven people were killed in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in October, just a mile from the Squirrel Hill school. A classmate, 16-year-old Jonathan Freeman, was shot and killed in January while he playing video games at a friend’s house. And the death of 17-year-old Antwon Rose last June and the March trial of Michael Rosfeld, the East Pittsburgh police officer who shot him, grabbed the attention of the entire Pittsburgh region this past year.
“I think, this year, our school has gone through some serious stuff regarding gun violence,” said sophomore Abigail Segel, a member of Students Demand Action. “So I’m really glad he came.”
The Allderdice students spoke with Mr. Hogg for about an hour, asking him questions about how he practices self-care, how he deals with hateful comments directed at him and how he thinks the underlying causes of gun violence could be addressed.
His message to them was simple: vote.
March for Our Lives, a nationwide movement of young people calling for gun violence prevention policies following the shooting in Parkland, doesn’t support candidates who are Republican or Democrat, Mr. Hogg said. Rather, they support “morally just” candidates who care to prevent another mass school shooting and who aren’t supported by special-interest lobbies like the National Rifle Association.
“It shouldn’t be on our generation to take action on this,” he said. “It should have been on the generations that this happened to before.
Don’t let this conversation die in this room.”
Elizabeth Behrman: Lbehrman@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1590 or @Ebehrman on Twitter.
First Published: May 23, 2019, 10:04 p.m.
