“I think we have to fight really hard … to not accept or get used to something that’s so unjust,” Kim Snyder said Wednesday.
The documentary filmmaker was speaking via Zoom to an audience at The Ware Center in Lancaster after a screening of her film “Us Kids,” about the aftermath of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida, in which a lone shooter killed 17 people and injured another 17.
Surviving students launched a movement that led to a worldwide day of protest, the March for Our Lives. The movie portrays their efforts to build public support for tighter gun regulation and reduce the National Rifle Association’s political power.
Official trailer: ‘Us Kids’
America has become a country that people elsewhere are scared to visit, Snyder said; Americans need to understand gun violence as a public health issue and as a human rights issue for children.
“Us Kids” builds on Snyder’s earlier work, including “Newtown,” about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults. (On Wednesday, a jury ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay $965 million to victims’ families for his lies about the incident.)
Joining Snyder on Zoom Wednesday evening were Samantha “Sam” Fuentes, one of the Parkland students featured in “Us Kids,” as well as Alex King, a young activist from Chicago also featured in the film.
Snyder and Fuentes were logging in from Fort Lauderdale, where they were awaiting the jury verdict in the penalty phase of the Parkland shooter’s trial. On Thursday, the jury recommended against the death penalty, instead calling for life in prison without parole.
Fuentes, who shares moments of deep emotional vulnerability in the film, said she trusted Snyder to tell her story respectfully. She said she wanted viewers to understand that the trauma of a school shooting affects whole communities and persists for years after the incident itself.
That resonated with former Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, one of four local panelists who weighed in on “Us Kids” before the screening. Gray, who was in office when the Nickel Mines shooting occurred in 2006, serves on the board of CeaseFire PA. He said it’s outrageous that gun rights are prioritized over children’s right to life and the safety of society at large.
“You want to talk about terrorism? This is it,” he said.
Kevin Ressler, president & CEO of United Way of Lancaster County, invited the audience to view “Us Kids” as a case study in the role of strategic thinking and sustained grassroots work in political activism. Mass protests are energizing and draw media attention, but “change doesn’t happen in that moment,” he said.
Brendan O’Malley, Chief Deputy Attorney General for Pennsylvania, said he’s learned too much about policy at the federal level to expect significant change there. Reform will instead have to happen state by state, he said.
Panelist Josh Beltre, a recent hire in Lancaster’s Department of Neighborhood Engagement, said he was riding in a car in Orlando a dozen years ago when it was bumped by another car. Its occupants reacted aggressively when Beltre and his companions complained; Beltre, then 17, was shot and nearly killed. He needed 10 surgical operations and said he still has physical complications.
Beltre lauded King and Fuentes as heroes and asked them what he could do to help.
Building community and bringing people together is important, King said: “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
Gray said he thinks the rising generation of young adults, politicized by a childhood of active-shooter drills and the ever-present threat of assault rifles, might be the ones to shift the U.S. “in the direction of reasonable regulation.”
“Maybe there is hope in the future,” he said.
