With their buzzed hair and luminous brown eyes, the 19-year-old Parkland shooting survivor, a rising sophomore at New College of Florida, has become the unforgettable face of the gun-control movement. Just three days after the Feb. 14, 2018  shooting, X (formerly Emma) González delivered an impassioned speech at a Broward County rally, with a refrain the crowd picked up and chanted back: “We call B.S.!” [on lawmakers in thrall of the NRA]. They helped create the March for Our Lives demonstrations in March 2018, which drew more than a million people across the country and was one of the largest American protests ever. They continue to work with the organization, which is holding rallies and registering new young voters across the country.

Why We Love Them

Because they are more at ease in her own skin than most people decades older will ever be. Two weeks after the shooting, they wrote an essay for Harper's Bazaar that began: “My name is Emma González. I’m 18 years old, Cuban and bisexual.” They like to quote Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Because although they've admitted that they are “deathly afraid” of people who threaten “the only way they want to talk is if we’re standing on the other end of their AR-15s,” they continue to stand up and speak out. “Adults like us when we have strong test scores, but they hate us when we have strong opinions,” they have said.

Because their voice is so powerful that 10 days after she started a Twitter account (Emma4Change), they had 1 million followers. Now close to 1.7 million—more than twice as many as follow the NRA—engage with their tweets, which mix information about gun violence with shout-outs to their favorite rock bands.

Because despite their instant and enormous fame, they have no interest in being a celebrity, declining most interviews, keeping their personal life private and quietly going about their studies at New College.

Because when their parents objected after she proposed shaving her head—an idea she says was prompted by the Florida heat—they created a PowerPoint presentation that cracked them up and won them over.

Because although they have bouts of terrible sadness and loss, they refuse to give up—on their own life, or on America itself. Everywhere they go, they say, they see people deciding to engage with politics and work for change, realizing “we are the checks and balances” on a government that refuses to act.

Because more than anything, their activism is driven by love. As they wrote in The New York Times, “Everything we’ve done and everything we will do, is for them [the slain students.] It’s for ourselves. It’s for every person who has gone through anything similar to this, for every person who hasn’t yet, for every person who never will.”