Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky sets a new political course
The “March for Our Lives” fall tour begins Friday in Los Angeles, but Parkland shooting survivor Cameron Kasky will not be joining.
“One of the biggest problems I’m seeing in our political discourse right now is the fact that people are not interested in engaging with folks who disagree with them,” Kasky said Thursday in a live interview at the New York Build studio, which is owned by Oath, the parent company of Yahoo News. “I felt that folks who disagreed with me on gun control didn’t care when kids died.”
On the March for Our Lives summer tour, Kasky said he met families in Texas “that have semi-automatic weapons — that I would instantly want to ban — to protect their families.” His experience meeting those people inspired him to change how he approached his and other’s “constitutional-based arguments.”
Referring to Generation Z, Kasky continued, “We’re at a point where we have to look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘Do we want to move forward, or do we want to move farther apart?’”
Kasky said he has learned from “hard mistakes” he made since the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead. He said his personal rhetoric “was aimed more at turning some people against other people as opposed to uniting everybody.”
Meanwhile, the Parkland student activists are gearing up for the 2018 elections with their “Vote for Our Lives” campaign to encourage Generation Z to get out and vote.
“If you look at the efforts from the students at March for Our Lives and the students at many other similar organizations, this is a big year where everybody is going out there and saying ‘Vote,’” said Kasky. “These midterms … are the most important in my lifetime.”
When asked what he’ll be voting for this year, Kasky told Yahoo News, “I’m voting for the people who dedicate themselves to putting their principles over their party, because I think parties suck.”
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