Marjory Stoneman Douglas students vow to keep up the pressure and get some sensible legislation passed

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

When I met Lorena Sanabria in a park across the street from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., she and her classmates had just walked out of class to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the first major school shooting — Columbine, Colo.

She introduced herself as a “crisis actor.”

Crisis actor is the derogatory name supporters of the National Rifle Association came up with to belittle the MSD H.S. students and deny the shooting in their school ever took place.

Lorena’s reaction? She understands she and her classmates have gotten under the skin of NRA supporters in a way Pulse massacre victims didn’t, in a way the parents of first graders in Sandy Hook didn’t, and in a way hundreds of concertgoers shot and wounded or killed in Las Vegas didn’t.

And her message to the NRA is “We’re not backing down.”

Lorena’s mother said Lorena and her friends are up until 2 a.m. studying and then up at 6 a.m. to get to school to strategize. More than anything, Lorena wanted to be in Dallas to protest the NRA, but she has AP tests next week and has to be home to study. Her mother is helping to keep her focused.

“Emotionally, I wish we could go back to being the people we were before,” Lorena said. “We don’t talk about it much because once we start, it’s impossible to stop. It’s a trigger.”

She said the day of the shooting school started like a normal day. It was Valentine’s Day, so she brought candy and flowers for a few of her friends. The morning routine was interrupted by a fire drill.

“But when we had an alarm sound again at the end of the day, we all thought that was weird,” she said.

She was in the middle of a trig test, but the class began to evacuate.

“I was one of the last to leave,” she said.

She saw a security guard running around, waving his arms and shouting.

“They’re supposed to maintain order,” she said. “Something’s up.”

As she was going downstairs to the exit, she heard a gunshot. Some of the other students were saying it was some sort of simulation. Lorena began to get nervous, so she called her mother so that “she could help me get calm,” she said.

But then she heard more shots. Her teacher directed them into her classroom, taking in more students than just those in her own class before blocking the entrance. Lorena heard some students banging on the door. The teacher refused to unlock the door to let more in, because she thought it would jeopardize those she was already trying to protect.

Students were texting each other across campus; they didn’t know where the shooter was or if it was just one gunman. Lorena hid in a closet in the classroom with about 10 other students for several hours.

Finally, the SWAT team came to the class after 6:30 p.m. and told them to leave everything behind and put their hands on their heads and file out of the building. Lorena said because of the helicopters overhead and the swarm of police cars, “It didn’t feel like school anymore.”

“We exited Douglas,” she said. “I got to the street and saw my mom.”

Since then, she said, her life has changed in so many ways.

After the shooting, Lorena went to Tallahassee and spoke to legislators about changing gun laws. She’s proud of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Safety Act that passed and was signed into law, even though it has a provision students and faculty at the school detest.

The law raises the age for buying a gun and bans bump stocks, both things the students asked for. But it allows schools to participate in arming teachers.

“We don’t want armed teachers,” Lorena said.

Last week, Lorena was in California to speak about the massacre at her school.

“California completely banned AR-15s,” she said. “If they’ve done it, we can too.”

That’s the attitude at Douglas — not only can they do it, but after witnessing gun violence first-hand, they have to.

Lorena said she has to do this, because Joaquin Oliver and Nicholas Dworet were her friends. So were Alaina Petty and Martin Duque. They were four of the 17 students killed on Valentine’s Day. And she knew many of those who were injured. Some of them aren’t strong enough yet to fight for legislation that will prevent this from happening again and again.

In the past, the NRA has taken the lead after a mass shooting by offering thoughts and prayers, diverting attention away from gun violence by calling it a mental health issue and then laughing in the face of survivors when even the mental health legislation they cynically proposed fails to get a single sponsor or get written into a proposed law.

But this time, the Douglas students refused to allow the NRA to run the narrative. The Douglas students want don’t want your thoughts and prayers. One student I met in the park called them disingenuous. Phony. An excuse.

The students at Douglas are a bunch of tough kids. They lived through a horrible event. And they have one message for the NRA and its paid flunkies in Congress: This time a gunman hit the wrong school.