Cameron Kasky, an outspoken survivor of the 2018 Parkland Excessive College taking pictures, introduced his bid for Congress on Tuesday, saying in a video that he’s working to work on legal guidelines that assist “all Americans.”
“You and your family are working all week just to spend most of your paycheck on rent and health care,” the 25-year-old stated in his launch video shared on social media. “Meanwhile, the richest people in our country are telling us that we can’t afford real solutions, like social housing and Medicare For All. No, we can only afford genocide, Palantir mass surveillance contracts and ICE thugs.”
Kasky stated he’s been “taking on” members of Trump’s “regime” since he was a teen. The video then cuts to a clip of then-17-year-old Kasky asking Marco Rubio, then a U.S. senator representing Florida, if he would promise to cease taking cash from the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation or NRA. (Rubio responded: “I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda.”)
Kasky stated within the launch video that he by no means deliberate on getting concerned in politics till the taking pictures at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 folks and injured 18 others. Kasky was a junior on the time of the taking pictures.
“My classmates and I learned the hard way that this shooting didn’t happen in spite of the American system,” he stated. “It happened because of it.”
Kasky and different survivors of the 2018 mass taking pictures quickly entered the highlight and have become champions for gun management. Kasky, together with two different survivors, co-founded By no means Once more MSD, a student-led political group that advocates for gun management. By no means Once more MSD, together with Everytown for Gun Security, led a nationwide protest ― March For Our Lives ― that demanded motion for gun violence.
David Hogg, one other outstanding survivor of the Parkland mass taking pictures, has already dabbled in politics. He served because the co-vice chair of the Democratic Nationwide Conference from February till he was ousted in June over disagreements with the DNC over Hogg’s effort to herald youthful politicians to major the older ones.
Kasky, who’s working to characterize New York’s twelfth Congressional District, ended his launch video asking for donations to his marketing campaign.
“All of my opponents have a lot of very rich friends,” he stated. “I can’t necessarily say the same thing about myself.”
In September, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) introduced he wouldn’t search reelection. Since then, a number of folks have introduced their bid to take his seat, together with former President John F. Kennedy’s grandson, 32-year-old Jack Schlossberg.
Like Schlossberg, Kasky is comparatively younger, however Kasky advised Vainness Honest in an interview printed Tuesday, which described him as a Democratic socialist, that he isn’t “running on youth.” He stated he’s as an alternative working on insurance policies like opposing AI, supporting Medicare for All, abolishing ICE and ending the warfare in Gaza.
“Two thousand twenty-six is the year of the outsider,” Kasky advised the publication. “I believe these midterms will send a message across the country that the traditional qualifications people talk about, the traditional standards to which we hold candidates—whether they have a background as a local-level lawmaker, whether they had X amount of time at Yale Law or McKinsey—these things don’t matter to people anymore. What people care about is who is going to put up a fight and who really believes in something.”
