Armed with Reason: This Podcast - Episode 17
When loss leads to action.
On this episode, Devin and Caitlin are joined by Robert Schentrup, a survivor, gun violence prevention advocate, and brother. He is also a founding member of Team ENOUGH.
You can listen to the chat via our channel on Spotify as well as watch on YouTube, or read the transcription below.
We hope you’ll tune in and let us know not only what you think, but what you’d like to hear more about in the future. And if you are interested in recommending a guest, or even being one yourself, please let us know!
Given the abundance of gun violence in our country, it is critical to have the ability to discuss and advocate for a safer community. This podcast is one more way for the movement to do just that.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:
Caitlin: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us here again on the Armed With Reason podcast, brought to you by GVPedia. As we've been saying recently, one of the main motivators to starting this podcast last year was to create a space for survivors to share their stories. So today Devin and I will be joined by Robert Schentrup, a survivor, gun violence prevention advocate and brother. He currently is the organizing manager for Team ENOUGH, but we certainly can't mention Team ENOUGH without stating that he is also a founding member. Robert's story about why he joined the gun violence prevention movement is a powerful one, and I believe it's important for that story to be told in his voice rather than mine. So Robert, first and foremost, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. We really appreciate you being here. And to begin, would you mind just telling us a little bit about the catalyst for your involvement in the gun violence prevention movement?
Robert: Absolutely. Well, thank you Caitlin and Devin. I really appreciate you guys. Having me on the podcast here today, and getting the chance to share my story and more about the work that I've had the chance to do here over the last six years. And so, yeah, how I got involved in gun violence prevention really is, a personal story. And for me, this movement was really the first time that I ever really engaged in politics. As a young person growing up, I lived my whole life in Florida. And to start high school, my parents moved me and my two sisters to Parkland, Florida. And we had lived kind of nearby, but, the high school wasn't nearly as good as Marjory Stoneman Douglas. And so I had the chance to go to school there, all four years of high school up until I graduated in 2017. And my two sisters continued to go there after I graduated.
But, on February 14th, 2018, my sister Carmen, who was just 16 at the time, along with 16 others, were shot and killed at the school. Carmen was in her AP Psychology class getting ready to wrap up the day when the shooter came in with an AR-15, shot into her classroom and a couple others. And this was someone who police, the community, who even his own family knew was struggling, who knew was in a bad place; and is someone who, throughout his entire time both in the school and after. But somebody who needed support, and if he needed help and never got it. And so for me and my family it really was, our, being personally impacted by gun violence that drove us to want to take action. And so, while I'm involved a lot on the youth organizing side, really focused on our work here on the gun violence prevention movement, my parents also do a lot of their own advocacy as well, related to this issue, but also a lot in school safety. But for us, it was really something that when the week after the shooting, as we were just trying to put the pieces together, understand what's next, one thing that really came to fruition for all of us was that this one, did not have to happen; and two, that there were so many things that failed, that allowed for the situation that happened in Parkland to unfold. And we understood that we needed to do something about that, that we needed to change the systems that failed us, to not only prevent that pain from happening to others, but also to try and make something good come out of the pain that we've experienced.
And, in conversations that I've had with survivors from Parkland and other shootings in the last six years, that is just such a core sentiment that I have heard from everyone that, yes, it is about stopping this from happening to other people. Taking that pain that you feel and turning into a passion to help others. But also trying to have, try to not have our loved one die in vain, right? To have something happen because of it. And so for me, this work is something that I have really throw myself into here in the last six years, something that, I have really enjoyed being able to be a part of, getting to meet people like the both of you, like so many other folks, that are a part of our movement space. And being able to do something that didn't happen, in Parkland that leads to so much of the gun violence that we have every day, which is being able to build a community. And for so many of us, that community is missing. And that really is something that is core to kind of my understanding of gun violence. How do we solve it?
