In an NPR interview that was taped and aired before the March 24 anti-gun marches across the country, Lalitha Vasudevan, Professor of Technology and Education, said she hoped the March for Our Lives demonstrations would “dispel the myth of the disengaged student.”

In an interview with “Morning Edition’s” Richard Hake that aired on March 23, Vasudevan also says the most recent wave of anti-gun organizing owes much to Black Lives Matter. The organizing spearheaded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students following a shooting at their suburban Florida school in February, is far from the first time young people have been saying, “stop shooting us,” Vasudevan says.

“Black Lives Matter has been protesting against police shootings and wrongful shooting deaths for years,” she says. And yet, “the young people who've been marching and advocating and being activists within the Black Lives Matter movement have not received the kind of exaltation and adulation and financial support that the young people of Parkland are receiving.”

“[T]his is a challenging thing to digest,” she says, especially since, in her view, the recent surge of organizing has benefited from the Black Lives Matter movement. “What happened with that movement, with the rise of young people, was an initial wave of seeing young people as—not just having something to say, which they always have—but as worthy of being listened to.”

Press play button below to listen to segment.