‘We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around,” Cameron Kasky, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School said, adding: “On March 24, you are going to be seeing students in every single major city marching, and we have our lives on the line here. And at the end of the day that is going to be what’s bringing us to victory, and to making some sort of right out of this tragedy.”
The time has come – again – for a new uprising.
In the 1960s, young Freedom Riders sacrificed their lives challenging segregation; children died in church bombings. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, inner cities erupted, students revolted on our campuses. In Chicago, Mayor Daley’s thugs brutally suppressed young student demonstrators at Grant Park during the Democratic National Convention – where I was present.
I was young once.
It’s been almost 50 years since the Stonewall Inn riots, demonstrations by the gay community against a New York City police raid that took place on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
We survived all that. We survived violence, nonviolence and uprisings, and on my better days I think we’ve made progress – not enough, but some.
On other days, like today, after the Stoneman Douglas massacre and the subsequent refusal of so many to directly confront America’s rising tide of violence, I despair.
There were many dark days in the ’60s but we endured, and the country survived, in part because deep down we knew that there were constitutional protections that would rescue us from madness.
Today, I wonder.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Today, I place my hope with our passionate, articulate, fearless, motivated children. I believe that “infinite hope” – hoping against hope – is our way forward.
I am ready to follow.
I’m ready to follow Emma González, who said: “The people in the government who are voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call BS.”
As Republicans asked for “prayers,” as Democrats equivocated between outrage and not wanting to “offend” gun lovers in swing states, the children rose as one and challenged the cowardice of their elders.
“I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours. It was about guns,” carly @car_nove tweeted. “You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns.”
The teens don’t stand alone. Moved by their passion George and Amal Clooney, Oprah, Steven Spielberg and others have donated to “March for Our Lives.”
“Amal and I are so inspired by the courage and eloquence of these young men and women,” George Clooney said. “Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side with this incredible generation of young people from all over the country, and in the name of our children Ella and Alexander. . . . Our children’s lives depend on it.”
“We are going to be marching together as students, begging for our lives,” Kasky said. “At this point, you are either with us or against us.”
I’m with them.
It’s time to acknowledge that for all the tragedies we’ve endured – three mass shootings in the past five months alone – for every witness, every grieving parent, sibling, grandparent, friend and survivor there are more steps to be taken.
We must recognize that it’s neither right nor healthy to consider as normal mass-shooting drills at schools, that it’s not normal for houses of worship to offer programs on surviving active shooters, that it’s not normal to expect teachers to be bodyguards.
“If kids aren’t even allowed to purchase their first drink of alcohol then how are we allowed to buy guns at the age of 18 or 19? I feel like as our legislators and leaders, they shouldn’t be offering prayers and words, we need action,” student Lyliah Skinner told CNN.
Will Stoneman Douglas be today’s Stonewall Inn, remembered not just as a moment of injustice and insanity but as a pivot point for a collective uprising?
There may be more school shootings in America but by seizing the narrative, by refusing to be just victims, by using the tragedy to rally others to a cause that so many Americans support, our children are showing us a path forward.
This isn’t going an easy journey.
One of their classmates, Army JROTC cadet Peter Wang, 15, was killed holding the door so his classmates could escape.
“Strangers,” the Miami Herald reports, “sent (Wang’s) family military patches and coins, the U.S. Army awarded him a Medal of Heroism, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (his dream school) posthumously accepted him.”
Veterans showed up at his funeral to pay their respects.
That’s who we are.
We’ve survived previous oppressions. We’ve thrown tea into Boston Harbor, marched on Washington and burned our draft cards.
Today, it’s time to rise up and resist the oppression of lobbyists, oligarchs and politicians who profit off our losses and pain.
It’s not easy. The oppression is not equally felt, equally shared.
President Obama tweeted: “Young people have helped lead all our great movements. How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be. We’ve been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.”
Be thankful for the children.
Let them know we’ve got their backs.
(Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. He can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.)