Really core to the work that we do at Team ENOUGH, which is when it comes to this epidemic of gun violence, or the epidemic of loneliness, the mental health issues that so many young people experience, it's there's a lack of community that we feel, that we experience, that leads to so many of the negative health outcomes that happen. And not only is it important to have our work be successful, for community to exist, but also for all of us to live thriving lives.
And so I, yeah, I, I'm really happy to be on today to chat through not only a little bit more about my personal story and the work that we do at Team ENOUGH, but also the movement as a whole.
Caitlin: Thank you for sharing that, and certainly the work that you and your family are doing, have done in the past, and will continue to do certainly serves Carmen's memory. And the thing about gun violence or any preventative work is we'll never truly know the impact that we make, right? Because we will prevent things from happening that we, you know, there's no real way to measure that. But certainly you are absolutely saving lives. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.
Robert: Thank you.
Caitlin: And when it comes to your work specifically, can you walk us through what it was like to start Team ENOUGH, just four months after the Parkland massacre occurred?
Robert: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it really kinda how Team ENOUGH got started was, well the fact that, you know, after the March for Our Lives, just a month after the Parkland shooting, as the youth movement was really gaining steam, and as I and my family had taken the chance to take, you know, a step forward, in the gun violence prevention movement, but also really just, like, have time to heal, really intentionally those first three months, I was, you know, in conversations with my friends, a lot of whom were a part of March for Our Lives, in conversation with other survivors who I'd gotten connected with. And one of the big pieces that came out to me was really how the issue of gun violence and conversation around it was, yes, of course importantly, focus on the gun violence that happened in school, something that I had direct experience with. But as I was educating myself on the issue, how gun violence really affected America as a whole. I started to realize that most of the gun violence that happened didn't look like my situation at all; and that 60% of gun deaths were from firearm suicides; that so much of the way that people die in firearm homicide was in a community or interpersonal setting. And I started to realize that, you know, if we're going to address this problem, we really need to come at it with a holistic solution set, but really address pretty seriously these large drivers of gun violence.
And so that's when I was reached out to by some folks at Brady who mentioned how they were starting to put together a group of folks for a program really focused on the experience of young people that was youth led, and focused on the reality of gun violence as it happens every day, and really wanting to intentionally center folks who have lived experience, but also who are of identities that are like, we're not being represented at the time. And you can that's the folks that were founders of about this, and that agree with you.
But like at the beginning, the youth movement space was predominantly white and wealthy, right? These were kids from upper class backgrounds. And because of the racial caste system that we have in this country, that usually means white. And so that was not reflective of what gun violence looks like every single day. And the mission of Team Enough and the mission that we started with, the mission that we have today, is how can we not only center the way that gun violence comes into our lives every single day? And have a core view of the way that the issue really represents not just what gets media attention, but also how can we make sure that we're centering voices that have been historically marginalized and excluded, and use the national platform at Brady to be able to do that.
So I, along with my co-founders Aalayah, Adam, Kaylee, and, 11 other folks who joined us for that first iteration of our executive council. We got together, we got to talk about what do we want this project to look like? What do you want this to be? Brady was very intentional at the beginning of saying, this is youth led. We want you guys to build this. And, that that was something that we really had the agency to do. And, you know, Aalayah and I are here six years later continuing to help build out the program, continuing to help manage it. It's something that for us is really important, because it really allowed us the space to talk about the issue of gun violence in the way that resonated with us, that resonated with our understanding of really how we're going to solve this problem. And is something that really resonates with young people across the country of the fact that we are, through our lived experience, uniquely impacted by gun violence. The number one cause of death for young people for the first time ever, starting a couple years ago, right, is gun violence. So the young people of today have a unique understanding through lived experience of what the problem is. And, as the most queer and most of color of any generation that has come before us, we also have a unique understanding of the way that historically marginalized communities are impacted by this issue.
And so it's our belief, it's my belief, that as young people we have a lot of expertise to offer, that we have an important perspective on what this issue actually looks like and how we're going to solve it. And that really is the perspective that we bring through Team ENOUGH, and try to bring every single day.
