Giving Compass' Take:

• The Rebels Project provides support and understanding to survivors of shootings. The Atlantic talked to one of the co-founders.

• How can we change community attitudes and increase support for shooting survivors? What role can we all play in helping survivors? 

• Everytown provides analysis of 160 school shootings from 2013-2015.

Heather Martin was a senior at Columbine High School in Colorado when a mass shooting there in 1999 left 15 people dead, including both perpetrators, and over 20 others injured. After the 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Martin co-founded The Rebels Project, an organization that offers support for survivors of mass violence.

Isabel Fattal: What are you thinking as you watch the response of the Parkland high schoolers?

Heather Martin: I’m so impressed by them, by their drive. They’re sticking to it. They’re not backing down, and that’s amazing to me, especially considering what they’ve been through. We were criticized for so much afterwards.

Fattal: What were you all criticized for?

Martin: We were [told we were] bullies, that our perpetrators shot up the school because they were bullied. That has since been debunked.

Fattal: Do you think conversations around survivors’ trauma have changed since then?

Martin: Yes and no. My work with The Rebels Project started after the Aurora theater shooting, where me and other survivors got to the point where we were just so sick of feeling re-victimized, and really helpless to help people who are just embarking on this journey that doesn’t end. We are a nonprofit, so we raise funds to help survivors, and [we have to] to convince people that this is needed. It’s a struggle.

Read the full article on The Rebel Project by Isabel Fattal at The Atlantic