Credit: Courtesy photos

Alex Wind prefers not to discuss the details of the shooting that killed 17 people at his high school in Parkland, Fla., in February.

The 17-year-old senior survived the horrific day. On Friday, he will appear with two fellow students in Burlington to promote their book, “Glimmer of Hope,” and the March for Our Lives campaign to stop gun violence.

“This is something that is going to be plaguing us our entire lives,” Wind said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “But it comes to a point where we have to say, what’s now is now, and we need to be focused on that.”

Last winter, a young gunman sprayed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with bullets. Former student Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of murder.

The 6 p.m. stop on the Glimmer of Hope tour will take place at the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington. Tickets sold out Sunday. Phoenix Books is sponsoring the event.

Wind will appear with two other students from the school: David Hogg and Emma González. They will participate in a moderated question-and-answer session and will sign books.

Some of the student activists have left the school to tour the country and advocate for gun safety measures. They are urging young people to register to vote and use the democratic process for change.

Friday’s appearance will be Wind’s first on the Glimmer tour. He still attends the school. “It’s completely changed the entire atmosphere, the entire landscape,” Wind said. “There’s not a specific thing to point out. It’s just the looming feeling.”

Wind did not know Cruz, and didn’t want to speculate on his motive — or even think about him. “No one is focused on him,” Wind said. “We don’t want to be concerned about him and his face, because he is someone that caused harm and we don’t like to talk about him.”

The campaign’s goals include voter registration, a federal universal background check for gun purchases, a ban on semiautomatic assault rifles, and more funding to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

It’s not a partisan effort, Wind said. “We can all come together and agree on one thing — that this country needs change.”

The book’s title is not an accident, he added. “The glimmer of hope is the young people, the people who are going to the polls next, the people who are going to the polls now. We don’t like the way things are happening and we’re going to change them.”
 

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Molly Walsh was a Seven Days staff writer 2015-20.

11 replies on “Parkland Students to Bring ‘Glimmer of Hope’ to Burlington”

  1. A big thank you to the kids from Parkland High School for all their hard work and dedication. They have many lessons to teach us.

  2. “It’s not a partisan effort, Wind said. “We can all come together and agree on one thing that this country needs change.””

    Uh, nope. We already have more than sufficient restrictions on our individual 2d Amendment rights.

  3. Yes, Pat Cashman, your ability to get just about any weapon has suffered horribly. How will you go on? Do you need grief counseling? Did you miss time from work? My thoughts and prayers to you.

  4. Wow 2 so-called students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Fla. Hogg wasn’t there when the shooting started,(home playing video games). one is 21 yr old Gonzalez, not even a student, only ONE was there Alex Wind
    When are people going to wrap their heads around the truth that guns do not kill. it’s the person behind the gun. The ones to blame is the Sherrif and the school. They were told about Cruz, how he was acting, things Cruz was saying. but nothing was being done, the Sherrif dept hid behind cars, not doing anything but run. Real brave men, hearing students screaming and did nothing but hid behind cars. This is all facts. TV stations showed them hiding. Hogg and Gonzalez just want to have their 15 mins of fame..

  5. “A sucker is born every minute”

    Capitalize on the victims…. “Fish-on!”
    People do realize that only the NET profit of this “book tour” is actually going to the Parkland Victims.
    Hogg, Gonzalez and Wind(and their publicist) get their cut before the “NET profit” which is 15% of the GROSS EACH!

    That equates to only less than 3% of the gross going to the victims.

    Soooooo, out of that $20 you bought a ticket for, only 60 cents…that’s right! 60 Cents is going to the victim fund.

    You wanna help? Donate directly to the cause March For Our Lives or Everytown.

  6. @Donna Boutin. Please stop spreading lies gleaned from far right conspiracy sites.

    Emma Gonzalez is not 21 years old, she is 18. (Born November 11, 1999… she’ll turn 19 in 3 weeks) She was a student at the school, graduated in May of this year. She was in the school auditorium at the time of the shooting, were she remained for 2 hours until the police came and escorted the students out.

    As for Hogg, it is well documented that he was in an Environmental Science class at the time the shooting began, and ended up with many other students packed together in a closet in a Culinary Arts classroom. Conspiracy sites have taken a comment he made during an interview to claim he wasn’t at the school at the time… but they twisted it entirely out of context and created the lie you’re spreading that has been smacked down repeatedly by fact checkers.

    You should be embarrassed to spew such nonsense.

  7. @terjeanderson Hogg stated in an interview on the News that he was HOME and when he saw the news on the TV that he jumped on his bike and rode as fast as he could to get to the school to cover this shooting to show to the news He did this as he wants to be a journalist and as for Emma Gonzalez she also stated to a reporter that she was 20 yrs old !!!!. This was on CBS a leftist station. So I’m not spewing any nonsense and I’m not embarrassed by what was said by these 2 on the news. To you I say “BLESS YOU ” as the southern people would say…

  8. A_Trout,
    It’s not an “ability”, it’s an Individual Right. I understand you don’t like it, I also don’t particularly care.
    The fact is that firearms are already heavily regulated and controlled, more so than any other individual right, and those restrictions just keep piling on as people think up new ways to keep their fellow citizens from engaging in legal activity they find offensive. Firearms remain essentially unchanged from 100 years ago, yet people with no knowledge of firearms think something has changed fundamentally. The fact is in the 1920’s and 30’s you could buy your guns through the mail, and go to the hardware store and rent a real mankiller like a Thompson submachinegun for a little weekend fun. What has changed? The kids. The problem is not guns, it’s that many kids today have broken moral compasses and no understanding of their obligations to our society, and believe that what they want, feel, think is more important than anything else.

  10. @BradD lol you believe snopes.com. The biggest leftist liberal website around. The one where the owner was arrested !!!. The owners are great friends of the Clintons and Soros. They will print anything the left tells them. Those 2 made their statemates on the local news in Fla, on The 3 national networks. So before calling me a liar maybe you should watch the news or do some real research. Bless You!!!

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