Devin: Yeah. So I'd like to pop in on that and ask about some of the specific programs and projects that you've been working on over the past six years, and what those have looked like, and what those have accomplished.
Robert: Yeah, absolutely. So some of the projects that we've worked on over the last six years, there's just like a couple that come to mind. So, the first and one that I am really proud of, my colleague Stephan on working on, was late 2019, early 2020, when, Stephan, through his work in San Diego with his local chapter, and started hearing a lot about ghost guns. Right.? These DIY, unserialized firearms you can buy online, build with a screwdriver and a YouTube video. And, really, what the folks in San Diego, recognized as a major city has especially a large port, we're really seeing was just a massive increase in the amount of ghost guns being recovered at the scene of a crime, and how this was really undercutting a lot of the important laws that California had. And so Stephan, in coordination with some folks at the Brady Chapter, was like, wait, I'm pretty sure that, like, I, as a 17-year-old, can buy and then, like, have shipped directly to my house, everything that I need to build a ghost gun. And they set up a way to do that. And sure enough, he, as a 17-year-old, no ID check, no verification of age, had that gun shipped directly to him, with instructions on how to do it, links to YouTube videos, all the tools he needed. And he put together a video and, helped showcase just how easy it was to do this in California, a state with one of the strongest gun laws in the country. And this video helped catalyze his city council to pass a ghost gun ordinance.
Back in early 2020, helped organize, folks that Team ENOUGH across L.A. and the Bay area, along with our coalition partners to get ordinances passed in those areas as well. And that really helped create the ghost gun law that happened in California in 2021. But that video showed people this is a real problem, it's actually happening, and helped really take that theoretical and show the reality of what was occurring. And that really jolted people into action. And so, you know, that's one project that I think of that Team ENOUGH did that really had a significant impact that really still resonates with me to this day.
And, you know, even thinking back earlier than that, I think it was late 2018, early '20, early 2019, was the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, when he was, his confirmation hearings for being a Supreme Court justice. And, my colleague, Aalayah Eastmond, was called up to be a witness and to testify in front of Congress as part of his hearing, and to talk about his views on the Second Amendment and how it would impact young people and the gun violence that comes into our lives. And really talk about how dangerous it would be to confirm him to that position. And me, along with a number of our other colleagues on Team ENOUGH were able to be there in support of Aalayah in that effort. And her testimony was something that gained a lot of traction, not only in media, but with members in terms of them thinking about this decision and what its impact could be. But this even kind of comes to what we've all seen kind of happened recently with the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. A law that many of us in the coalition have been really pushing for for a number of years, but really started on the youth side of things in the movement.
And at Team ENOUGH, one of our seminal programs is our youth advocacy training program, where we work with young people who are just passionate about the issue and don't know where to start, but want to do something, learn about legislative organizing, advocacy and gun violence prevention policy, and then work with them to bring it all together to advocate directly in the halls of power, both at the state level and at the federal level on the Hill. And this past summer, one of the big bills that we really worked on, that we had our advocacy days focused on, was the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. And, yes, it was also in support of Representative Maxwell Frost, the first Gen-Z Congress member -- someone that I had the privilege of organizing with out in Orlando -- but also because we know how powerful this policy can be, and we were really working along with other folks in the youth movement space to really raise the profile of this policy and really put it on the radars of lawmakers. And so, of course, now that law caught the ear of the White House. They're like, "Wait, there's something we can do?" And now it exists, and now we have, of course, our great movement leaders -- Rob Wilcox, Greg Jackson, and Stefanie Feldman -- being able to lead that office. And so for me, those are just some things that we had a role in that, that I personally feel really proud about helping accomplish.
