A conversation with Ryan Pascal on Activism and Writing

Author and activist, Ryan Pascal

This conversation took place live, via Zoom, on September 12th as part of the 2020 DtWT Recognition Weekend where audience members had the chance to ask Ryan questions directly. You’ll find the full event with Ryan Pascal and others, here.

Ryan Pascal is an 18-year-old activist and writer from Los Angeles, California.  Ryan serves on the Students Demand Action National Advisory Board, working to prevent gun violence and to register young voters.  She has written several pieces that reflect the social justice work she pursues and has been published in Teen Vogue, Seventeen, USA Today, and BuzzFeed.  She is a freshman at Yale University.

What should everyone know about you as we get started?

I have been working with Students Demand Action, a grassroots gun violence prevention organization under the umbrella of Everytown for Gun Safety.  We have 400 student groups in schools and communities working on the ground in their areas to find solutions to violence depending on their own situations.  I've just had such an impactful time there with them, and I've been working with them for 2 years now.  And yeah, that has just kind of pivoted me into writing.

How did you first get started?  I know you just touched upon that, but what would you say was that 2 years ago?  Was that sort of the catalyst?  Was there a turning point? 

When the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting happened in 2018, that really woke me up.  I remember for some reason I wasn't in class.  I was at home.  Maybe I got out early that day or something.  But I remember I was at home, I was doing my homework, and I got the notification on my phone that there had just been a shooting in Florida at a high school where 17 students had died.  I was watching the live footage and seeing the students' interviews and seeing everything that was happening. I had never experienced that sort of cataclysm in my conscious lifetime.  We've had other shootings.  I was kind of too young to really understand them or be paying attention to the news really. That was the first thing that I had ever seen like that where I actually was aware of what was happening. Seeing the students not only talk about their experience but saying things like, things need to change.  We need to see reform.  We need to see changes.  That also is something that was so interesting to me because at the time, I think I was a sophomore.  I didn't know that gun violence prevention was a thing.  I didn't know that there could be changes made that could potentially prevent gun violence.  I literally just thought it was something that we have to deal with, this is something that is a part of our society and is a problem and we have to deal with it.

So that kind of led me into this deep research about what is gun violence prevention, what are the potential solutions, how long has this been happening.  And I found myself in this wormhole of wanting to do something about it.

That's when I got in touch with an organization that was mobilizing students to host walkouts in their communities, and that organization was Everytown, which was so incredibly supportive.  They were offering counseling and coaches to help students to get through this because for a lot of students, including myself, this is our first experience with organizing, especially organizing around gun violence. So I ended up co hosting my school's walk out with another friend of mine, and we had an amazing turnout.  And it just was a memorial for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting victims and to honor their lives because we know they were cut so short and such a tragic event.

Then they launched Students Demand Action.  They wanted students to be on board, to help them, guide them, as we create this organization together.  So I applied to their brand new advisory board, and like a month later I got an email saying, we really want to invite you to be a part of this advisory board, we loved your essays and we would love to have you on board.

And that has taken me on a journey I honestly could have never imagined being on, working with students and even working with survivors.  That is something that's incredibly important.  But then also realizing through my research and through all this new knowledge and through working with Everytown and then Students Demand Action, it took me to realize that school shootings, they're deadly, they're awful, but there is so much more to gun violence.  It's such a multifaceted issue that it's going to take all hands on deck. That is also something that honestly I could never really process.  We look at things like domestic violence, which is awful.  When you have a gun in the home, it makes it 10 times more deadly.  We look at group violence and community violence, police violence, which is also a form of gun violence.  There is suicide and unintentional shootings.  There's just so many facets of gun violence.  And I think going deeper into that work as well has really kept me grounded and kept me going.  So that really is just kind of like the short form of my journey with Everytown with Students Demand.

You are touching on a lot of issues that the students here with us are writing about themselves and so many of the essays speak to gun violence in all its forms. So I think hearing someone else speak to that as well and the impact that you're making, I wonder what advice you could offer to them about using their own voices for change.

