Young people are cleverly using imagery to change the conversation on gun violence

This is solidarity on display

Students protest in front of the White House
(Image credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

On Wednesday, students at nearly 3,000 schools walked out of their classrooms for 17 minutes in honor of the 17 people murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School one month ago. They used the occasion to demand change in a variety of ways and on a variety of platforms. If it was a stunning demonstration of political outrage, it was also, more crucially, proof of a form of generational solidarity we haven't seen in some time. There's a lot these events can teach us about what digital natives can achieve when local activism hooks up with decentralized platforms like Twitter. There might even be some hints here about what the leadership of the future will look like.

The first startling fact is that, unlike every previous outrage cycle over gun violence after a mass shooting, these protests aren't diminishing. In fact, they're growing. They're adapting to include a long and painful history of record-breaking mass shootings, from Columbine to Sandy Hook. And they're adapting to include the less sensational but more pervasive effects of everyday gun violence as well.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.