Global Dialogues

As I prepare to graduate in five months and enter the world that some think “the older generations” have shaped for me, passing the workforce into a new generation, I buck that agency-reducing framework. I, as a young student and activist, am not the future, I am the present. Through the wonderful conversation I was honored to be part of with Professor Paul Elie, Aina García Mestre, and Carl Jambo, I got to explore these tensions.

While I do not have a mortgage or an insurance policy under my name yet, I have been an active role in shaping this world for the last few years. I joined the gun violence prevention movement when I was in 8th grade, volunteering with Students Demand Action for the last seven-and-a-half years to advance survivor-informed policies at the local, state, and federal level. I started meeting with my state legislators around these issues I know all too well, as a gun violence survivor and a member of the Lockdown Generation, at age 15. As a 16 and 17 year old, I lead a team to register 500 voters between the ages of 18-29 in my home state of Kentucky ahead of the 2020 elections. At age 19, I rallied in front of the Supreme Court to support domestic violence survivors. At age 21, I led a group of peers to knock 1,200 doors and Get Out The Vote in Philadelphia the weekend before the 2024 election. Now, by age 22, as I am beginning to transition my leadership roles, I am most proud of how my peers and I have refused to give up, even in the face of very powerful lobbies and a whole industry built on our terror. I will not be inheriting my future as I cross the graduation stage in May; I have been working to make the change I want to see in the world from before I could drive, before I could vote, and before I had any professional titles to my name. Please do not just include Generation Z in your visions of the future, we have been here, doing the work, for years. 

However, my generation needs to carefully consider those older than us. We did not engineer the gun violence public health crisis that plagues our country and we need to recognize that pointing fingers at all of the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millenials does not solve the problem. Rather, the very two women who first got me involved were Gen Xers and the leader who inspires me the most is a Baby Boomer. Rather, we fill in each other’s gaps. In 2024, at age 20, I was tasked with leading the Kentucky delegation of Moms Demand Action volunteers through our Capitol Hill lobby day. We would be meeting with every single office in our state’s delegation, both House and Senate. I felt scared by the daunting prospect of navigating the Hill’s tunnels, discussing in-depth policies to leaders who are notoriously against gun safety measures, and keeping track of everyone. However, we found success as a group only when we learned to lean into each other’s strengths: when I was trusted to coordinate plans with our national team over text and to find our meetings with Google Maps, when the Moms volunteers led our meetings by sharing their stories and policy details. We, the different generations, need each other to create the world we want to see, recognizing each other as the present, the now, and the knowledgeable. For my work in the gun violence prevention movement, intergenerational solidarity is essential.