March for Our Lives: Magical Teens or Something Much Bigger?

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg speaks onstage at March for Our Lives on March 24 in Washington, D.C.
Getty Images

March for Our Lives: Magical Teens or Something Much Bigger?

Just below the surface lies a much more important dimension that journalists won’t talk about.

Hundreds of thousands of young people gathered across the United States on Saturday, March 24 to “March for Our Lives.” They were protesting gun violence and advocating stricter gun laws after 17 students and teachers died in the Parkland school shooting of February 14.

I talked about this on my March 26 radio show:

In Washington, D.C., about 200,000 people attended the march (organizers placed the number at closer to 800,000). As many as 800 similar marches were held across the U.S. on the same day.

In Washington, people heard from Parkland survivors—teens who have appeared on cnn, msnbc and Fox News. These are the faces and voices of the movement. But is this nationwide movement really just the work of a few teenagers?

At the Trumpet, we have drawn attention to how this news story matches a prophecy in Isaiah 3. God prophesies in verse 4 that He will take away strong leaders from our nations and He “will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.”

The teenagers are rising up, and their parents are not even mentioned. The press is practically drooling over these young people, marveling at how wonderful and smart they are. The idea is: Now that the youth are taking over, we will finally have change. That’s Isaiah 3 incarnate.

However, there is another dimension to this story. Although the news reports give the impression that this agenda is driven purely by teens from Parkland and elsewhere, that is not the case. These youths are the face of the movement, but someone else is working behind the scenes organizing the protests and walkouts; advising when, where and how to apply political pressure; and maximizing media coverage.

This strong political movement is not the work of a bunch of teenagers working on their own.

David Hines wrote a revealing story for the Federalist on March 1: “Why Did It Take Two Weeks to Discover Parkland Students’ Astroturfing?” He talked about the immediate reaction of the press after the tragedy. The young people who survived the shooting were thrust in front of the cameras, and the media heaped praise on them: Wow, they’re mobilizing a movement across the nation! Wow, they’re so intelligent! Look at them go!

The general consensus is that these kids are magical. But a movement of this size is not the work of children who were recently traumatized by a crazed mass murderer killing people in their high school. This movement is organized and sponsored by the radical left.

Hines wrote:

“Can you believe these kids?” It’s been a recurring theme of the coverage of the Parkland school shooting: the remarkable effectiveness of the high school students who created a gun-control organization in the wake of the massacre. In seemingly no time, the magical kids had organized events ranging from a national march to a mass school walkout, and they’d brought in a million dollars in donations from Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney.

The Miami Herald credited their success to the school’s stellar debate program. The Wall Street Journal said it was because they were born online, and organizing was instinctive.

On February 28, BuzzFeed came out with the actual story: Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding in the lobbying in Tallahassee, a teacher’s union organizing the buses that got the kids there, Michael Bloomberg’s groups and the Women’s March working on the upcoming March for Our Lives, MoveOn.org doing social media promotion and (potentially) march logistics, and training for student activists provided by federally funded Planned Parenthood.

The president of the American Federation of Teachers told BuzzFeed they’re also behind the national school walkout, which journalists had previously assured the public was the sole work of a teenager.

And it worked! Hundreds of thousands of people showed up to the march. Students across the nation participated in the walkout.

The Parkland students may not be “crisis actors,” as some conservative sources have suggested. But these teens are not doing this all on their own. The reason why this movement has exploded across the U.S. from coast to coast is because organizations like the American Federation of Teachers and the Women’s March are behind it. All of these sponsors are radical-leftist organizations. And the Parkland survivors fit into their agenda.

The Federalist continued (emphasis added throughout):

In other words, the response was professionalized. That’s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It’s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody’s living room. …

What’s striking about all this isn’t the organization. If you start reading books about organizing, it’s clear how it all works. But no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks. Instead, every story was about the Parkland kids being magically effective.

Left-wing adult radicals are the ones organizing the movement, but in listening to the media, you would think it’s these magical kids! Hines continued:

On Twitter, I lost track of the number of bluechecks rhapsodizing over how effective the kids’ organizational instincts were. But organizing isn’t instinctive. It’s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don’t just get a few magical kids who’re amazing and naturally good at it.

The real tip-off should have been the $500,000 donations from Winfrey and Clooney. Big celebrities don’t give huge money to strangers on a whim. Somebody who knows Winfrey and Clooney called them and asked. But the press’s response was to be ever more impressed with the kids.

Celebrities don’t just hand over a half million dollars to disorganized group of 16-year-olds! Winfrey and Clooney donated to this movement because they knew March for Our Lives is part of a much larger liberal agenda that will make effective use of that money—and it won’t be spent by a teenager.

The teens are in front, but powering the movement behind the scenes are radical left-wing organizations. This is not difficult to understand, but American journalists have failed in their responsibility to report these fairly obvious facts. This almost-instantaneous nationwide political movement aimed at altering or repealing the second amendment of the United States Constitution is not just the work of a few teenagers upset about gun control. This is part of a highly organized, far-left political movement.

The fact that so many are listening to and responding to the speeches of teenagers does show that our society is a fulfillment of Isaiah 3. But the enormous amount of news coverage on the opinions of these youths and the minuscule amount of news coverage on the leftist organizations amplifying them shows that something else is at work here. It’s not so much that the liberal left support the Parkland students; it’s that the Parkland students support the agenda of the liberal left.

Although the media skips over this fact, March for Our Lives shows the influence and control that the radical left still exerts over mainstream journalists, teachers, activists, politicians and so many young Americans.

If you want to know more about the liberal left’s control over America and the media, read my father’s booklets America Under Attack and Great Again.