No Easy Answers (30 page)

At the end of our meeting, they told us they weren't going to commit to any decision—basically the response we had expected. We left feeling like we were off to a good start but still had a lot of work ahead of us.

The next morning, Moore called a press conference outside Kmart's headquarters. We figured that we were in for several days of keeping up the pressure on the corporation. After all, if you've ever seen Moore's other work, you know that executives usually ask him to leave, push him out the door, and refuse to speak with him again—and by now, Moore knew how to fight back.

This time, he didn't have to. Less than an hour after we arrived, Kmart announced that they were going to pull all handgun ammunition off their store shelves by the end of September.

We had succeeded.

Kmart claimed that they had been planning this move for months, and that our presentation hadn't had anything to do with the decision; whether that's actually true is subject to debate. But that first day, we showed them that we weren't going to give up. From what we could tell, it had paid off.

For the first time in a long while, I felt positive about the world. First, I had gained so much respect for Kmart. Here was a corporation that went against the norm. Instead of chasing us out, or hitting us with bureaucracy, they'd invited us in, listened to our concerns, and reacted. That impressed the hell out of me. In addition, we had just removed a way for teenage gunmen to acquire ammunition. I don't support gun control, but I do support enforcing the laws we have—and it would be a lot easier for a kid to buy bullets from some teenage clerk at Kmart than from
the owner of a gun shop. If closing this avenue discouraged just one potential shooter from imitating Columbine, I considered it a victory.

A victory for the individual, achieved without help from the government or the police. A victory realized not by a committee, but by a filmmaker and three teenagers.

A sign that maybe there was still hope after all.

Working with Michael Moore was an inspiration. He saw problems in the world and took action against them as an individual, in his own way. I wanted to make a contribution as well. Perhaps I could use what I had experienced to make a difference in some way. I knew there were other kids out there who felt lost and alone, just like Eric and Dylan did. I wanted to find them. I wanted to reach out to them before it was too late.

I just had to figure out how.

One of my first inspirations came from music. At a KottonMouth Kings concert in Denver, I encountered a band I'd never heard of before, called Corporate Avenger. Many of their lyrics centered on the injustice of the government and the theft of land from Native American people. In other words, this band was about more than just making music. These guys were interested in making people think. As luck would have it, I ran into a few members of the band after the show, and we got into a long conversation.

We spoke at length about the idea that music had caused Columbine; they felt it was ludicrous. They made it clear that they were artists expressing ideas, but that they weren't advocating violence in any way. In fact, they were committed to opposing violence and fear as a means of imposing thoughts and ideas. They believed in nonviolent expression of thought, and protecting freedom of speech.

I mentioned that I wanted to start some kind of group for society's thinkers—people like us, who wanted to change things through logic and reason rather than force or violence. They told me they would love to be involved in something like that. We talked about using the Internet somehow for that purpose.

I left that night with a new focus. I would try to reach out to the other individuals of the world. The thinkers. The people who wanted to make a difference in society. It was just a matter of deciding how to implement it.

Soon I had an idea.

By now, I had accumulated experience designing Web sites. It occurred to me that I could create a place on the Internet for those who thought outside the norm to share their thoughts with one another. I wanted to give people a chance to see: “Hey, there are other people who are having problems like mine. They think the world sucks just like I do. But they're advocating that we do something to change things, through logic and nonviolent resistance. Hey—maybe there's something to this.”

I named the Web site Little Brother, a reference to George Orwell's
1984.
In that book, a government known as “Big Brother” controlled its citizens' every move. I compared that to our government, and chose “Little Brother” to describe a group of concerned citizens, considerably smaller than Big Brother, who are watching the government the same way that the government is watching us.

For the Web address, I chose
www.atlasisshrugging.com
(now
www.atlasisshrugging.org
). The first essay I posted on the site presented thought as the enemy of evil:

The arguments evil uses to win are not logic, but feelings. Not hope, but despair. Not reality, but some sort of super-reality that none of us can hope to achieve. But we, the good, use three simple things to prove our points: Reality, truth, and life. We
simply want the truth, and we only deal in the truth. We have the chance to take back the world that is rightfully ours.

Don't let them win.

The original Web site was little more than a message board for people interested in philosophy. A person could post his or her thoughts about the world, and I or someone else on the board would respond. Then we would get into a discussion. Sometimes we approached difficult topics, like whether or not the government should retaliate against the Taliban for the September 11, 2001 attacks. It didn't matter what your personal beliefs might be—you signed on to this site to see a million perspectives.

I didn't promote the site at first. I mentioned it to a few of my friends, and asked them to refer anyone who they thought would be interested. When forty different people signed in within a week, I thought, “Shit. Maybe there's something to this.”

For a few months, I left the site alone, to see how it would grow.

In the meantime, I corresponded with a guy who called himself Middle Brother—a brilliant philosopher and a genius at Web page design. He liked the idea behind Little Brother and offered his services to help revamp it. Together, we created new forums and posted philosophical essays on the main page.

A wide variety of posters began arriving: a teenager nicknamed “DeadBoy,” who ranted against the injustice of high school but also preached nonviolence. “Miz,” a free-thinking girl in California. A guy from Iowa who nicknamed himself after Hank Reardon, a key character from Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged.
The list kept growing. People wanted to talk. They had a thirst for conversation, for thinking and debating.

We put up a questionnaire for new participants to fill in. I wanted to see where people were coming from and adjust our site's direction
accordingly. After all, I don't pretend to have all the answers to society's problems. I simply wanted my site to be a gathering place for those who were dissatisfied with the way things are. By talking through our problems together—and realizing we weren't alone in the world—we were starting something. Who knew where we might go from there?