And, you know, I just want to close to saying that, like, all of those efforts -- while I think Team ENOUGH had a strong role in them -- these are inherently all movement efforts. It's something that every organization in this movement had a hand in helping out with. And we've seen success as a movement space because of that collaboration, because of us being able to work together. And the more that we're able to do that, and I see this so clearly on the youth movement side, we understand that the more that we do this, the stronger we will be, the more power we will have, and the more we're able to get done. And I know that that kind of spirit and that sense of collaboration is something that we carry forward as a Team ENOUGH, and it's something I think that we as young people really feel and value as important.
Devin: Yeah. And I definitely like to second the comments about the power of collaboration. I mean, at GVPedia, our main effort is trying to debunk myths and get information to the proper hands so that it can show up basically whenever, and like somebody we know meeting with somebody else who meets with somebody else and getting information to a Senator at an important hearing, and stuff like that, is quite critical. And I think the work you've done at Team ENOUGH and kind of sparking those changes is quite important. I'd like to ask a bit more about the Youth Advocacy Training Program, and what kind of skills you teach, and what are some of the, like, I'm not quite sure the best way to frame it, but more surprising skills for people coming in and realizing like, Oh, I didn't know about X or Y, and that turns out to be super important.
Robert: Yeah. Well, really, in the training program, the thing that we're teaching students is, broadly, legislative organizing, right? What is it and how to do it? And, for young people one of the things that this program is really trying to work against is the idea that so many folks have that they as an individual are powerless. That they cannot create change, and that they are just subject to the whims of politicians and those in power. And really, what this training program is about more than anything else is that you as a young person have the ability to make an impact, make a difference, and make change happen.
And so really how we start off the program is talking about the fact that, like, there are real things that we can do to make a difference, right? That change is possible. Right? The the focus on this issue, in particular, that gun violence is preventable. And, we spend the first couple of weeks of the program really helping students understand why that's real, right? Why it's not a talking point, but actually a reality. And we go through states and even things at the federal level that have happened. We go through what those policies were, what the change they created was, how we measured that from actually happening. And then we meet with folks about the research space and in the movement space to talk about what is gun violence prevention policy, how does it come together? Why does it work? What evidence do we have to believe that it works in the first place? And, also being able to better understand what does gun violence look like at the identity level? How does it impact certain communities differently? And we have speakers come on to talk about how, especially for historically marginalized groups, what those impacts look like and how they break apart differently. And so it is for us, how we struck the program off is really giving folks a foundational understanding of what is the issue of gun violence, how does it impact all of us, and then what are the solutions that we have available to us?
And then in the second half, we really drill and drill down and focus in on the state, or the of course, in DC at the federal level. Right? What are the bills? What are the ideas and concepts that we're going to be working on in particular that session? And so we have meetings with sponsors, with advocates, with folks who have a lot of knowledge about these bills to help our students really dive into the weeds and learn more about what the details of this policy is, what we're hoping it will achieve, how it's actually going to make those changes, and then be able to go into doing an advocacy training to help students understand, okay, how do I take these ideas and this knowledge that I have and then create change with it? So we not only do the classic bill on the hill, right, what's the process? But we also talk about what are the ways that, well, one, that that process is often built to exclude people, especially young people or people without specific knowledge. And there are examples that all of our leaders have of this happening.
One thing that comes to mind recently was at the beginning of a legislative session in Florida, one of our leaders were calling different offices, trying to get an idea of what the agenda was. Right. What's the schedule for the session? And different offices all give them different information. And so it's okay, well, what, do you guys not know what you're doing? The answer is maybe. But two, you know, how often are people actively trying to mislead you? And how often are they trying to make it so that you have to have a specific level of knowledge or insider access in order to be able to make change happen. And so that is, of course, an important part of the conversation of the fact that these legislatures, both in where they are placed a lot of times, but also specifically how they operate is meant to box out people who are not a part, who are not legislators themselves, or are not a part of the kind of lobbying establishment, that is around them. And so for us, how do you make that change happen? What does it look like? We teach the skills of advocacy. We go into legislative organizing, the theory behind it.
