Former President Barack Obama authored the blurb featuring Parkland shooting survivors on the list of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Influential People of 2018.
The former president praised survivors Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Emma Gonzales, and Alex Wind as students fighting for change at a time when progress is “slow and frustrating.”
“The Parkland Fla., students don’t have the kind of lobbyists or big budgets for attack ads that their opponents do. Most of them don’t even vote yet,” Obama wrote. “Seared by memories of seeing their friends murdered at a place they believed to be safe, these young leaders don’t intimidate easily.”
Obama was an early supporter the Parkland students’ push for new gun control, cheering on the students in their movement as “inspiring” and “fearless.”
Young people have helped lead all our great movements. How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be. We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 22, 2018
Obama spent a considerable amount of time advocating for new gun control legislation throughout his time in office, during which the nation suffered several highly publicized shootings that threw the country into a nationwide gun debate including the 2011 shooting in Tuscon, Ariz., that injured Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., and the 2012 Connecticut shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 children and six educators.
Obama’s failure to pass gun reform is one area the former president has said left him “most frustrated and most stymied” as he prepared to leave office.
