The Parkland Diaries will air on “Anderson Cooper 360” on Friday at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.
“I’m supposed to be recovering … and I can’t do that if these things are still going to be happening.”
Tears streaming down her face, Emma González, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, allowed her grief to mix with anger as she spoke into her cell phone’s camera, chronicling life after a shooter killed 17 of her classmates and others on Valentine’s Day.
“What can we do to stop this from continuing?” she asked.
Another survivor, Sam Fuentes, pointed her camera toward her face, still battered by shrapnel, and toward her leg and thigh, which was pierced by one of the gunman’s bullets.
“This is what I have to deal with right now,” she said. “I’m in a lot of pain, and I’ve never been faced with this kind of pain before.”
Six Parkland survivors agreed to share with CNN their progress during the weeks since the shooting. They have been using their cellphones to capture their thoughts and moments from their lives.
What emerged are intimate portraits of strength, solidarity, grief, defiance and a sense of determination to turn pain into change.
In CNN’s “The Parkland Diaries,” the six young survivors mourn their fallen companions while taking on mundane tasks like homework and returning to school. They also consider their roles in the burgeoning movement to end gun violence, which will culminate in the nationwide March for Our Lives on Saturday.
“I feel worried, I feel angry. I just know I have to go back and continue to learn even when our politicians won’t,” said David Hogg, as he prepared for his first day of school since the attack.
Samantha Grady reflected on her first day back at school after the shooting. “He targeted that spot where I was. It’s by a miracle that I wasn’t shot because I was, like, right there.”