Gun security is a cornerstone difficulty for all members of Elder Youth. Frost, for his half, has lengthy stated that he first felt compelled to get entangled with politics after the Sandy Hook elementary faculty capturing in 2014. He labored with March For Our Lives because the gun security group’s nationwide organizing director earlier than operating for workplace himself.
Final yr, after a capturing on the College of North Carolina in Chapel Hill left one professor lifeless, Clayton, 26, referred to as Jones, who had simply come off a spring and summer time of rallying in opposition to gun violence, to ask for assist internet hosting an illustration for gun violence prevention. “I used to be like, ‘Will you come? I need assistance. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know the way to do that, I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And he was like, ‘I’ll be there,’” she says.
Clayton has reached out to members of the group at totally different instances for his or her assist, and says their rapport is incomparable. “Annie was there for that [rally] as nicely. Maxwell got here for my Younger Democrats of North Carolina conference,” she says. “It’s among the finest assist techniques I’ve obtained on this job. It’s them.”
Others really feel equally. Whereas working for an LGBTQ rights group in Florida, Wolf requested Frost for a hand operating counter-programming for an occasion that former President Donald Trump was internet hosting in Orlando. “Maxwell, after all, rescued the entire thing,” Wolf, 35, says. Not solely did Frost come for the occasion, however “the icing on the cake,” as Wolf describes it, was that Frost, a percussionist and music aficionado, DJed the occasion himself.
It’s not misplaced on any of the group’s members that almost all of them are from and symbolize numerous communities within the South, an space that many political pundits have written off as unwinnable for Democrats, eternally beholden to conservative ideologies. “The Southern segregationists would say that the South will rise once more, and I’ve rejected that,” Jones, 28, says. Pointing to himself, Clayton, and Frost, every of whom are the youngest of their respective positions, he provides, “we symbolize a new South that’s multiracial, multigenerational, multi-faith, that’s pro-immigrant, pro-economic justice, and anti-systemic racism and homophobia.”
Just like the others within the group chat, he believes within the worth and significance of illustration. “Having folks like us in these areas is essential. We’ve been instructed to fall into nihilism in regards to the South, however I actually consider that the rationale we’re seeing a lot repression and assault within the South is as a result of there may be a lot resistance and revolutionary exercise to quell.”
