Bringing the fight
Another storm was brewing in Chapel Hill, NC on Wednesday even as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Idalia traversed the lower part of the state (WSOC):
A shooting that left a faculty member dead and frightened students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has galvanized gun safety advocates and local Democrats, who rallied the grieving campus community Wednesday to fight for stricter state gun laws.
About 600 students held protest signs on a large lawn in the heart of campus and bowed their heads during a moment of silence as the iconic campus Bell Tower rang in honor of the deceased associate professor, Zijie Yan.
Yan, who led a research group in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, was fatally shot Monday by one of his graduate students inside a science lab building at the state’s flagship public university, authorities said.
NC Democrats’ state chair, Anderson Clayton, 25, lit into the state’s Republican-controlled legislature for failing to address gun violence, calling for “a reckoning in our state capital.”
Rep. Lindsey Prather (D-Buncombe), a former schoolteacher, posted on the “generational divide” between the students who live with gun violence and their “desensitized” elders. “They think it’s fake outrage. Trust me, it’s not.”
March For Our Lives founder David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, FL mass-shooting, addressed the crowd. In light of the daily shootings, “We need to repurpose the meaning of run, hide, fight. We need to run for office to replace those and change our government,” Hogg said. “There are some people on the stage with me where this is their third shooting … and they aren’t even old enough top run for Congress yet.”
Days earlier, Tennessee Republicans voted to silence state Rep. Justin Jones (D) for demanding that state’s lawmakers do something in the wake of the Nashville elementary school shooting in March. The “GOP-dominant Statehouse refused to take up gun control measures” for which the special session was called.
Coincidentally, I had a conversation on Wednesday with a Young Democrat leader about 2024 strategy. He and others from his cohort had spent the last two days nearly nonstop on the phone organizing in the wake of the UNC shooting.
Young people like Clayton and Hogg and Jones are showing voters and college students, especially, that there is still fight in the Democratic Party. Younger voters, if they turn out in numbers, can dominate American elections:
I’ve noted before: How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it. Cheer for it. Pay for it. Over and over and over.
It’s past time for younger progressives eager to fight to take the lead. And for Democrats who won’t to retire.