I’m Travis Harper, I’m a junior at Harvard and a full time Associate on our Judicial Advocacy team. 

I’m an unapologetic queer Black person, born and raised in Atlanta where I fell in love with social justice and activism. When you picture March For Our Lives, and the students leading it, you might picture us marching in the streets, rallying outside statehouses and leading impassioned chants of “we call BS” at the NRA.  

But there’s also a lot about this organization and movement that you don’t see. It’s not only essential to have young, queer, BIPOC folks leading rallies and marches, but also showing up in decisionmaking spaces where young people haven’t been heard— like the courtroom.  

Today, extremist judges across the country pose a growing threat to every gun safety law in existence and yet to be passed. March For Our Lives’ Judicial Advocacy Team’s work is critical to fighting back. We’re getting involved in litigation, filing amicus briefs, and mass-mobilizing young people to show the courts young people are paying attention and won’t stand for rulings that make us less safe.
 

What sets our strategy apart is that, for the first time, judges and justices are being confronted directly by the voices of impacted young people. And people are noticing.

In the recent Supreme Court Case Mahanoy Area School District v. BL, which debated whether schools could constitutionally punish students for speech or activism outside of school, we took action. Hundreds of March For Our Lives members have been punished by their schools for speaking up, so this one was personal. We filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court sharing the experiences of young activists, launched a social media campaign, and hosted a teach-in with Mary Beth Tinker that was attended by thousands of students nationally. The Supreme Court heard our voices and we won.  

This was a major victory for student organizing. We now have a constitutionally enshrined right to have a say in our democratic process and not be punished for it. This isn’t our first win — over the past three years, our team has made huge strides. Just last month, we won another case against the NRA defending the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in Florida.  

But the gun extremists haven’t given up trying to subvert democracy and rewrite the rules in their favor. They’re packing courts with far-right extremists, funding partisan legal “scholarship” that misinterprets the second amendment, and trying to roll back our constitutional right to not be shot. Their goal is to overturn common-sense gun safety laws and block the passage of future policies that we need to make us safe.  

We can’t let them. 

Let’s get to work.

Onward,
Travis Harper
Judicial Advocacy Associate
March For Our Lives