Parkland Survivors Honor Victims With Music and Art

Brut America

"Trauma is trauma. No matter what you've gone through." Two Parkland shooting survivors spoke to Brut about finding comfort and healing through music — and how they want to help victims of violence.

Transcript

00:00The people that we lost, we wanted to make sure that they knew that we would forever

00:03remember them and they will always be an essential like component to our community.

00:07After the shooting at our school on February 14th, Andrea and I both felt a lot of the

00:35same things.

00:36We both felt very lost and very confused and very angry and very sad and we just, we

00:40didn't really know what to do with all these emotions and feelings that we were having.

00:44There have been changes because of everything that we've been doing and everything our community

00:58and other people who have been affected by this epidemic of gun violence.

01:03I think that we're not giving up the fight is such an important line because no matter

01:09how long it takes and no matter how hard it is and all of the people saying, oh you're

01:13just kids, like you can't really make a change, like we're not going to stop because it's

01:17such an important issue.

01:28They can experience like the power of healing through visual arts such as painting, expressive

01:35arts or dramatic arts through drama and then music arts.

01:38We just personally find so much comfort and healing through music and through the arts

01:44in general and I just think it's such a powerful outlet.

02:06I think the media's portrayal of guns, especially gun violence, is very romanticized, especially

02:12in today's society where we have all of these video games, like first shooter video games

02:16and we have all of these violent films.

02:19Oklahoma deals with it in a really good way, I feel like, as opposed to how the media deals

02:23with it.

02:24Whenever they fired a gun, like they let it sit, like they didn't, there wasn't like a

02:27alright, let's move on to the musical, like it takes a second and you realize like wow,

02:32that's what some people have to hear every single day, like that's what I had to hear

02:35on like that day, like that's just like the feeling that I felt.

02:45It's a matter of self-care and it's a matter of knowing what you need to do and knowing

02:50the right ways and the limits that you have to making sure that you're not working too

02:55hard and having activism burnout, which is a phrase that I just learned about this year

02:59because that's something that people can get, they can get burnout from activism because

03:04you do care about this cause but it is so emotionally draining.

03:08Trauma is trauma, no matter like what you've gone through, if it's a school shooting or

03:12if it's that you have experienced like violence in your life or even if you've been bullied

03:17to like a certain extent, like that's still stuff that you have to go through and just

03:22allowing kids to know that there are healthy ways to cope with it.

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