'Enough' PSA targets gun violence

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Sandy goes backstage with the kids from the National Dance Institute who are featured in a new PSA aimed at combating gun violence

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- It begins so innocently, a child in school with a balloon. Then it pops, and everyone wonders: Was it a gunshot?

It's a fear that school children across the country now live with every day. And now, it's the subject of a new public service announcement called "Enough."

Students from The National Dance Institute are hoping to raise awareness and encourage voters to support gun control legislation.

"A message is sent without saying anything," choreographer James Alsop said. "Everybody is expressing themselves through their bodies, so you have to immediately connect with the kids emotionally."

The PSA was inspired by the epidemic of school shootings around the country, particularly the massacre at Parkland High School that left 17 people dead and another 17 injured.

"The message alone is even kids are thinking about this," Alsop said. "We can't listen to anybody else. We can listen to the future."

Alsop, who has worked with Beyonce and J-Lo, coached the kids from Harlem's National Dance Institute for free.

"I've never been in a video like this before," one dancer said. "To dance to a Sia song, working with James, working with a real director, with camera crews and the entire shebang, it was great."

To talk to these children is to experience the pain that still lingers from the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history.

"People who are voting should take away that you should stop gun violence," dancer Victoria Serra said. "And vote for the person who's going to stop gun violence."

And that's the simple call to action: Vote.

"I want you to take the main message, which is vote," dancer Sarafina Belafonte said. "Not only so you can share your beliefs and thoughts and represent them, but also so you can represent us."

Sia sings in the campaign's theme song, "The past is still haunting me." Now, perhaps, it should start haunting all of us.

"Having young people involved in a project like this raises awareness about how we all care about this kind of stuff," dancer Eden Rolle said. "And we all have a voice, and we all feel passionately about some of the same things that I can imagine you feel passionately about. And I hope that it says to people in power, people in charge, people with the resources to make change that we don't view our lives as expendable. And we hope that they don't either."

Watch the entire video of "Enough"