I'll start by saying that writing -- some of the best pieces of work are written out of the author's own experience.  Even when you look at fiction and fantasy and sci-fi, like oftentimes those books are just metaphors for something happening in their life or a major event in history that's happening.

Fall in love with the Notes app on your phone[AJW2] .  I mean that literally but also not literally.  What I mean is that things happen in your life quickly.  And things are happening in this country and this world very quickly, maybe at your school, in your community. I've created an outlet for myself  through writing. Even if it's spur of the moment, that's why you need to fall in love with your Notes app.  If there's something happening in your life that you want to write about, pick up a napkin, your Notes app, a journal, anything around you and just start writing. I think that is going to be  important for young writers who are living in these really crazy times.  You know, you guys are going to be the ones to document and talk about COVID and racial injustices that are happening right now.  And just everything that's going on not only in this world but in your lives.  So being able to put it down with pen wherever you are.  If there's something happening and oh, I'll just wait next day to write about it, then there's not the emotion there anymore.  Maybe the drive isn't there.  So make sure that emotion and drive is sustained by just writing wherever you are.  And that includes journaling. I am an advocate for journaling, whether at night or in the morning or even if it's an informal way of journaling.  Just write as much as you can.  Write as I don't want to say quickly as you can, but write as immediately as you can, and you can take your time in that obviously, but yeah.  That's what I would say.

I was just wondering, like in cases, people who have actually been in a city that had that personally, gun violence, per se, what would you suggest they do, if they want to take action on that? student

Yeah, absolutely.  I say gun violence prevention and not gun control, because they are very different.  Gun violence prevention is a whole robust idea that there are systemic issues, it's a cyclical issue in this country that causes gun violence and that perpetuates violence in communities. So gun control is a term that's been used and it's been weaponized and it has to do with the firearm itself.  And while yes, I believe that obviously there are laws that need to be put in place about firearms, there is also the notion that gun violence prevention applies to other areas in our political system.  There's education that's affecting gun violence, healthcare is affecting gun violence.  

One thing that I would say for young people to get involved is find community programs in your area, because more often than not, these community programs exist to prevent gun violence or just violence in general. These programs give students or whoever it is that they're serving, a place, an outlet.  So, I would say as young people, support the organizations in your community.  Organizations that you may not realize are doing anti-violence work.  It could be an organization that hosts music lessons for students or doing dance lessons or after school tutoring.  Those programs are working to prevent these cycles of violence. Bring your friends in, bring people from your school and yourself and uplift these programs and do what you can to help them out.

Now that we are doing things online, what are some things to help make a change in our community?

For Students Demand Action, we were planning a huge voter registration campaign.  We had celebrities and big people who were going to help us out with it.  And it fell  through because of COVID-19 and because everything was online, people weren't organizing together.

We ended up pivoting to what we call our virtual field offices where students are working together online, in group chats, in Zoom, to register voters and work in gun violence prevention space with people in their states.

I can't give you the answer because everyone is still learning.  But I've said this before, but one of our students had a movie night using Netflix party which is a Google chrome extension where everyone can watch a movie together and chat about the movie together.  That was an innovative way we were able to get together and connect.

Zoom I think is great. Social media is a huge way to be using your voice as well.  Posting on Instagram.  Instagram stories. 

I have posted a couple things on Instagram.  I've used the caption space to inform and to let people know where I'm at and what I'm thinking and just things that are going on. I know one thing that our community is doing, again, this is not the same for every community, but our school newspaper has been opening up submissions to not only their journalists on staff or in that class.  Anyone can submit something.  And so that's a great way to reach your community.  If I were to write an essay for them, I know that would reach my school, my community, probably parents as well. I hate that I can't give you a better answer. 

I think you've done an incredible job.  We're all figuring it out.  We're all here on Zoom together instead of being in D.C.  And so I think we're all kind of just making it work as best we can.