Volunteer Spotlight: Cara Chen
This speech was delivered by Cara Chen, a Lakeridge High School student and the Lakeridge lead for Students Demand Action, at an Oregon Moms Demand Action event in Salem on March 2, 2023. Cara is a strong supporter of Ballot Measure 114 and worked behind the scenes to gather support for its passage by Oregon voters. Cara’s speech was interrupted multiple times with applause and concluded with a rousing standing ovation by the audience. It’s a powerful message for adults.
“I’m Cara, I lead the Lakeridge High School chapter of Students Demand Action in Lake Oswego, Oregon, near the Portland metro area. We mostly do work focused around walkouts and other forms of visibility, where we try and get press to realize, yes, students do care about this issue, what a shocker. And we try to get press to come to these activities, and we try to make sure that everyone who needs a chance to speak out, and share their opinions, who are students, who are often marginalized or sidelined in crowded conference rooms, to get the chance to do stuff. So, I have prepared remarks, they may sound a little passive-aggressive, but they’re not directed towards you, I promise. They’re directed towards any adult reading this, or listening to this, who’s not in this room right now.
“Throughout my brief career in activism, I’m often confronted by the paradox of youth: we are simultaneously expected to be the generation that fixes everything, yet we cannot be trusted to vote responsibly; we are to be uplifted, considered the voices leading the charge, yet we are often sidelined or ignored in crowded conference rooms; and, most of all. We bear the burden of carving out a life foe ourselves in a world we had no say in crafting, but are seen as naïve , idealistic, or radical when we try to shift the paradigm and start anew. We exist in the liminal space between the innocence of childhood and the jaded, corrupting influences of new adulthood. The scale only seems to tip in either direction when we are needed – as a homogenous, undemanding group – to satisfy the agendas of others.
“We are considered the ‘perfect victims.’ When you read news about mass shootings, school shootings hit a particular nerve in the American consciousness. Sandy Hook, for example, is considered a seminal moment in America’s sordid, storied history of gun violence. The younger the victims, the better, am I right?
“But it should not be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way. At school, when we do safety trainings, all our school resource officers say is that it’s no longer a matter of if, but of when. Why do we live like this? For the adults who are not in this movement already, trying to change the status quo, it’s beyond time to join us.
“Whether or not people with the power to change the status quo listen to people like me depends on the timing of the national political cycle. There seems to be a ‘right time’ for everything – immediately after the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was passed, we were told to not expect any more legislation on a national level for at least two years. But gun violence in American cannot be put on pause. It is far from solved, and no amount of wishful thinking or politicking can change the reality that we still live in.
“On Tuesday, October 18th last year, there was a shooting at Jefferson High School in north Portland, just 13 miles from where I live. Two students were injured. I had been planning a statewide walkout on October 25th in support of Measure 114 along with other student organizers; I texted them the news, and the first response I got was ‘thankfully no one was seriously hurt.’ But when have our standards for what is and isn’t acceptable become so low? Even we, as students, have gotten so used to reports of gun violence on school campuses that we seem to have developed, collectively, to have developed calluses to cope. I consider it a byproduct of human psychology, this ability to rationalize disasters and perform ‘impact calculus’ – how else are we supposed to make sense of the complex, ever-shifting world around us? Turning disasters into data is effective when considering the scope of certain issues, but I believe flattening people into statistics strips away their personhood. It takes the fact that two lives have been forever altered and consoles us with the reminder that they are ‘only injured.’ I think it’s a sign of our times that people find it mundane that students are injured every day on the campuses of their schools, a place where they are supposed to learn, grow, and above all, be protected. I thought it was shameful that this shooting, and others like these, did not receive more attention from the media. I don’t mean that, upon hearing the news, I wanted the media to circle Jefferson like a flock of vultures; I only mean that, in our current political climate, our incessant thirst – for the shock factor, for statistics, for record highs and record lows – picks lives apart for the sake of novelty and a good story. From a pure numbers standpoint, ‘two injured’ comes as a relief, not breaking news.