But Devin, to the second part of your question, which is what do people learn? Right? What's something where people are the most I'll say surprised is that we help everyone understand that you have a story about how gun violence has impacted you in your life, right? I, as a survivor, have a very clear story, and it's very obvious to a lot of people of how gun violence impacted my life. But every person, young or old, has a story about just even the fear that gun violence puts into their lives. And for some of these young people -- as we help them understand their story of self, right, how can you connect your experiences and your feelings to making this policy happen and giving a persuasive case to the lawmaker or their staff -- that they start to realize, wait, gun violence has impacted me. I have a story to share here. And my perspective is important. Even if it's a student saying there was a shooting threat at my school, right? And that we had to go on lockdown, that we have to, you know, lock all the doors, huddle under the desks, turn off the lights, and like, you know, the fear or the anxiety, the effects that that had on me; and the shooting didn't actually even happen, but just the threat of the shooting that that's a real and important story. And you deserve to be able to share that, that you have power in being able to share that, and that you absolutely should demand that your lawmakers, the people that have been elected to represent you, actually do something about it. And the thing that I love the most about the program -- having been a part of it myself and now having the chance to help lead it -- is how so many young people kind of come in to the program feeling passionate, but just like not really knowing what to do. And leaving with a feeling that, oh, I can actually make a difference, that like, I have the power to do something, and that they believe, that that they have a role to play in government, in the political process. And that empowerment is something that I see in so many, so many of our members coming out of this program, and is really the end result that we're looking for, which is, do you feel empowered to make a difference?
Because the only sure fire way that everything gets worse is that no one tries to make anything better.
And what we tell our students is, you know, look at this, especially where we have programs that are in states that are just not very receptive to the ideas that we're bringing. Like, look, we're probably going to get shot down a lot. There's probably going to be people that, like, don't want to listen to us. But we have to try. The more we come back, the more people we bring with us next time, the more likely they are to listen, and know that this inherently is an act of hope. And I'm saying that we believe that we can make a difference, that we believe that we can change things. And that we we do that because of the difference that we believe it can make. And, you know, the first year, the second year even, right, you might not feel that, but ten years down the road, there will be a difference. And really being able to instill that within our membership is something that is really important for us and really core to the program.
Devin: Yeah. So and particularly in the cases where you don't get the most receptive of greetings, I'm curious what some of the common myths that your organization and volunteers frequently encounter on the ground, if there are any.
Robert: Yeah. Well, when it comes to myths, there is an important distinction here, which is that when we're talking to legislators and we're talking to individuals, whether they're a myth or whether they are a disingenuous argument is an important distinction. Because we know that for many lawmakers, that they are not true believers in a lot of the myths that are propagated by the gun lobby. But that they have a vested electoral and financial interest in sharing an ideology with the gun lobby. And so, for those folks, that's also something that we talk about too, right? Where are people's decisions coming from? Why are they making them? And you know what's possible in these meetings?
But the second part is, you know, especially when we're talking to folks who -- and this is for so many of our young people, our family members, right, our friends who are not super into politics who really aren't paying attention -- but are often hearing a lot of what started as marketing tactics by the gun lobby and have now become pervasive myths about guns and gun ownership and their role in society. Really being able to help, a lot of those conversations are really about helping people understand that gun violence didn't just happen, right. This isn't something that... it didn't come from nowhere, but that it is an intentionally created, situation because a bunch of people are making billions of dollars by making this problem worse, by not solving it. And so, helping people understand really the role that, in this case, the profit motive and and the monetary incentive have in creating and perpetuating gun violence at the rate that it is today is important for any kind of framework around myth busting for us.
But as to like, what are the myths that they're hearing? The number one myth is that guns make us safer, right? And that's something I know GVPedia's done a lot of research around, especially around defensive gun use, showing that it does not. And at Brady, it's something that we call the Big Lie, right? This idea that guns make us safer and all the data shows that it doesn't. And so really combating that big lie is super important.
