Steve Duin: 'Our generation has a gun to its head'

(Steve Duin)

Once Sen. Jeff Merkley sat down Friday in the newsroom of The Bruin, McMinnville High School's student newspaper, his first question to the six journalists was this:

"Do you know where President Trump is today?

They did. Prostrating himself at the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas.

Sen. Jeff Merkley with The Bruin staff Friday at McMinnville High School.

Telling the bump-stock crowd that "Democrats and liberals in Congress want to disarm law-abiding Americans at the same time they're releasing dangerous criminal aliens and savage gang members onto our streets."

Assuring the well-armed militia that their Second Amendment rights "will never, ever be under siege as long as I am your president."

And, yes, jagging the memories of the Parkland parents who met Donald Trump after the Stoneman Douglas massacre. "He won't do anything to help us," one parent, Michele Barrack, told The New Yorker. "He met us after the shooting and lied to our faces."

Where does that leave students at McMinnville High?

"Our generation has a gun to its head," says junior Tommy Douglass. "That's students in school. That's kids walking home or people playing basketball. That's pretty hard to forget about.

"That gun to our heads is going to motivate us."

At the ballot box. In newspaper design meetings. In the weeks following the Parkland shooting, Douglass reports Mac High received three different "large scale threats."

In one instance, someone wrote "R.I.P. MHS March 1" on a bathroom stall in the local WinCo Foods." When Superintendent Maryalice Russell reported the threat to parents, at least half of the school's 2,200 students stayed home.

As senior Diana Denney told Merkley, many students are terrified when the fire alarms sound. This past Wednesday, the students added, another "high alert" cleared the high-school halls for 90 minutes.

In response, Denney and her staff dedicated The Bruin's March issue to gun violence. They wrote a letter to Merkley, Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, begging for help, and pinned that dramatic appeal to the newspaper's front page.

"I wasn't expecting a response, much less an actual visit," Denney said.

Sen. Jeff Merkley with, left to right, Annie Christman, Emma Siepmann, editor Diana Denney, Joe Gullo, Tommy Douglass and Luis Straub.

Enter Merkley, an hour before his Yamhill County town hall.

In recent months, the Oregon senator has been all over the map, both literally and figuratively. Because his two children have graduated from high school, Merkley says, "My rhythm of life can change." He can parachute into Democratic fundraisers in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina - pivotal sites in the 2020 primaries - in his campaign to ensure Democrats survive the midterms with at least 51 seats in the U.S. Senate.

"I'll go wherever people will find it useful for me," Merkley says. "That's my mission for the year."

His message? He knows it needs focus. In an hour last month at his Senate office, Merkley went deep on the Koch brothers, climate chaos, college debt, the Republican tax bill - "the biggest bank heist in the history of the world" - crumbling infrastructure, and what Hillary Clinton failed to understand about the impact of globalization and trade policy on living-wage jobs.

As Sara Kliff writes at Vox, the Democrats are also "really keen on having another health-care debate," and Merkley and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have one of the five Medicaid proposals in the mix.

Yet, Merkley is also hosting meetings twice each month to help Democrats maintain discipline in a news cycle that has none. When he described those efforts to The Hill, he said he simply wanted to get progressive factions "all moving in the same direction.

"Maybe not using the same boats or the same paddles or moving the same speed, but at least not crashing into each other."

No, I don't believe that sentiment fits on a 2020 presidential campaign button.

But this one might: "I would like to see an anti-Trump.

"By that, I mean somebody who has lived their life working to make the world a better place, who sees that as their mission in life."

Someone dismayed that too many people believe their only hope of owning a house is if they inherit one.

Someone who finds more realistic fears in a high-school classroom than at an NRA convention.

Is Merkley running for president, all the journalists in the room wanted to know?

"I'm keeping my options open," Merkley says. "Many times in my life I've taken on challenges that are David vs. Goliath. I like to remind myself and others that David won. But you can't win unless you get on the battlefield."

Or the battlefield comes looking for you. The Bruin journalists were impressed with Merkley's candor, knowledge, and availability, but they are under no illusions as to which generation will confront gun violence and finally deal with gun control.

Not the generation that waves the flag at NRA conventions, but the generation with the gun to its head.

-- Steve Duin
stephen.b.duin@gmail.com

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