Co-Authored By: Pat Paluzzi & Alexandra Eisler

I am on a number of listservs and recently read a thread that exemplified some of what we are discussing here at Healthy Teen Network, as we try to make sense of our feelings about the response to the incredible coverage of the advocacy following the Parkland shooting.  

Someone posted that there will be a dedicated safe space for youth and families from Parkland who will be participating in the March 24th March for Your Life in Washington D.C., and may be triggered. Someone responded asking why all youth would not be offered a safe space, as many in attendance may be triggered. Stating, “As an example, among the 343 murders in Baltimore last year, 110 were of youth under age 26. Youth who travel to Washington from other similarly affected communities or have experienced less publicized gun violence at school might also need support.”   

Living and working in Baltimore, where a 72-hour Ceasefire when no one was killed is cause for celebration, likely jades our views of gun violence and youth. And the contrast of attention given to the Parkland youth versus youth in Baltimore makes us wonder—is it racism, classism, or something more that causes the world to pay attention to one set of voices and ignore, and even demonize, another? 

There are as many as 33,000 gun-related deaths every year in the United States, and while mass shootings tend to be the focus of national news stories, they account for less than half of 1 percent of gun deaths each year (Luca, Malhotra, and Poliquin 2016).  Further, of the 3,702 firearm homicides committed against youth in 2015, 88% were carried out against youth of color (CDC 2016). Obviously the majority of these shootings did not occur in schools, but in communities, and even more obviously the outcry from this level of violence has not captured our attention to the extent that the Parkland youth have been able to garner (unless you count the national attention after the Freddie Gray death, but that is another story altogether). 

Parkland students have gotten unprecedented positive attention for their efforts, and we are thrilled to see it and fully support these youth and all that they have accomplished. It is this kind of activism that has triggered movements in the past and led to change.  We would never suggest that this attention is unwarranted. What we do suggest, however, is that youth of color dying in their communities from gun violence also warrant this attention.   

It is easy to say that you cannot compare these types of violence, and there is some truth to that. However, at the end of the day, young people are dead and that is a tragedy. And it is no more or less of a tragedy if they are killed by an estranged classmate while in school than if they are killed by a stray bullet from a gang member walking home from school. 

Is advocacy a black or white issue? Listen to Brittany Packnett, have your own discussions, and then you decide.  

In the meantime, our call to action is to make sure we are empowering all youth voices, letting youth know that their brown or black skin does not make them less significant. And we need to be doing what we can to address the isolation and estrangement that leads someone to kill their classmates or join a gang and kill their neighbors. Moreover, we need to be investing heavily in black and brown communities who’ve largely been stripped of the resources that their peers in places like Parkland have benefited from. That means funding robust liberal arts education, creating opportunities for growth and employment, addressing issues of crime with social justice-oriented solutions and not militarized law enforcement, to name a few.