After Parkland, a new generation finds its voice

On a bus to Tallahassee on Florida’s State Road 91 on Tuesday, Drew Schwartz sits with a scrum of fellow students planning the logistics of their march on the state capital, just hours away.

“Right now it’s all hands on deck,” says Drew, a 17-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., site of the nation’s most recent mass shooting and where 14 of these students’ fellow classmates died. “We divide the work the best we can, and then divide the work based on who is best at what,” he says in a phone interview with the Monitor from the bus. “This march will be crucial to the core campaign.”

But even amid the furious scramble of these determined student activists, Drew can only take a breath and reflect on the maelstrom that began last week on Valentine’s Day. As a student board member, he was bringing carnations to classrooms when the first shots rang out, and the course of his life was suddenly altered.

“This is a really new thing for me,” says Drew, mentioning how strange it feels to have gone from a kid who liked to

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