“Contrary to the beliefs of most of the adults in my life – again, this isn’t directed towards anyone in this room – I don’t think it’s idealistic of me to expect better for the generations to come. The media should be more responsible about covering trauma; politicians need to stop equivocating and implement concrete solutions; and the adults and similarly jaded peers in my life should not accept the current state of affairs as ‘normal.’ I and everyone else I work with in the gun violence prevention movement are long past the point of believing that the world will become better through hopes and prayers alone. I don’t say that we are change-makers because I consider us cleverer or more skillful than the generations who came before us; I consider us change-makers because I know we are stubborn. I know how much we want it. And I know what we will sacrifice to get it.“
Last month’s Volunteer Spotlight: Zandra Brant
“I have been a member of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America since 2014, focusing on supporting candidates running for state legislative seats. It has been fulfilling and informative activism. But in 2018, after discovering a group of local “patriots” in Deschutes County planned to gather signatures to bring a county Second Amendment Preservation petition to the election, I called Penny Okamoto, who was the Executive Director of Ceasefire Oregon, a gun violence prevention organization, to ask how I could help to defeat the initiative. She advised, mentored, and encouraged me to challenge the petition’s content in Circuit Court. Fortunately, I persevered. The petition was rewritten to clearly show it would give the County Sheriff the ability to amend firearm-related laws instead of the Legislature. I was able to succeed getting the revisions approved by a judge but the petitioners could not get enough signatures to get it on the 2018 ballot. This was the beginning of my more active work to help prevent gun violence.
“Not long after, I became a member of the 501(c)4 Board of Ceasefire Oregon, which allows me to channel the energy I can give to protect our families and community in Central Oregon and in the state of Oregon. As a survivor of gun violence, I needed to continue serving and hopefully make a difference. When the Ceasefire board became involved with LEVO and Measure 114, I needed to help and became the satellite coordinator for Central Oregon.
“The work started in January 2022. I called a few friends to help gather signatures that cold snowy winter. I’ll never be able to thank Naomi, Meg, and Thiel enough, because together we became the organizing team to gather other volunteers and gather signatures in libraries, parking lots, faith communities, and civic events. The signature sheets were mailed weekly to the volunteer coordinators, Joe and Janey Paterno, who were the most supportive, thoughtful couple I’ve ever met. They and their volunteers counted the signature sheets for accuracy. After succeeding and collecting enough signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot, LEVO continued its work to develop a public information campaign in Oregon, including Redmond and Bend. Caroline Fitchett and Oregon Safe Schools Safe Communities Coalition worked with me and provided campaign materials, signs, and post cards.
“I am grateful to the large community of people who helped Measure 114 become law in Oregon and proud to have been part of it. We lifted almost every voice in Oregon to ensure our citizens can be safe from gun violence.”
February Volunteer Spotlight: Joe & Janey Paterno
After the Parkland school shootings in February 2018, we received a call one month later from Pastor Mark Knutson asking us if we would be interested in traveling to Salem to talk to the Election Division of the Secretary of State’s office regarding a possible citizen’s gun initiative. Having both recently retired as physical therapists, we were available and very interested since we were angered by so many mass shootings, particularly in school settings. Janey, being a 30-year employee of the public school system, was also frustrated with the numerous active shooter drills she participated in regularly. On the way to Salem, five of us organized and made plans delineating who would be heading up each area of the Initiative process. Pastor Mark would be one of the chief petitioners; Tamrah, Mark’s wife, would be in charge of Youth activities; Liz McKanna would lead the legislative team; and Janey and Joe would be in charge of the Field Team. At that time, we had no idea what the initiative process entailed, let alone what a Field Team was! But we jumped in with both feet.
We learned so much over the next four years about the initiative process, organizing the Field Team, and working with a grass roots effort. We experienced 3 different qualifying rounds (2018, 2020, 2022), which required 1000 to 2000 signatures each time, just to begin the process. In 2018, we ran out of time, our initiative getting stalled in a State Supreme Court challenge. In 2020, we ran into Covid and stopped our effort in consideration of public safety. As the saying goes, the “third time was the charm” and finally in late November 2021 we were able to begin collecting the 112,020 qualifying signatures for July 2022. In all, 161,450 signatures were collected, which greatly exceeded our overall goal.
All of YOU, the wonderful and dedicated volunteers, made this effort successful. We frequently commented to each other that one of the best parts of this work was meeting so many wonderful individuals and creating meaningful relationships with like-minded people. Critics said a mainly grassroots effort would not even get it on the ballot, and just that effort might cost a million dollars or more. But we achieved a huge accomplishment for a small fraction of that amount. That's because every one of you worked relentlessly through July 8th. And then you came out again, going door to door, sending postcards and texts, making phone calls and distributing yard signs. LEVO, along with some other very supportive organizations, got the voters to make Measure 114 the law in Oregon. YOU should all be proud of this monumental and successful effort.
There’s still work to do with court challenges, implementation and equity work, and work with our legislature to make this legislation a model for our country. Our volunteers are at the heart of this continued work, and we encourage you to stay alert, educated, and involved. This inaugural newsletter is one effort toward that goal!
Thank you ALL for your wonderful work!
With much gratitude,
Joe & Janey Paterno