Ever since it happened, Columbine has maintained a large presence on the Internet. Multiple discussion boards, Web sites, and tribute pages still circulate through cyberspace, and people trade information all the time.

I have mixed feelings about this. Many of the sites have good intentions. There are memorials to the victims, posted so that people will never forget what happened. Other sites are investigative sites, which support the contention that the police are still holding back evidence. Those sites are good to see. They show me that, three years later, people still care. They're still asking questions.

There are some other Columbine-related sites that are a little more . . . well . . . disturbing. I've read conspiracy theories from people who believe Eric and Dylan were part of a government mind-control plot, that they were “brainwashed” to attack Columbine. After all, these conspiracy buffs argue, the government wants guns out of the people's hands, and what better way to do that than stage a “school shooting” so that people get angry and demand gun control? I swear, I'm not making this up.

Then there are the obsessive types. Girls will write about how they are “in love” with Eric and Dylan. Some have gone so far as to write about wanting to “dig them up and make love to their headless corpses.” Others pretend to be students from Columbine. I entered a chat room discussion with a guy who swore up and down that his name was Brooks Brown,
and that he'd graduated from Columbine High School in 1999. I was just like, “Um, I'm pretty sure you're not, dude . . .”

I don't pay much attention to these people. But the kids who intrigue me are the ones who write about how they idolize Eric and Dylan, or call them heroes. They write that Eric and Dylan made a “brave” choice by attacking their high school, and that it sent a message to all the jocks and bullies of the world.

These people have a horribly skewed outlook on life—but at the same time, I recognize what's happening to them. They may not have started out any different from you or me. But they've become so frustrated with the world that in their anger they look upon two mass murderers and actually see reason there.

Some of the posters on Little Brother asked me if I was worried that sooner or later those types of messages would show up on my board. The truth is, I hope that people who feel that way will use the Web site. After all, why would people post messages about how much they admire Eric and Dylan? Because they're going through the same kind of shit Eric and Dylan did, and they feel so alone that they think only Eric and Dylan would have understood. Yet by reading just a few of the posts on our board, they can see that there are people who are having the same kinds of problems they are, but are staying in touch with reality.

Maybe it will help them to reevaluate. Maybe it will help them realize that a lot of people are screwed over by the system, but that doesn't give them a reason to become like Eric and Dylan.

If even one of them starts to think twice about idolizing Eric and Dylan, or imitating them, then my site has served its purpose. The answer to feeling alienated isn't to do what Eric and Dylan did. It isn't to give up. It isn't to kill.

It's to use your mind, and make things better.

I'M STANDING IN CLEMENT PARK, AT A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR Columbine's victims. It's April 20, 2002.

I can't believe it's been three years since it happened.

In one more month, the Columbine High School Class of 2002 will graduate. These are the last kids who were there when Eric and Dylan took their revenge. Starting next year, there will be all new students at Columbine—students who have no firsthand memories of hiding in their classrooms, or running away as bullets flew overhead. They will have no memory of seeing friends turn into mass murderers. They will have a clean slate.

The Columbine library is gone, demolished nearly two years ago. It's been replaced by an atrium. The place where Rachel Scott was killed is gone, covered up by an entryway that links to the new library. The patch of asphalt where Danny Rohrbough was killed is no longer there; that entire concrete stairway was pulled up and remodeled.

If you don't know what happened there, Columbine High School looks like any other school in America.

Some students tell the newspapers now that there is no bullying at Columbine. Others say the bullying is so bad that they're glad graduation is finally coming.

In today's newspaper, a teacher said that when she hears the claims about bullying at Columbine, “I think sometimes we feel like the rape victim who's told her skirt was too short and she shouldn't walk down the street at night.”

Attempts are already being made to rewrite history. Also in this morning's paper, a Columbine teacher told the reporter, “[Harris and Klebold] scared me more than any other kids in the building. They bullied more kids than they were bullied.”

Now, walking with my friends toward the memorial service, I see that same teacher moving in the opposite direction. I glare at her as I walk past. She doesn't return my gaze.

Some choose to deal with Columbine through ignorance. But the memories of that day can never be covered up for long. Nor can the repercussions.

Even though the cloud of Columbine will hang over us for the rest of our lives, all of us are trying to move on as best we can.

My brother graduated from Columbine High School last year. He's thrown himself into composing music, recording demo CDs for friends and spending entire nights hunched over his synthesizer. Music has always been his passion, and I imagine it always will be.

Trevor and I are still close friends. When memories of Columbine really start to weigh me down, he's the best confidant I have. He was there with me the whole way. Most of the time, though, we just have a beer or play a good video game, and concentrate on happier times.

From time to time, I still see guys like Nick Baumgart, Zach Heckler, and Chris Morris around town. Sometimes we nod. Sometimes we talk. But there's distance there now. I imagine it will always be that way.

I moved out of my parents' house a couple of years ago; now I live with friends in an apartment across town. Like any family, my parents and I still have our arguments and our rough times. But we've grown much closer since Columbine happened. In fact, I got my father to go with me to Detroit and attend a Twiztid concert. Imagine my dad, surrounded by juggalos with their faces painted and chains hanging off their clothing! It was a good time.

These past three years have been difficult. Even today, I'm still not over what happened. I go through major mood swings and depressions, something I never had to deal with before April 20. I do different things to cope with it. Sometimes I go online, sometimes I play a video game, some nights I wind up drinking. I'm doing much better today than I was a few years ago, but things can be hard sometimes.