Rep. Maxwell Frost talks gun violence while drumming up support for Harris in Flint

BY ANDREW ROTH, MICHIGAN ADVANCE

MICHIGAN—US Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) “drummed up” support for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in Flint on Thursday, joining a jazz band in Flint to play percussion. The event also featured state Rep. Jasper Martus (D-Flushing) and Flint City Council President Ladel Lewis.

Frost gave a primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention last week and also headlined an event in Detroit Thursday for influencers supporting Harris. He’s scheduled to hold a young voter event in Grand Rapids on Friday.

Frost, 27, is the only member of Congress from Generation Z and said Thursday that he first got involved in politics because he “didn’t want to get shot in school.”

He shared that shortly before a school jazz band concert, he and his friends saw the news of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.

“I go to the concert. I play one of the worst shows of my life, because I kept looking at the exit signs, scared somebody could walk into that theater and kill my friends, my family, myself,” Frost said. “And then, just a few weeks later, I go to Washington, D.C., for the first time, to go to the memorial for the kids that were killed.”

After meeting with the family of a teacher who was killed in the shooting, Frost said he ran back to his hotel and called his mother.

“I said, ‘Mom, for the rest of my life, I want to fight for a world where people don’t feel that pain that I just saw in Matthew’s eyes,’” Frost said.

Frost said that was one of the first times that he saw a problem and saw himself and the people around him as part of the solution.

He said that while people are bombarded with messages and news every day, everyone needs to be an active part of the solution.

“There’s a lot to agonize over right now,” Frost said. “But we can’t agonize, we’ve got to organize.”

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This coverage was republished from Michigan Advance pursuant to a Creative Commons license.