Mother of Newtown victim to Florida teens: “Concentrate on the win”

Nicole Hockley lost her son Dylan five years ago in the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Since then, she’s dedicated her life to fighting gun violence. That includes traveling to Parkland, Florida, to talk to those affected by the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last week. As part of her visit, she sat down with two students, Cameron Kasky and Sofie Whitney, to discuss their efforts in preventing another tragedy.

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Nicole Hockley: I first started talking about change at Dylan’s funeral and I talked about how Dylan was a butterfly and everyone that we lost that day were butterflies and those small flaps were going to create change in our country. And now when I’m out and I see it in you guys, when I’m out at schools now and I look around, honestly all I see are butterflies, because you’re the ones that are going to make these changes happen.

Cameron Kasky: That’s why I’m hopeful. People keep telling me, people keep asking Sofie and I, for example, “Why do you think that this going to be different? So many of these things have happened, and nothing has changed.” Well, our answer was, well, we’re the future.

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Hockley: We made a lot of mistakes in the beginning when we were trying to figure out what we wanted to be and how we wanted to use our voices, and I don’t think we quite grasped the enormity of what we were walking into … We decided to go down the policy route to start off with, and it felt like we were slamming our heads against a wall.

Sofie Whitney: We’re the lucky ones, so we’re using our platform because there’s people that aren’t strong enough yet to be able to talk about it.

Hockley: I get through everyday by focusing totally on my work to the point of distraction and especially when milestones come up — Dylan’s birthday, 12:14, when school gets out, when school starts, seeing busses — I push all my emotion down, and distract myself with work. I’ve been doing that for five years now and it’s not healthy.

Kasky: We took 17 shots to the heart — our entire town, our entire community. And we’re going to keep walking and then run and then try and lead everybody else in the country on our path and from what it looks like we’re going to have a good start.

Hockley: Concentrate on the win, that’s what matters. Stay focused on that. You can spiral if all you do is fight.