Former President Obama penned a Time 100 Most Influential People entry for five student survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Fla., earlier this year.
Davig Hogg, Emma González, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin and Alex Wind are the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students included in the entry.
{mosads}Obama wrote that the students, “by bearing witness to carnage” and “asking tough questions and demanding real answers,” were “shaking us out of our complacency.”
The students have emerged as activists for stricter gun laws following the shooting that left 17 people dead at their South Florida high school.
“The Parkland, Fla., students don’t have the kind of lobbyists or big budgets for attack ads that their opponents do. Most of them can’t even vote yet,” Obama wrote.
“But they have the power so often inherent in youth: to see the world anew; to reject the old constraints, outdated conventions and cowardice too often dressed up as wisdom.”
Since the deadly shooting, the students have participated in a CNN town hall with lawmakers and helped organize the “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C.
“They’re as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry. And they live to mobilize their peers,” Obama wrote of the students.