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Pro-2A Parkland Survivor Questions Exclusion from Twitter’s Live Q&A

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San Francisco, CA – Twitter held a livestreaming session on March 19 to promote the upcoming “March For Our Lives” event, featuring Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students answering questions from Twitter users. Twitter selected MSD students and noted gun control proponents David Hogg, Emma González, Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind, Ryan Deitsch and Jaclyn Corin to take part in the event.

MSD junior Kyle Kashuv, a pro-2A student, responded to not being invited by the social media platform to the livestream question and answer session by asking where his invitation was to the event. The Daily Wire reported that Kashuv confirmed he was not invited to the event.

Another MSD student survivor of the school shooting, freshman Sarah Stricker, responded to Kashuv’s Twitter post, noting the exclusivity of students being “focused on”, writing, “I believe survivors from the classrooms that were shot in, should be looked at. Or at least students that were actually in the building, and saw what I saw.”

Stricker continued, “here we are, suffering from flashbacks and jumping at every loud noise, while we watch kids that were on the other side of the school get attention thrown at them,” seemingly denoting that the students garnering large-scale media coverage weren’t even in the same building as shooter Nikolas Cruz.

Hogg, a senior at MSD, previously boasted about hanging up on the White House during a phone call in the wake of the school shooting, and more recently, in an ad touting next week’s “March For Our Lives”, Parkland student David Hogg wondered, “What if our politicians weren’t the bitch of the NRA?”

Twitter CMO Leslie Berland responded to Kashuv’s inquiry by noting that the livestream Q&A was meant for discussion of the upcoming march, and extended an invite to the student to conduct his own Q&A over the platform.

Mass media coverage following the MSD tragedy has been abundantly directed at featuring a select group of pro-gun control students, although there are other student survivors with differing opinions on guns that have been ignored by most of the media outlets.

For instance, the Harvard Institute of Politics recently extended an invite to MSD students to take part in a panel discussion on gun law reforms, which is set to take place shortly before the students participate in the pro-gun control “March For Our Lives” rally in Washington, D.C., on March 24.

Entitled “#NEVERAGAIN: How Parkland Students are Changing the Conversation on Guns,” the panel will, according to The Washington Examiner, “feature the same exclusive group of students who have received extensive media coverage for their attacks on the National Rifle Association and desire to enact strict gun control laws throughout the country.”

Similar to Twitter’s exclusively pro-gun control student invitations, the Harvard IOP invited Parkland activists Hogg, González, Kasky, Wind, and Deitsch while ignoring survivors like Kashuv, whose desire to protect students while respecting the Second Amendment has earned him a meeting with President Trump and other high-profile elected officials. However, that praise has not translated into significant media coverage.

CBS News’ 60 Minutes most recent episode also featured Hogg, González, Corin, Wind and Kasky.