{"id":102577,"date":"2023-04-05T11:11:47","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T16:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=102577"},"modified":"2023-04-05T11:11:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T16:11:47","slug":"im-not-that-scared-kid-anymore-highland-parks-rachel-jacoby-on-her-path-to-becoming-an-anti-gun-violence-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/im-not-that-scared-kid-anymore-highland-parks-rachel-jacoby-on-her-path-to-becoming-an-anti-gun-violence-activist\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m not that scared kid anymore\u2019: Highland Park\u2019s Rachel Jacoby on her path to becoming an anti-gun violence activist"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jordana Comiter
\n<\/strong>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

In June 2022, Rachel Jacoby, a national organizer for March for Our Lives, planned a rally in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, to end gun violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While she was publicizing it, commenters on neighborhood-based social networking site Nextdoor said, \u201cWe don\u2019t have gun violence in Highland Park,\u201d and \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you doing it in the South Side of Chicago?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She replied, \u201cJust because it hasn\u2019t happened here, doesn\u2019t mean it won’t.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three weeks after the march, a gunman killed seven people and injured 48 more at a Highland Park Fourth of July parade.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bullet holes marked the same benches and spots Jacoby had marched past three weeks earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day later, people asked her when the rally would be held. She thought to herself, \u201cOh, my gosh, I\u2019m grieving.\u201d But that afternoon, she began planning an event, first connecting with the Illinois chapter of <\/span>Moms Demand Action<\/span><\/a>, a gun control advocacy group.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacoby, 26, never expected to be on the front line of the anti-gun violence movement. She grew up \u201cMidwestern polite\u201d: She didn\u2019t talk about religion or politics. She hung out with her parents, baked the \u201cbest cookies in Highland Park\u201d and competed in soccer, tennis and other sports. But today, she is one of the loudest voices fighting for change and a driving force behind recent groundbreaking gun-reform legislation in Illinois.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been a rule follower. But I\u2019ve come to realize that I only want to follow rules that should be followed,\u201d Jacoby said. \u201cIt\u2019s now my job to break rules, make people uncomfortable and hold those in power accountable for their actions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacoby spends time connecting with other students and activists, and lobbying for and against legislation. Simultaneously, she is finishing her final year of her master\u2019s degree in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. A public policy degree would allow her to work toward finding solutions to systemic problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacoby was only joking about her childhood dream of being the first female U.S. president. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t in my blood to be political, or maybe it was all along, and I just didn\u2019t realize,\u201d Jacoby said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2016, the morning after Donald Trump was elected president, Jacoby walked into the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studied accounting and supply chain management, and cried after she listened to Hillary Clinton\u2019s concession speech being broadcast on television screens around her. \u201cI was getting emotional, and that\u2019s when I was like, \u2018What am I doing with my life? I want to be on a path to make a change,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even with a full-time offer at Deloitte, Jacoby felt her passion was elsewhere. Her mother, initially skeptical, remembers her daughter explaining the change of heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe called me up and said, \u2018I can do that, and I know I will make really good money, but I\u2019m not going to be happy. I really want to do something that is going to make a difference in the world,\u2019\u201d her mother, Kim, recalled. After weeks of discussion, she said she told her daughter, \u201cYou\u2019re young enough, do what makes you happy and we will support you.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Graduation came around the 2018 midterm elections, when many women were running for office. Jacoby worked as a finance and compliance coordinator at Emily\u2019s List, a PAC that aims to put Democratic female candidates in office. The month before the midterms, she volunteered with the New Mexico Democratic Party, assisting in voter operations and helping politicians like Deb Haaland \u2014 who was elected to represent New Mexico\u2019s 1st District \u2014 flip the House. She caught what she calls the \u201corganizing bug.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacoby participated in the inaugural 2018 March for Our Lives but threw herself into an organizing role following the <\/span>Uvalde<\/span><\/a>, Texas, shooting in May 2022. She avoided the news for a few days after the shooting, hoping to protect her mental health. But talking with her younger cousin who feared returning to school, Jacoby remembered feeling nervous and helpless during her first active shooter drill after Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. \u201cI\u2019m not that scared kid anymore. I now know how to mobilize and organize,\u201d Jacoby said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, she joined the March for Our Lives team.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only three weeks later, when her hometown joined the long list of U.S. communities grieving after gun violence, Jacoby led the response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe had less than five days to plan a major community event for a community that had just been traumatized in a major way. She didn\u2019t know if people would come, she didn\u2019t know if it would work, but she knew it needed to be done,\u201d said Caryn Fliegler, lead of the Illinois Moms Demand Action chapter at the time. \u201cShe has a really irreplaceable combination of fearlessness and compassion, and she leads people forward from a place of humanity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Rachel Jacoby speaks at the Highland Park rally that she organized following the Fourth of July shooting. (Photo courtesy of Syed Khalil Ullah)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following the rally, Jacoby began organizing support for the Protect Illinois Communities Act. The legislation, developed by the House Firearm Safety Reform Working Group and chaired by Rep. Bob Morgan, extended the duration of the Firearm Restraining Order, strengthened \u201cred flag\u201d laws and banned assault weapons. She and the other volunteers called constituents countless times asking them to push their Democratic representatives to sponsor the legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a country that has become