The second piece is also, this idea that the Second Amendment inherently enshrines the individual right to own any firearm that you want at any point in time. And that's something that is a new legal construction, and is something that -- as we found out last year through great investigative reporting by The New York Times and ProPublica -- was essentially astroturfed by the gun industry, right, that they're paying law students and law professors, literally giving them checks for thousands of dollars to write law review articles that basically laid the groundwork for then judges to say, oh, well, the Second Amendment actually is blank. And so, for us, you know, those are the two myths that are the most pervasive that students say that they have in conversations with their parents, but their friends.
But the third one really is, the myth that gun violence is just something that happens. It's something that we can't do anything about. And that it is just a fact of life. Right? And to use the parlance of my generation, it is what it is. Right? And that that is not true. Right? That we know that we can really make a difference. We had the pleasure of having Attorney General Rob Bonta, join Brady for our California conference in October.
I had the pleasure of leading a retreat for our leaders at Team ENOUGH during that conference, and he came out and said a stat that just really stuck with me, which is that if every state had California's gun laws today, every single year, 15,000 less people would die. We cut the rate essentially by a third.
And that it shows you, obviously California is an example where you've seen where you can literally watch the rate of gun deaths go down over time, but also just having that example to show what can that policy look like across the country if you implement it? That it shows that we can do something, that there's a difference to be made. And also if you look at any other country that is in our peer nation, the status, right, like none of them have this issue to anywhere the similar degree, and we as the U.S. are a unique outlier. And so we can look to them and say, oh, hey, okay, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, like they have all figured it out, and that we are the ones here that are actually the outlier, that we are the ones where something is going wrong, and that there are things that we could do to prevent that.
And so, yeah, happy to go into kind of the, you know, the more specific myths or like kind of what I guess myth busting looks like. But just to close, one thing that really resonates with young people overall, and it's any issue, and it's the thing that clicked with me that helped me really understand why is gun violence happening. Is really going back to this idea that corporations and billionaires are making money hand over fist off of selling over a million guns a month, making it as easy as possible to buy a gun, allowing anyone really to buy a gun, and that the gun violence that we experience now in this country is something that is directly tied to the fact that they are able to make billions of dollars a year and suffer no consequences. So, it is crucial when we're explaining to, what I'm explaining to my peers, what does gun violence look like, why is it happening? It's really connected with that issue because people know that climate change, why it's happening, is the same reason. And that so many of the social problems that we experience are really connected to that concept. And it really shifts the onus of blame away from the individual, really onto the people that are actually causing this harm. And so, yeah, for us, that's just one myth-busting strategy that's really helped.
Caitlin: Robert, just for one final question that we have here. We are always worried about survivors in general, but we worry most about the survivors who devote their lives to gun violence prevention like you do. So for any other survivors who might be listening to this podcast, can you tell us what you do for self care to make sure that you're in a good space?
Robert: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to start off by saying something somewhat controversial, which is, self-care as an individualist concept is fake and misleading. That care, right, being able to have, to be in a good place mentally and physically is something that is inherently a community effort, right? That it does not, and that the idea of self care is something pushed by corporations to sell us more products, right? To get us to buy into a six-week bootcamp. For me to spend $400 at a spa, or to go ahead and buy something else that I don't need, when the thing that makes me feel the best, the thing that fills my cup up emotionally is being with other people, and sharing space with others, and feeling connected. Right. And that's something that I feel like I get out of this work, being able to work with the young people, through other young people through Team ENOUGH to be able to build something together, to create that community. That is something that helps me feel good at the end of the day.
And too often, this is actually what led me to almost burn out of the movement in 2020 was just the isolation, being separated from people, not being able to be with one another. And, you know, being not only of course physically isolated, but also the fact that, like, there were so for so many of us, there was also -- and for me in a transitional time in my life where I graduated college and went into the workforce -- losing so many of the rituals, the natural points of connection that just kind of existed without me thinking in college, just the fact that I lived next door to a bunch of my friends and could walk over to their house at any point in time. That that's something I never thought about. But then when it was missing, I was like, oh, that was so important. And so for me, it's really being like, what is self-care? It's community care. It's being able to be intentional about my friendships, the people that I care about, and really nurturing, all the relationships in my life, because that is what helps me feel good at the end of the day. And I have my passions, I have my hobbies. But even those are better when you do them with other people.
