If It Felt Like the Children's Crusade Was a Joint Hollywood-Media-DNC Production With Billion Dollar Backers, That's Because That's Exactly What It Was

So, let's talk about this article for a bit:https://t.co/YtK4lgmTuu

— David Hines (@hradzka) February 28, 2018

That article says, in part:

Several large progressive organizations, donors, and a high-powered public relations firm are backing the March for Our Lives movement, which is quickly evolving from a student-run social media effort to end gun violence into one backed by some of the most influential activists in the country.

In the days after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, the teenage survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were impossible to ignore. They blanketed cable news coverage, built a massive following on social media, and began to organize a rally in the country's capital in support of gun reform.

Barely two weeks ago, the student survivors sat in a circle in the living room of one of their parents' homes, planning a trip to Tallahassee to meet with lawmakers and handling nitty-gritty matters like which media outlets to talk to.

Since then, major players and organizations 00 including Everytown, Giffords, Move On, Planned Parenthood, and the Women’s March LA 00 told BuzzFeed News they are helping the students with logistics, strategy, and planning for next month's March for Our Lives rally and beyond. Much of the specific resources the groups are providing to the Parkland students remains unclear-- as is the full list of supporting organizations-- but there are broad outlines.

Giffords is a group started by Gabby Giffords to push gun restrictions.

...

Everytown for Gun Safety 00 bankrolled mostly by Michael Bloomberg -- recently secured a $1 million donation from entrepreneur and philanthropist Eli Broad.

MoveOn said it will encourage its millions of members to follow and promote the March for Our Lives movement on social media and attend the rally next month. The group said it had offered support in organizing logistics such as security and portable toilets, but it is unclear if the students have taken them up on their offer.

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood said the group is "teaching and hosting training"” for young activists across the US "to keep momentum going so they don't get burned out."

...

Democratic US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Broward County resident for nearly 30 years, told BuzzFeed News she has been in touch with students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas since the day after the shooting, helping them connect to state legislators and plan their trip to Tallahassee last week.

Wasserman Schultz said that because this is the first time many of the students have interacted with legislators, she advised them on communication strategy. She also said she been in contact with Mark Kelly --Gabrielle Giffords' husband and one of the founders of the Giffords foundation.

....

The American Federation of Teachers, which helped bus students and parents to Tallahassee multiple times last week, are now assisting with the March for Our Lives rally. The federation's president told BuzzFeed News that they are also helping support next month's march as well as helping to shape the vision and mission for the group once the rally is over.

...

After that, she says the goal is to carry that momentum until November -- with some of the students already using the hashtag #VoteThemOut.

"We are also marching towards midterms," she said, adding that the activists intend for gun control and student safety to be a major platform and key issue for voters in the midterm elections.

...

42West, a PR firm that usually works with the entertainment industry, is now helping the students and parents manage their new careers in entertainment.

42West is not providing the students with legal advice or financial advice, the spokesperson said, and refused to provide details on who is helping manage the millions of dollars in donations they have received.

...

In addition to the millions of dollars raised by A-list celebrities including Oprah, George and Amal Clooney, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the March for Our Lives GoFundMe page has raised an additional $2.7 million as of Tuesday.

David Hines --@hradzka on Twitter -- discussed this on that platform. Below are his comments, taken out of Twitter format.

* Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding Tallahassee lobbying

* Teacher's union getting buses to Tallahassee

* Bloomberg's guys and Women's March working on march

* MoveOn on social media promotion, offer of march logistics

* Planned Parenthood doing trainings for student activists

...

This is what organization that gets results actually looks like. Not a bunch of magical kids in somebody's living room. And it was right off the bat; Wassermann Schultz was there working hard on day 2.

...

The president of the American Federation of Teachers tells Buzzfeed they're also behind the national school walkout. I'd thought teachers were supposed to get kids *into* school, but maybe that's just me.

...

But what strikes me about all this isn't the organization -- if you start reading books about organizing, it becomes pretty clear how all this works.

What strikes me is that *no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks.*

Every story on the organizing for two weeks was about the kids. I lost track of the number of bluechecks I've seen rhapsodizing over the Parkland kids, and how organized they were, and how effective. The WSJ said it was because they were born on social media; it was instinctive.

...

But this stuff isn't instinctive. It's skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don't just get a few magical kids who're amazing and naturally good at it.

...

The big tip-off for *anybody* should have been the $500K donations from Oprah and George Clooney. They don't give money on a whim; somebody they knew called them and asked.

JOURNALISTS. "Wowwww, these kiiiiiids"

...

Anyway, now that the organizations are more open about their involvement, at some point the Parkland kids will go into the background a bit in media exposure terms, the same way Deray and Linda Sarsour did. That's part of how organizing fame works these days.

...

The big takeaway on this: for two weeks, journalists abjectly failed in their jobs, which is to tell the public what's going on. And if any of them had any familiarity with organizing campaigns, they absolutely knew.

...

Also, let me point out something that's damning: *none of the Righty outlets writing about Parkland picked up on the orgs, either.*

Righties need to learn how organizing works, and prominent righties need to educate their people on the subject. Because ignorance is damaging.

Well, in fairness, Elizabeth Harrington at the Free Beacon had part of the story, reporting that George Clooney's media publicist was handling bookings for the Parkland "natural instinctual spokeschildren" (as the Wall Street Journal dishonestly suggested they were).

The media of course did know about this; they obviously knew they were going through Hollywood publicists to get bookings of these "natural instinctual spokeschildren."

They covered it up, because it made for a better political narrative to claim this was all spontaneous and organic.

As a friend said: They were not ignorant; they were complicit. They were co-producers in this media venture.

They knew this was a lavish Hollywood production and, like most entertainment journalist whores, helped publicize it to the hilt.

posted by Ace at 04:12 PM

| Access Comments