Here is a another design honoring Emma González. My first highlighted her fierce use of words. This design highlights her fierce use of silence. It is compelling to be making these messages as history is unfolding. I finished this design on April 6, 2018.
The image of González’s profile is based on an Instagram photo posted by one of her high school comrades and fellow activist, David Miles Hogg, who is also a stunning and wise speaker. His account is at https://www.instagram.com/davidmileshogg/
Emma González and many of her comrades have embarked on a passionate and wise campaign to reform gun laws in the U.S. They were responsible for organizing one of the largest marches in U.S. history, the “March for Our Lives,” on March 24, 2018 in Washington DC. It was too big for a march, in the same way the Women’s March of 2017 was too big. People were crowded together in the allotted space and we couldn’t move from one point to another as a group. We stayed put and it was rivetting to watch these young people (all young people!) perform their conviction and trauma on stage and screen.
Many Parkland students and young guests spoke well. Emma González was stunning because she held a silence after her short speech, so that her time on stage aligned with the time it took for the murderer to end the lives of 17 people and injure 14 others: approximately six minutes and 20 seconds.
To recap the context:
From Wikipedia and http://time.com/5160267/gun-used-florida-school-shooting-ar-15/
On February 14, 2018, from 2:21pm to 2:27pm, 19-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz murdered seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Fourteen more were injured. He used a legally bought AR-15 semi-automatic style weapon during the massacre, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press. The highly deadly military-inspired rifle has been the weapon used by several mass shooters. The AR-15 was most notably used during the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that claimed 27 lives, including that of the shooter. AR-15-style rifles have been used in recent mass shootings in Aurora, Colo.; Santa Monica and San Bernardino, Calif.
The AR-15 was classified as an “assault-style” weapon and outlawed under the assault weapons ban that lapsed in 2004.
About González’s silence:
From https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/emma-gonzalez-is-responsible-for-the-loudest-silence-in-the-history-of-us-social-protest/
by Ari Berman
“Six minutes and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us.” That’s how Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and one of the organizers of the March for Our Lives, began her remarkable speech on Saturday afternoon at the rally in Washington, DC.
After reading the names of her classmates who were killed in the mass shooting, Gonzalez stood at the podium in silence for six minutes, fighting back tears. It was an incredible, chilling moment. All of the major cable networks carried it live. “Loudest silence in the history of US social protest,” my colleague David Corn tweeted.
“Never again,” many in the crowd of 500,000 chanted in response. After her timer went off, Gonzalez said, “since the time when I came out here, it has been six minutes and twenty seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest,” she said. “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.” And then she left the stage.
MY EXPERIENCE AND DESIGN NOTE
It didn’t take us long in the crowd to realize what she was doing. If you’ve ever worked in radio you know that broadcasting silence is probably worse than cussing on air. Everything said before this was predictable, except maybe Yolanda; this is not to say meaningless. We know how we are supposed to feel. There can be a banality to the expected emotions of outrage. I have been persistently outraged for a long time. It is hard to hold that authentically for so long. The crowd was uncomfortable in the silence, and I extended my imagination over the crowd to feel their discomfort, to hold it present there, as well as my own. Some people felt moved to chant for change. I felt that too. Nervous laughter. That sort of thing. It was about the not knowing. And then something like a sigh when I heard the timer go off. It sounded like the timer on our old microwave. Done. This was about the feelings of the survivors. She stood there in her pain and the thousands of us could share it only insofar as we are individually able. This is about trauma.
In the process of building this design, it was very hard for me to leave that big white profile unembellished. I went through several versions with something in the space of González’s profile, and each time I told myself, “No. It is silence.” White space on a page correlates with silence when speaking. The words in the background of this design are from González’s spoken words, before she stood silent.
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