I have cried watching the news only a few times. Once when a firefighter pulled a limp little blond boy in Oshkosh overalls from under the ice who looked just like my three year old. The fragility of life – of family – overwhelmed me. I cried. Thankfully the firefighters revived the boy.
My kids have grown, I changed careers and was a new teacher when Sandy Hook happened. I got home from school that day and turned on the news. I tried to imagine the awesome responsibility Victoria Leigh Soto, a teacher, assumed by throwing herself between a gunman and her first graders. Could I do that? Would I try to save my eighth graders? I thought about my classroom, students crammed in a corner, and pictured the terror on their faces. I began to cry not knowing what I would do facing evil when some of my students came to my door caroling “Joy to the World.” I wanted to hug them for pushing back the terror coming from my television with their self-conscience performance to my front steps, but I didn’t. I gave them each handfuls of candy, because that’s what you do.
Six years later we practice active shooter scenarios at school, we hold anti-bullying seminars for students and teachers, and we barely notice when another school attack happens. We have become inoculated from the shock. I watched the news and remarked to my wife how well spoken and poised the students from Parkland, Florida were in the immediate aftermath. These were not the Tide-Pod eating slackers that TV loves to show us. They stayed focused, kept speaking out brilliantly and got the president’s ear enough to be invited to a White House listening session.
There eighteen year old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior Samuel Zeif described the day in Parkland when 17 people were murdered, texting what he thought were his last words to his family. He pleaded to the president “let’s never let this happen again. Please. Please.” And I cried with him.
It should never have come to this. “How did we not stop this after Columbine? After Sandy Hook?” I cried with him. How come we didn’t stop this? We – the adults, the moms and dads, the teachers, the police – didn’t stop this because we are not unified in our will. We are too jaded, shrugging in resignation that nothing will change, and sending out “thoughts and prayers” on Facebook. We did nothing because we could not agree on anything – Ban assault weapons – what’s an “assault weapon”? Mental health check-ups – who decides you’re crazy? Arm everybody – have you met everybody?
“We call BS!” Emma Gonzales spoke with the clarity of unjaded youth whose innocence was murdered along her classmates and a few more teachers who placed themselves between bullets and students. She and the thousands of young voices are speaking together demanding we all see the obvious – their lives are more valuable than a dogmatic reading of the 2nd amendment. There is no nuance in this argument. She spoke clearly. Cameron Kasky, another Parkland high school student, demanded in the name of seventeen dead classmates that his senator, Marco Rubio, not accept money from the NRA and he pressed until he got an answer – not the one he wanted, but not the evasive sound bite either. Seventeen year old witness to this murder, David Hogg, said, “We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done” and even after being accused of being a Soros paid actor hasn’t “lost hope in America.”
These students bring me hope. They will take action because they have to – we adults have been paralyzed in our partisan bickering for too long. Is it too soon to cite Isaiah 11:6? “Wolves will live with lambs. Leopards will lie down with goats. Calves, young lions, and year-old lambs will be together, and little children will lead them.”
I stand with the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
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