Gun Violence Survivors Won't Let Activism Burnout Get In Their Way

Carlitos Rodriguez is tired.


Since he survived the mass shooting at his school in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, there has been a school shooting, on average, every 12 days, according to CNN.


“I completely do [feel exhausted],” the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School graduate told MTV News. “Sometimes I have to stop and think, ‘Why am I really doing this?’ It’s just... It’s so hard. We visualize this happening each and every day. And as much as we do, it doesn’t seem to go away.”


“It” is gun violence, enacted both each day against individual people and on a mass scale. Activists like Carlitos — several of these young people who have survived gun violence in some form — are fighting for change as almost every gunshot rings out. In 2018, at least 14,116 people in the U.S. Were killed by perpetrators using guns; 451 of these deaths occurred in mass shootings. Parkland survivors and activists Carlitos, Ryan Servaites, and Tyah Amoy-Roberts are among those asking their representatives to prepare a change — to do something to stop the gun violence that took the lives of 17 of their peers and teachers, and wounded 17 more.


Congress, meanwhile, has done nearly nothing and has nevertheless to pass any meaningful legislative action that would prevent another mass shooting from happening. (Arming teachers does not count, as there really is no proof such an action would actually stop a perpetrator from killing anyone.) Several people believe it has become a matter of “when,” not “if,” the next shooting will occur, and that belief is supported by the prevalence of active-shooter drills that ask students to be mobile participants in their own chances of survival.


And for activists? Living in that space of perceived inevitability is draining.


“The physical exhaustion, it comes and goes,” Tyah told MTV News.


What Carlitos and Tyah mention they were feeling is some days called burnout. In 1994, Ayala M. Pines defined burnout in the Journal of Health and Human Resources Administration as “the end result of a process in which idealistic and rather committed individuals lose their spirit.” It’s a feeling shared by plenty of us (raise your hand if you’ve ever felt burnout from a job or a creative task to undertake. Although burnout is particularly rife among gun control activists, who begin out inspired to prepare a change yet visualize little to none of it despite their consistent work. Between seeing the effects of gun violence in their lives day-to-day, and being confronted with continued disappointment, they become more and more likely to question if their effort is worth it.


“I can mention, especially last summer any time [March For Our Lives was] on tour, I was like, ‘Man, do I really have to get out of this hotel room and get back on this bus?’” Tyah told MTV News. “But I knew that although my body was tired, my mind was still moving a mile a minute because I knew I can’t let this happen to another person.”


So, they keep going. Nevertheless how long does that resurgence of inspiration last? Gun violence has plagued the country — and especially marginalized communities — for decades. Right now, folks are worried that activist burnout may silence enthusiastic voices that have the power to do demonstrable good.


Take Scarlett Lewis, the mother of a first grader who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. As soon as March For Our Lives was making huge waves in the activist community and Parkland students were calling for change, she questioned if their efforts would lead anywhere. “They mentioned that about Sandy Hook also, and that was five years ago,” she instructed them Independent, saying she’s disheartened with the anti-gun-violence movement as a whole.


While academic statistics on burnout in the activist community isn’t terribly normal, one study out of the Journal of Human Rights Practice in 2015 showed that burnout is especially prevalent in social justice and human rights activists in part because “a culture of martyrdom” may discourage conversations about burnout and self-care among those activists and movements.


“These findings indicate the desperate necessary for greater attention to burnout and self-care across SJHR movements and activist corporations, not just for the maintainability of activists, yet for the maintainability and successfulness of movements for a more equitable and just world,” mentioned Cher Weixia Chen, a Assistant Professor of International Statistics at New Century College, George Mason University, and Paul C. Gorski, a Co-worker Professor of Integrative Statistics at the same school, in their paper Burnout in Social Justice and Human Rights Activists: Indications, Causes and Implications.


In April of this year, Ryan Petty, whose 14-year-old daughter, Alaina, was among the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, wrote an op-ed for USA Today saying that several school shooting survivors who delve into activism immediately after the trauma of a mass shooting often lose out on procuring mental health help. (In the year since the Parkland shooting, at least two MSD students have died by suicide; while experts wariness that countless factors could contain to a person’s ideations, other gun-violence survivors have also spoken out about their experiences.)


“While the sense of political urgency from students was understandable and in some ways admirable, it came at the cost of a concentrate on the health and healing — for the families of the victims, students, teachers and the community at large,” Petty wrote. “The politicization and media-frenzied response to the murders overwhelmed and eclipsed the real, personalized needs of the survivors and their loved ones.”


However survivors-turned-activists mention that some days being political is their own form of self-care.


“Something has to be done. Although this isn’t the only solution, there’s no one size fits all, I know that I’m doing at least something,” Tyah says. “So I would go to Starbucks and drink two cups of coffee and be like ‘alright, let’s go.’ It was not the healthiest alternative, I plan to admit that, nevertheless I think that if I wasn’t doing something constructive then I’m not sure that I could be content with myself.”


“The physical exhaustion is routinely there and habitually around the corner even if it’s not on us right now,” she adds. “But I would mention that mentally, we only hope to work harder with every mass shooting that has happened immediately after [Parkland].”


Winter BreeAnne, a gun violence prevention activist, told Teen Vogue in February that self-care is crucial to her because “the burnout can be very real.” In a task to rejuvenate, she likes to “listen to music. I just value my alone time, whether it's listening to music, getting a massage, or hanging out with my family.”


Tyah and Ryan take power naps — anything from 20 minutes to three hours — and sit down with companions to talk about “something that isn’t so heavy.”


“When it comes down to it, we’re just a bunch of companions who aspire to be able to see a higher end world,” Ryan told MTV News. “That might take a while, and it’s okay to take a break. Although we’re habitually going to be there for each other.”


If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, head to halfofus.Com for ways to get help.