Cameron Kasky, as I’m sure you all know by now, is one of the Stoneman-Douglas High School students in Florida who survived the Valentine’s Day massacre and then went on to help create the #NeverAgain movement and #MarchForOurLives.
Jeff Kasky is Cameron’s father.
Let’s just say...he’s not happy with Ms. Loesch and the NRA.
ON A RELATED NOTE: As some of you may recall, I posted a diary early in the morning of February 15th.
Cameron Kasky had already posted a lengthy screed on his Facebook account (which he later had to disable due to the volume of hate/bile he started receiving in the following weeks) at around 8:40pm...just, what, 5 hours after it happened? A mutual friend of his father’s forwarded the link to me, and I was so stunned that I took a screen shot and reposted it on Twitter. It went viral within an hour or two.
Cameron and I touched base with each other via Twitter that night. For me it was mainly to confirm his identity, since there are a lot of strange people out there...I didn’t doubt what had happened, I just wanted to make sure he was who he said he was. You see, at the time, his Twitter and Facebook profiles made it sound like he lived in New York, which obviously set off red flags since the shooting happened in Florida. I wanted to be sure this wasn’t an imposter, so I asked:
ME: Pardon a stupid/awkward question, but your profile says you're in...Brooklyn? And your FB profile says you worked at the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts...again, in New York?
Cameron: This account was originally made for me to tweet out to the cast members of a play I was directing and the play took place in Brooklyn
I think he was referring to his school production of “Little Shop of Horrors”.
You see, at the time he had a different Twitter account which only had couple dozen tweets referring to rehearsal schedules and the like...as he noted, prior to February 14th it was used purely for utilitarian reasons.
Anyway, for him it was to just to thank me for helping get the word out, and a day or so later I got in touch with his father, Jeff, as well.
Let me be clear: While the specifics/details would take a couple of weeks to gel, Cameron already knew that very night what lay ahead and what he and his fellow students had to do. This is an actual exchange between us at around midnight or so that night:
Me: Just so you know…now that your post has gone viral., you’re almost certainly gonna be attacked by sick gun nut goons claiming “false flag” or that you’re a fake, etc etc. The NY references/etc on TW/FB will likely be the first thing they go after...
Cameron: Who gives a shit? The people who care will care, the people who don’t want to care won’t care...That’s the qualm with social media. Nobody can trust anything
Me: I just wanted to make sure you knew what to expect, but it sounds like you’ve already braced yourself.
Cameron: Just the world we live in Mr. G.
Read that again. This is how well Cameron (and I’m guessing his friends as well) understand the current U.S. news/social media environment. They already knew how things were gonna play out with the Trumpster scumbags, the NRA assholes, the Alex Jones nutbags. They may not have known the specifics of when, how and where the backlash and conspiracy theories would show up, but they knew they’d be coming.
The next day he set up a new Twitter account using his real name:
I have the vague distinction of being the first person who he followed on Twitter, which doesn’t mean much I realize.
Anyway, the entire Kasky family seems to be a force to be reckoned with. Mr. & Mrs. Kasky did/are doing their jobs brilliantly.