They certainly picked a symbolic spot to start the journey, from the Project Grow Love tribute garden at the corner of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Campus.
Manuel and Patricia Oliver, along with several volunteers, loaded into a repurposed school bus and drove away on what they’re calling Guac’s Magical Tour. (The Olivers’ son, Joaquin, was murdered at age 17 and his nickname was Guac.)
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“We’re gonna be uniting a community that is gonna get louder and louder, because after five years, we haven’t seen change,” Manuel Oliver said.
They’re driving to 23 cities in 50 days — towns that have experienced mass shootings, to keep pushing for what they call common-sense gun reforms.
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“You need to come to the streets, you need to speak, you need to send letters, you need to write, you need to make calls, you need to do what is in your power, it doesn’t matter where you are, you always can do something,” said Patricia Oliver.
The Olivers and other activists spoke at the news conference before the bus left.
“Too many people are blissfully unaware, as I was until it happened here, of the reality and the cost of gun violence in this country,” said Elizabeth Weigard of the group Moms Demand Action.
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“Why is that?” responded Cameron Kasky. “Well, we’ve become complacent, we’ve become desensitized, we see this all the time and therefore it isn’t the same tragedy we once knew it as because we’ve taught ourselves it’s normal, nothing about this is normal.”
Kasky was a student survivor at MSD and was a co-founder of March for Our Lives. He’s going on the trip, he says, to keep the issue of gun violence and mass shootings on the front burner.
“Well I’m not letting people stop talking about Parkland, it won’t happen, and that’s why we’re visiting these cities, because they feel exactly what we feel,” Manuel Oliver said.
The bus is intentionally flying an American flag, because Oliver says as a symbol, the flag has been used by some to glorify the gun industry.
“What is more patriotic and loyal to our country, endorse the gun industry or save lives?” Manuel Oliver said. “We share the flag, my friends, you don’t own it.”
One of the themes we heard today was that five years after the Parkland tragedy, nothing has changed. That’s not entirely true. The state of Florida enacted extreme risk protection orders, raised the age to buy guns, in addition to school safety provisions.
Nationally, just a year ago, President Joe Biden signed the bi-partisan Safer Communities Act into law. It was touted as the most significant gun safety legislation in two decades, but at the signing ceremony, Manuel Oliver interrupted Biden and said that law was not enough.
“This is what we expect them to do, they did it, it’s not enough, so we need to keep on putting pressure so they do more,” he told us at the time.
Obviously, the Olivers still believe much more needs to be done to curb gun violence.
