Here is a new perSISTER design for Emma González.

 

Here is a summary of Emma González’s story as of the day I finish this poster design, March 2, 2018. Most of these words are quotes. Design notes at bottom. #NeverAgain #EmmaGonzalez #Gonzalez #listentoemmagonzalez @Emma4Change #FemalePowerProject

On February 14, 2018, from 2:21pm to 2:27pm, 19-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz murdered seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Fourteen more were injured. He used a legally bought AR-15 semi-automatic style weapon during the massacre, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press. The highly deadly military-inspired rifle has been the weapon used by several mass shooters. The AR-15 was most notably used during the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that claimed 27 lives, including that of the shooter. AR-15-style rifles have been used in recent mass shootings in Aurora, Colo.; Santa Monica and San Bernardino, Calif.
The AR-15 was classified as an “assault-style” weapon and outlawed under the assault weapons ban that lapsed in 2004.
(From Wikipedia and http://time.com/5160267/gun-used-florida-school-shooting-ar-15/)

From:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/17/us/florida-student-emma-gonzalez-speech/index.html
Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, addressed a gun control rally on Saturday [February 17, 2018] in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, days after a gunman entered her school in nearby Parkland and killed 17 people.
Last part of her speech:
The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS.Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.
If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local congresspeople. Give them a piece of your mind.
(Crowd chants) Throw them out.

Excerpts from:
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a18715714/protesting-nra-gun-control-true-story/
By Emma González

We are tired of being ignored.

We are grieving, we are furious, and we are using our words fiercely and desperately because that’s the only thing standing between us and this happening again.

I have talked so much in the past few days that sometimes I feel like I might have used up all my words and I’ll never speak again. And then I hear someone say something really stupid and I can barely keep myself from snapping in two.

But to the people out there who disagree with us: if you have ever felt what it’s like to deal with all of this, you would know we aren’t doing this for attention. If these funerals were for your friends, you would know this grief is real, not paid for. We are children who are being expected to act like adults, while the adults are proving themselves to behave like children.
Adults are saying that children are emotional. I should hope so—some of our closest friends were taken before their time because of a senseless act of violence that should never have occurred. If we weren’t emotional, they would criticize us for that, as well. Adults are saying that children are disrespectful. But how can we respect people who don’t respect us? We have always been told that if we see something wrong, we need to speak up; but now that we are, all we’re getting is disrespect from the people who made the rules in the first place. Adults like us when we have strong test scores, but they hate us when we have strong opinions.

I’m constantly torn between being thankful for the endless opportunities to share my voice, and wishing I were a tree so that I’d never have had to deal with this in the first place. I’d like to think that it would be nice to be a tree.

Still, if I’m able to communicate one thing to adults, it would be this: it should not be easier to purchase a gun than it is to obtain a driver’s license, and military-grade weapons should not be accessible in civilian settings.

Excerpts from:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/01/emma-gonzalez-la-nueva-cara-of-florida-latinx/?utm_term=.04f976e4a9cf
by Ed Morales

But while González and her fellow students David Hogg and Cameron Kasky represent a youth protest movement that may finally lead to more gun control, Emma stands out as an emblematic challenge to the old ways of Cuban-American voting preferences in Florida, one of the most important swing states in national elections. She also portends a new generation of Latino youth who have the potential to be major political players through their ability to straddle different constituencies and mold a coherent message for change.

The daughter of Jose González, now a lawyer who arrived from Cuba in New York in 1968, Emma is unwavering in her embrace of her identity. “I’m 18 years old, Cuban, and bisexual,” she says in the lead paragraph of her recent essay published in Harper’s Bazaar. While Univision reported that she does not speak Spanish, she doesn’t shy away from her Cuban identity. And though The Sun Sentinel has reported that her short buzz-cut is for practical reasons — “Hair is just another sweater I’m forced to wear,” she demurred — her participation in her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and recent self-outing resounds with queerness.

A year and change into the Trump presidency, many groups — women, Muslim and Latino immigrants, African Americans — have been attacked and belittled, not only by the president’s callous behavior but also by the tenacious tactics of the Republican right. As a student, Emma represents not only youth but women, Latinos and the LGBT community.
“It’s interesting that she chose to say she belongs to multiple communities,” said Jorge Duany, a professor of anthropology and head of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. “It was a recognition of shared interests between communities.”
 
DESIGN NOTES
In all the perSISTERS posters I layer words and symbols behind the main figure and statement. In this design I used an ornament font, DB Trees, which is not letters but trees. Each keystroke types a tree illustration. I set González’s statement, “I’d like to think that it would be nice to be a tree” in this font (it is repeated several times). Then I colored 17 of the trees in a ghost color, to represent the murdered people. I based the illustration of Emma González on a photograph by: “Nicole Raucheisen/Naples Daily News/USA TODAY NETWORK/Sipa USA” available on the web here: http://people.com/crime/everything-to-know-about-emma-gonzalez-the-florida-school-shooting-survivor-fighting-for-gun-violence-prevention/