Name: Kai Khorasani

Social Justice Group: 2022-2023, Mass shootings in the U.S. / School Shooting in US

Date of Fieldwork: February 15, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):N/A

Type of Fieldwork: Documentary

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:

Last week, my group and I watched the documentary, “After Parkland.” After Parkland is a documentary about different students and their families sharing their personal stories of trauma and loss in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Also known as the “Parkland Shooting.” The shooting occurred on February 14, 2018. The shooter was a 19-year-old boy named Nikolas Cruz who opened fire on students, and killed 17 people, injuring 17 others. When I was watching, I felt really heartbroken listening to different families talk about how their kids were killed in the shooting. We were introduced to some activists that are currently helping to prevent gun violence from happening, such as David Hogg, and X González. They are both apart of the youth-lead movement called March For Our Lives. It is dedicated to promoting community engagement, education, and direct action by youth to help eliminate gun violence. I was really interested in one of his quotes. He compared our congress to a sports game, “The referee is being bribed in favor of one team, so we need to change the ref.” Hogg is referring to congress as the refs and the two teams being democrats and republicans. We can “change the refs” by electing different people into congress. Overall, this was a great documentary and I believe that it will inspire whoever watches it to create change.