desensitized to gun violence, Jacoby sometimes struggles with asking for support. \u201cYou\u2019re asking people to make some sort of personal sacrifice, and you want to tell people that their actions will lead to change, but sometimes you just don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true,\u201d Jacoby said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the fall of 2022, an assault weapons ban in Illinois looked unlikely. \u201cI felt like even with the work I\u2019ve been doing, the relationships I\u2019ve built and the people who have poured so much of themselves into it, nothing was going to go anywhere,\u201d Jacoby said. \u201cI woke up in the middle of the night with my heart beating super fast and terrified that all of this work, and all of this trauma and grief, was going to be for nothing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Leaning on the relationships she had built, \u201cthe bright spot of the tragedy,\u201d helped her redirect her focus to her work. She clung to a lesson she learned from her professor who had organized during the civil rights movement. \u201cWhen you\u2019re organizing, you\u2019re doing it for the outcome. But the work you\u2019re doing, the relationships you\u2019re forming, and the movement that you\u2019re building along the way, are just as important,\u201d Jacoby said she learned from her professor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the movement, though, requires using your trauma to push for change, Jacoby said. \u201cThat\u2019s what people connect with, and that\u2019s what they find compelling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That push also helped her grieve. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t need the pats on the back or someone telling her they saw her on TV,\u201d Jacoby\u2019s mother said. \u201cShe fights so hard, and it can be hard to see change, but seeing the little wins are her way of grieving.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In January, the Protect Illinois Communities Act went to the Illinois State Capitol. The week it was on the floor, Jacoby organized buses and cars full of activists from Highland Park, the South Side of Chicago, Rockford, Champaign, Peoria and Evanston to Springfield to lobby state senators and attend a rally. Support reached beyond Illinois, with cars from Missouri and Indiana too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While boarding the bus to leave Springfield, Jacoby received a call from a lobbyist asking if she could stay to be in the audience while the House voted that night. Without hesitation, she stayed. At around 2 a.m., the House voted to push the bill through. Then, it headed to the Senate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Rachel
In January, Rachel Jacoby addressed the crowd of activists who attended the Capitol rally while the House and Senate were voting on the Protect Illinois Communities Act. (Photo courtesy of Ashbey Beasley)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the Senate reconvened two days later to vote, it introduced a watered-down version of the bill that stripped out the enforcement capabilities, which Jacoby called an \u201cassault weapons ban with no teeth.\u201d After long hours of organizing against it and Gov. J.B Pritzker saying he would veto this version, senators revised and passed the bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we\u2019ve worked for and toward, every call we made, every email we sent, every conversation we had was worth it,\u201d Jacoby said, tears beginning to fall. \u201cThis legislation is going to save lives. Most importantly, every person that we\u2019ve lost in Illinois to gun violence, that work was for them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With the number of mass shootings in the U.S. this year already at more than <\/span>100<\/span><\/a>, Jacoby\u2019s work continues. She wants Illinois to put more money into addressing the root causes of gun violence, close the domestic violence loophole and raise the age of a child under the <\/span>Illinois Safe Storage Act <\/span><\/a>(which generally makes it unlawful for a person to store or leave their firearm unlocked and accessible to a minor under the age of 14). She dreams of the day when the whole nation can follow Illinois.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest hope is that now that we have passed in our community, all of us don\u2019t just sit on our laurels,\u201d Jacoby said. \u201cThere is so much more to do \u2026 it takes all of us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordana Comiter is a magazine graduate student at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at <\/span><\/i>@Jordanacomiter.<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jordana Comiter Medill Reports In June 2022, Rachel Jacoby, a national organizer for March for Our Lives, planned a rally in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, to end gun violence.\u00a0 While she was publicizing it, commenters on neighborhood-based social networking site Nextdoor said, \u201cWe don\u2019t have gun violence in Highland Park,\u201d and \u201cWhy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":874,"featured_media":102582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5251,2952,4091,675,5377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chicago","category-politics","category-schoolshootings","category-social-justice","category-spring-2023"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018I\u2019m not that scared kid anymore\u2019: Highland Park\u2019s Rachel Jacoby on her path to becoming an anti-gun violence activist - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/im-not-that-scared-kid-anymore-highland-parks-rachel-jacoby-on-her-path-to-becoming-an-anti-gun-violence-activist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018I\u2019m not that scared kid anymore\u2019: Highland Park\u2019s Rachel Jacoby on her path to becoming an anti-gun violence activist - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Jordana Comiter Medill Reports In June 2022, Rachel Jacoby, a national organizer for March for Our Lives, planned a rally in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, to end gun violence.\u00a0 While she was publicizing it, commenters on neighborhood-based social networking site Nextdoor said, \u201cWe don\u2019t have gun violence in Highland Park,\u201d and \u201cWhy […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/im-not-that-scared-kid-anymore-highland-parks-rachel-jacoby-on-her-path-to-becoming-an-anti-gun-violence-activist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-04-05T16:11:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/wp-media-folder-medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/04\/IMG_7309-copy.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"jordanacomiter2023\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"jordanacomiter2023\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/im-not-that-scared-kid-anymore-highland-parks-rachel-jacoby-on-her-path-to-becoming-an-anti-gun-violence-activist\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/im-not-that-scared-kid-anymore-highland-parks-rachel-jacoby-on-her-path-to-becoming-an-anti-gun-violence-activist\/\",\"name\":\"\u2018I\u2019m not that scared kid anymore\u2019: Highland Park\u2019s Rachel Jacoby on her path to becoming an anti-gun violence activist - 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