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Rep. Maxwell Frost: From Marching For Our Lives, to the Halls of Congress
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We are Gen Z: a generation raised with the constant threat of gun violence in our lives. Through active shooter drills and the neverending news of another shooting, we know the devastation of the gun violence epidemic all too well. But even as guns have become the leading cause of death for children and young people, far too many of our leaders have ignored our pleas for action. We’re left out of the decision-making rooms and offered thoughts and prayers for the violence we endure. 2018 changed that. We refused to be silenced, and we marched for our lives and put gun violence, and our lives, on the map.
In 2022, we did more than just shout—we took a seat at the table. That was the year that March For Our Lives’ former Organizing Director, Maxwell Frost, made history as the first member of Gen Z and the first Afro-Cuban elected to Congress at just 25 years old. He broke a massive barrier and brought a megaphone with him to amplify our stories and our voices in the halls of power.
This is Representative Frost’s story, and it’s one that could happen to any of us: the story of a youth activist who went from demanding his lawmakers listen to him, to running for Congress and becoming a lawmaker himself.
Ignited to Advocate for Change
“Throughout our lives, we will have thousands of calls to action, if not hundreds of thousands,” explains Frost. “It can be a very little thing that you just see out of the corner of your eye that rubs you the wrong way, that pushes you to do something about it. It could be someone asking you, but I think most of the time it’s not someone asking you, it’s just you experiencing something. Young people are just seeing more messed up stuff, more calls to action, and more people are answering that call.”
For Frost, that initial call to action was Sandy Hook. He was 15 years old when a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. From a restaurant TV, he watched in horror as news broke that 20 children and six staff members were shot and killed. Adopted at birth and raised in middle-class suburbia in South Orlando, gun violence wasn’t at the top of his mind. But seeing those images on the TV had a big impact on him and he knew he had to do something about it.
After connecting with Sarah Clements, founder of Jr. Newtown Action Alliance, Frost flew to DC and lobbied Congress to pass gun safety legislation. He built lasting friendships, but was struck by the brutal reality: these people, still children like himself, had experienced an impossible-to-understand loss. He could see that pain in their eyes, and he carries that with him to this day, almost 12 years later.
On The Ground and In The Fight
That trip to DC catapulted Frost’s activism. He advocated for gun violence prevention as the student government president at his high school, led die-ins, wrote petitions to pass gun safety policies, spoke up at school board meetings, and eventually turned his cause into a career, working for a number of progressive campaigns.
In 2019, David Hogg, a co-founder and board member of March For Our Lives who had met Frost at an event we hosted in Las Vegas, called him and said, “Maxwell, we’re hiring our first National Organizing Director and I think you should apply.” Soon enough, it was Frost’s job to create and lead the organizing team from the ground up, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and building a nationwide movement of young people empowered to advocate for gun violence prevention.
While working at MFOL, Frost was often on the ground and in the streets. One day, he was speaking at a rally. Another, he and other March For Our Lives members snuck into a state capitol with the help of elected officials to avoid armed NRA members who were threatening youth activists ahead of a divisive fight for gun laws.
He spent the day working at MFOL, then went out at night to protest, becoming one of the leaders of Orlando’s Black Lives Matter movement. In other words, he was an organizer down to his bones. He was tear-gassed, maced, and even arrested and sent to jail. Now, a few years later, his district includes that very same jail.
Maxwell Frost Becomes Rep. Maxwell Frost
After the Black Lives Matter uprisings, friends and community members called upon Frost to run for Congress. His response? “Hell no.” He was an organizer and he didn’t want to be part of the system. Plus, he loved his job at MFOL and the movement we were building. He didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t until he met his biological mom for the first time and heard about the hardships she’d faced that he finally decided to step up and take a leap into the unknown. Freshly 25 years old and eligible to run for office, Frost won his election, becoming the first Gen Z and Afro-Cuban member of Congress.
“I wouldn’t have run for Congress if I hadn’t worked at March For Our Lives,” Rep. Frost explains. “We’re disruptors, we’re organizers, we want to be effective, and we want to be at the table.”
When Rep. Frost was first elected, everyone asked whether he would be effective or loud, as if he could only be one. He rebutted, “I’m going to be both. There’s a lot to be loud about and I also want to be effective. MFOL is one of the most premier movements to do that: to do all the things all the time.”
I wouldn’t have run for Congress if I hadn’t worked at March For Our Lives.
Rep. Maxwell Frost
Young People are a Political Force
The very first bill Rep. Frost introduced in 2023 when we finally made it to his corner office on Capitol Hill was to create a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which he had fought for with MFOL since we first demanded it in 2019. Last year, he stood alongside MFOL activists and introduced the President as the White House announced that the office would become a reality.
“It was a powerful moment,” said Natalie Fall, March For Our Lives’ current Executive Director. “That was our friend, our colleague, up there at the podium with the President. We’d spent so many hours together in the trenches fighting for this thing that everyone told us was impossible. Now there he was, making it possible.”
It was a testament to the power of youth activism, and demanding what we knew we deserved, even if you’re told no the first few times. Rep. Frost has continued to be a force in Congress, fighting for issues that are most important to young people, and two years after his first election, March For Our Lives was proud to endorse Rep. Frost as part of our first-ever round of endorsements.
As Rep. Frost puts it, “MFOL is important for what we’re doing now, but also what everybody will do in five years or 10 years.” He’s an example of exactly that. We are a movement of young people ready to take our fight to the streets and the halls of Congress, demanding change, and we’re just getting started.
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