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On December 2nd, 2019, I had the chance to sit down with Ava Liponis, a first-year Whitman student from Exeter, New Hampshire to discuss her activism work.  

                                                                                                                                                                         - Miranda LaFond, Dramaturg

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ML: “Was there a specific catalyst or moment that inspired you to address different aspects of gun violence, on a local, and later, national level?”

 

AL: “I have been pretty into political activism for most of my life…but around the time of the Parkland shooting, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas event, was probably when my activism in gun violence prevention started.”

 

In 2018, Liponis and other students from the local high school and middle school organized Exeter Orange, a chapter of Students Against Gun Violence.

 

ML: “You mentioned that you helped to organize and also participated in multiple town halls. Would you mind giving some background on how those took shape?”

 

AL: “One of our central values was bringing in differences of opinion, and finding a middle ground because gun violence prevention is an issue that is very polarized, but at the same time people have very common values and very common goals, and so we brought in elected officials from both parties. We brought in an executive counselor, and a teacher, and then we also had students…And then we kind of just fielded questions from an audience of the general public that ended up being I think two or three hundred people the first time.”

 

Liponis describes the enduring effect of a video taken at the event by a local news organization that captured audience members jeering at one of the republican representatives.

 

AL: “Going forward when we were doing more town halls and more events, when we talked to people about it who were more on the conservative side, they would reference the video and be like, ‘This doesn’t look like a comfortable environment for me to share my views,’ which is absolutely not what we were looking for so we were working really hard after that to try and remove that element from the space in order to kind of make it comfortable for everyone’s opinions.”

 

In the summer of 2018, Liponis along with several other members of Exeter Orange met with representatives from Everytown USA in Washington DC. She speaks to how this experience brought home the diverse nature of debates on gun control.

 

AL: “It’s easy for us to relate most to school shootings, because they affect people that look like us and who live like us. But…that’s not a super huge part of the national crisis of gun violence, and I think that that’s really important when we discuss gun violence; to take into account the other aspects of it that don’t necessarily affect us, and that we aren’t necessarily more… positioned to empathize with.”

 

ML: “What are your thoughts on the term activism? I’m using it pretty generously, but I wonder if you have any reaction to how we approach labels like activist when applying them to young people.”

 

Liponis pointed out the how youth frequently engage in “slacktivism,” the practice of supporting a political cause on social media, in a way that involves very little effort or commitment.

 

AL: “People post things on their snapchat stories that are like, ‘Why isn’t the government doing anything about this?’ … Whereas I think that it’s really really important especially on the issue of gun violence to be able to answer the question: ‘What do you want the government to do about it? What are the solutions that you specifically want to advocate for? What specifically do you think will help the most? What do you think will create the most comprehensive change? What do you think is the most productive solution?’”

 

ML: “If you could tell people anything about the current status, or history of gun violence what would you want them to know?”

 

AL: “I think that people need to pay more attention to whose voices are being heard and whose voices are being silenced in the national gun violence debate, and how that affects the national discourse.”

 

ML: “Are there any resources you would recommend to those interested in getting involved in this work?”

 

AL: “Everytown is everywhere, and Moms Demand is everywhere…Moms in general are very active in activism and politics, more than we probably think, and so I mean, just looking up organizations in your area—if you contact the people all they want is volunteers... Grassroots organizations are key.”

 

*The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this interview belong solely to the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the stance of those working on Ripe Frenzy within the Whitman College Department of Theatre and Dance.