Parkland shooting survivor Emma González will narrate a video highlighting issues surrounding gun violence that the Democratic National Convention will air Wednesday night as part of programming around gun reform.
“People affected by everyday gun violence have to walk by the street corner where their best friend, their brother, their mother, their nephew — where they themselves were shot. And life goes on and on as if we all just haven’t watched a loved one die and get put in the grave,” González says in the video.
The video flashes to empty streets and barren classrooms, as well as an empty movie theater and church, seemingly referencing sites of mass shootings across the U.S., as well as footage of vigils for victims of recent mass shootings.
“The whole point of what I’m saying here is until one of us or all of us stand up and say, ‘I can’t do this anymore, I can’t sit by and watch the news treat these shootings as like acts of god,’ gun violence isn’t just going to stop,” González says. “Until there’s a force fighting harder against it, and I’m going to do something to prevent it.”
González is one of the founders of March for Our Lives, a student led anti-gun violence movement formed by survivors of the Parkland, Fla. shooting. The February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 people and injured 17 others.
Along with the video, Wednesday’s night’s programming will feature DeAndra Dycus, a mother whose son was left paralyzed by a stray bullet at the age of 13, and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who turned to gun reform advocacy after surviving an assassination attempt in 2011.