In this file photo, Meredith Gallagher, then 15, of Cuyahoga Falls, the organizer of the Akron March for Our Lives event to end gun violence, yells into the microphone as she leads a rally at Highland Square. March 24, 2018. Photo by Karen Schiely.
Bree Chambers was 12 years old when a gunman tore through Sandy Hook Elementary, killing 27 people, including 20 young children.
At 17, the Akron native helped organize a walkout at Firestone High School after 17 students were shot dead at Parkland High School.
But now, following the most recent mass murder at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the 21-year-old can’t help but think about all the kids who never got to do the things she did: graduate high school, attend college and begin a career while looking forward to graduate school this fall.
And all the hope she had years ago is running out.
“Since I was a child, I’ve grown up watching other children die in school,” she said. “I am tired in a way that I have never experienced in my life because it has just been this. It has always been this.”
In 2018, Chambers and her classmates wanted to take a stand against gun violence amid the nationwide “March for our Lives” movement organized by survivors of the Parkland High School shooting.
“It could’ve very easily been me, my friends, my classmates, my teachers, and that was a very profoundly disturbing feeling,” she recalled.
Four years later, Chambers said feels jaded, having lost any hope that elected officials will do anything to prevent another mass shooting in schools.
“I miss the version of myself that thought that change was a possibility,” Chambers said. “Every time this happens, a part of that version of myself dies.”
Lawmakers are 'not listening to the words we're saying'
Chambers is not alone. Young activists are losing steam, barraged by a seemingly endless cycle of tragedy eclipsed by another tragedy.
“It's the worst-case scenario on both ends, like a racially motivated attack, and an attack on children,” said 20-year-old Akron resident Sarah Sterns, referencing the white supremacist assailant in Buffalo, New York, who murdered 10 people in a grocery store just 10 days before the Texas shooting. “And our legislators are doing literally nothing.”
Sterns was a 16-year-old student when she helped organize Akron’s March for our Lives rally in 2018. Her frustration has deepened over the years due to not only “lack of action” at the statehouse.
“I think [our legislators] hear us, like they hear the noise we make, but they're not listening to the words we're saying,” Sterns said. “I wish that we had more conversation on this, because it seems that we only talk about these tragedies when they happen. It's horrific and it’s disappointing.”
Zale Piepho, a 20-year-old studying environmental science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, was also a teenage activist at the time of the Parkland shooting.
Piepho described increased anxiety throughout their schooling beginning as early as fourth grade, when their class was given training on how to respond to an active school shooter.
“It made us sitting ducks, like soda cans lined up on a fence at a shooting range,” Piepho said. “It was common for friends of mine to break down crying in fear of a shooting. … [March for Our Lives] seems so long ago, yet it feels as if nothing has changed.”
It appears any progress they were fighting for years ago has actually backpedaled, Piepho said, citing even further loosened laws, including recent passage of a law earlier this year that allows all Ohioans 21 and older to carry a concealed firearm without a permit, training or background check.
“Lawmakers need to enact legislation that puts people's lives first,” Piepho said. “The whole point of having a society and a government is to improve the lives, safety, and security of citizens. ... We are sacrificing our children, laying down the lives of our most marginalized communities, and turning to cheer for gun rights.”
What solutions are activists still trying to fight for?
Aside from recurring calls for gun restrictions, assault rifle bans and background checks, young activists want to affect change at the problem's root cause.
"Nothing is different except we teach our kindergarteners to hide from the bad guy with a gun instead of taking the bad guy’s gun," Chambers said.
Chambers voiced support for mandatory media literacy in schools, saying that a lot of the bigotry and hatred that run rampant in many of the young men committing mass shootings begins online, motivated by conspiracy theories.
“We need to make sure people know how to read a thing online and not instinctually believe it to be true,” she said. “It is beyond me how people are not taught to think critically.”
They're also advocating for mental health assistance and other social support systems to be readily available for those who need it.
"Gun violence is not just a student's issue," Piepho said. "It is an intimate partner violence issue. It is a mental health and suicide issue. It is a racial justice issue. It is a public safety issue. Ohioans deserve to be safe."
Meredith Gallagher, a 20-year-old studying anthropology at Princeton University who helped organize the 2018 march, emphasized the importance of more people joining the movement.
"It's really unfair that we expect teenagers to be the only ones to care enough about these things to actually spark movements," she said. "Why does it have to be the kids who are scared of going to school every day? It's often teenagers who are leading things. We need more buy in and participation from other people."
And even though she’s feeling dejected by the string of tragedies since Sandy Hook in 2012, Chambers said her heart “has to be in” the fight for her generation and future ones to come.
“There is no happy ending right now,” she said. “I feel like we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to manufacture one but at the end of the day we are chanting the same things and marching the same routes that we did in 2012 and nothing is different except more kids are dead.”
Beacon Journal staff writer Seyma Bayram contributed to this report.
Originally published in the Akron Beacon Journal on May 27, 2022.