And so, for me, I really think, you know, and this is advice that I give to other survivors, too, right -- what is the thing that helps me keep going? What is the thing that helps me when I'm feeling down? It is connecting more intimately. But it's like emotionally and connecting more deeply with people that share my experience, like other survivors, but also just my friends and my family and people in my life who care about me. And really being open to and allowing myself to feel that caring connection. And it's ever since I've really started doing that, and I feel like for me that's been here the past couple of years, I just I felt so much more connected to this work, but also so much more connected with myself. And, yeah, it's it's something that I think has so many other benefits beyond mental health. But, it is really something that that helps me every day.
Caitlin: Yes, certainly the pandemic gave us a different sort of appreciation for being with other people, whether it's close friends and family, or simply going to the grocery store and seeing other humans. So, I'm glad that you have found that to be something that fills your cup, as you said. I certainly agree. Something that we talk about sometimes when we have finished being at a CAP conference -- the Center for American Progress Conference in D.C. -- is the messaging, and the content is so heavy. But there is so much value in being there in a space with people who speak the same language as you and understand, then you can give hugs to and smile at. Simply that sort of nurturing that that comes from being around people who understand you. So that makes total sense.
Robert: Well, and even to your point about, the pandemic, I found myself at one point just like putting on like a literal background noise, like, you know, the chatter that you hear in the background when you're at a cafe or at a coffee shop, like, just like to feel like, just to feel like around other people. And sometimes it's nice to even just, like, go to a setting where it's like, yeah, no, I'm not talking to anyone, like reading my book, but I'm around other people. And even something as simple as that, like, was helpful. And yeah, I'm really glad that, you know, that piece resonated with you.
Caitlin: Right, right. The world can be a lonely and a dark place for a myriad of reasons. So it's always nice to be around other people who, make you feel seen and heard. So. All right, well, Robert, we're going to wrap this up here. And last, Devin, do you have any final thoughts that you want to throw in today?
Devin: I think we're good. Just thank you so much for joining us and for your wisdom and insight, and glad to be in the same space with you.
Caitlin: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Your experience, I mean, it's been just over six years. And I know you said that you weren't involved in politics before this, but you certainly had me fooled because you clearly know how to be effective in this space. Not only as a survivor, but as a creative thinker and somebody who can make positive change. So we look forward to seeing what else you do here. And if you ever want to come back on here again with us, whether it's to talk about Team ENOUGH or another project that you're working on, we would always welcome you back.
Robert: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And you know, one caveat I'll give to not being politically engaged before is that my grandma did drag me out to an Obama rally. It was like 2008. I was like nine. And it was at like a local high school. And, Pitbull was like the opener for Barack Obama during that rally. And I think it was like the year of or the year after. I'm totally blanking on the name of the song, but like "Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn," like that came out. And so I was like, blending of worlds right there. But politics was definitely something in the water. Like my grandparents would watch me after school and they'd always be watching CNN, and it'd be, like, boring. But it was just never something where I was like, yeah, that's something I want to be part of, something I want to be engaged in. But, you know, looking back on those experiences it's something where I do think, like, even just seeing, you know, Wolf Blitzer on the TV every day after school, like, you know, those are memories that I look back on very fondly.
Caitlin: Well, sounds like you're a pretty cool grandmother. So that's good to know as well.
Robert: Yeah. No, she's great. And my grandparents are, you know, to this day, even though they're in their late 80s, like, still as politically involved as they can be. So, they've been a great influence.
Caitlin: Fantastic. All right. Well, well wishes to you, Robert. And we have no doubt that we'll see you making more waves in this space. And we look forward to talking with you soon.
Robert: Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thanks, Devin.