My name is Cameron Kasky, I am 18 years old now.
After a horrible tragedy at my school,
my friends and I came together
to try to change the narrative of school shootings.
Our job is to protect our country,
and if our elected officials aren't doing it,
we have to step up.
So we came together and started a movement
that was very much mobilized by social media.
We were tweeting out a lot.
We were using our Instagram to connect with other people
and show them our messaging in a really accessible way.
We didn't really plan to do a social media-based movement.
We planned to do a movement, and we didn't even think
about what it was like to base it in social media,
because that's just how we interact with each other.
And it was hard.
And over the course of the year,
we have been harassed online.
I received countless death threats.
I received very lewd images in my Instagram direct messages.
We were attacked like adults,
but we were not defended like kids.
I have personally said things online
that I'm sure I'll look at as an adult
and not be very thrilled about.
And a lot of us learned a lot about how we interact
with each other in social media.
There are a lot of things
about the Parkland movement
that I think are amazing,
and a lot of things I regret.
But one thing I can tell you
that is my point of pride after all of this
is that people don't remember Parkland
as the city that was destroyed.
People remember Parkland as the city
that was strong and brave enough to stand up and say,
"We are not going to let you get away with another one of these."
The one lesson I wish I had learned
before all of this started
was that the internet, while it's not real life,
is becoming a part of it.
It's all about remembering
that the social media exists
to supplement personal connections
and not replace them.
Behind every single account on Twitter,
unless they're a bot,
there's a human being typing.
And that person might not realize
just who they're interacting with.
So you feel like it doesn't mean anything,
and you feel like the people who see your comments
aren't affected by it.
We are now a part
of this large ocean of connection,
and it's now our job to be responsible.
We need to hold ourselves accountable
so somebody else doesn't do it for us.
I used to look down on people.
I put myself on a pedestal.
And I encouraged a lot of my friends to do it, as well.
I treated people who disagreed with me
like they weren't as good human beings as I was.
I did a town hall debate at CNN.
Emotions were high-- just a week ago,
people that I loved were killed.
I went up and asked my senator, Marco Rubio,
if he would stop taking money from the NRA.
Can you tell me right now that you will not accept
a single donation from the NRA in the future?
(cheering and applauding)
And I wish I had stopped it there,
but before that, I compared him to the likeness
of the shooter from my school.
I became part of the problem,
because I went up there on that debate
to make another human being look bad as a human being
and not as a politician,
because I wanted to go up there and embarrass him.
I wanted to ruin his career.
I did not do that to benefit the conversation.
I did not do that to benefit our discourse as human beings.
I did that to make another person look bad.
I learned a lesson from it, and I...
I'm thrilled that we went out there,
and I'm thrilled that we were able to make this conversation
such a national topic.
But at the end of the day,
I'm never going to do something like that again.
That's where we can stop this.
We had counterprotesters at all our events
who were the same people
who were commenting these awful things
in our social media posts.
When we broke the wall,
when we simply just spoke to them,
and we became humans interacting with other humans,
things changed.
I was in Texas this summer.
I met a man who came up to me,
shook my hand and said,
"I went after you on Twitter a lot this year.
"I said some nasty things about you on the internet.
"But the fact that you're coming up here to this counterprotest
"really taught me something,
"because I didn't know that you kids were interested
in approaching this like people."
He introduced me to his wife and kids,
who were all out there protesting us, as well.
And they said they don't know if they want to do this again,
because when we came up and connected with them,
it changed the way they look at it.
That left me floored.
And that's why it's so important
to look at people who disagree with you
like other human beings.
When people disagree with you on political issues,
you have to remember
that approaching them like this is your enemy
isn't... it's not going to do anything for you.
You have to approach everybody
in bitterly social and political situations
like they're part of the same world that you are.
Approach a bitterly partisan topic,
but come from a place where you want to learn.
You learn the most from the people who disagree with you.
I'm not speaking about any specific issues,
but be ready to learn something.
Assume that every single person you speak to
knows something that you don't, because it's true.
Remember that the best thing you can do as a human being
is lift another person up, not knock them down.
I think you're allowed to criticize my messaging
without criticizing my character or who I am.
These are emotional topics because they affect us.
A lot of kids like me and like you
believe what we believe because of our upbringing.
That's okay-- that's how we were raised.
It's part of our character.
I used to not understand
how someone could disagree with me.
But be ready to change people's hearts,
be ready to change people's minds,
and be open to changing your mind.