To the students walking out to protest gun violence today: I am with you, young patriots.
And I’ll be Marching for Your Lives on the 24th.
To the governor of my state who just vetoed a gun licensing bill that passed both the House and Senate and has popular support in the state: shame on you. But the only real response is one from a 12yo activist who testified in favor of the bill, upon learning the Governor had vetoed it: “Then we vote him out.”
Every politician who makes the calculation that retaining power requires doing the NRA’s bidding cannot be trusted with any level of power.
In the mean time, we march. We organize. And we GOTV. The only way to overcome a powerfully funded and organized lobbying organization like the NRA is to overwhelm them with numbers at the polls and teach politicians that they’d better listen to the young voices protesting in the streets or they will pay the price with their seats.
Dear Oak Lawn Community High School and Every Other School Handing Out Detentions And Punishments for Students Who Walked Out,
1 – You should be ashamed.
2 – Thanks for further demonstrating that some adults in this country do *not* have the students’ best interests at heart (not that teens actually needed a reminder–but the adults do).
3 – “How I Stood Up Against Gun Violence In Schools Despite The Threat Of Detention” is a hell of a college essay.
4 – It’s clear that free-thinking kids are to be punished at your school. Makes me wonder what kind of “education” you’re actually providing. (That’s rhetorical–I served 4 years on my local school board; the kind of admins/board who would do this are the kind I would fire/work to unseat.)
Again: it’s not the kids who have failed to fix the problem of gun violence in America–they’re just the ones suffering for it. In slaughtered friends, in the specter of violence, in the terrorizing lock-down drills.
Adults–time to step it up and make sure this movement has consequences at the ballot box.
#MarchForOurLives Chicago was amazing. Tremendously powerful speeches and poetry and performances by students of color. High energy on a cold wintery morning as we marched. And the turnout was spectacular–in Chicago, DC, and across the world. Half a million in DC alone. Tens of thousands in Chicago–hard to tell when you’re in the middle of it.
This isn’t just a moment, it’s a movement. These kids are *activated*.
I am full of hope this morning.
As I was saying to a mom and her daughter on the train to Chicago yesterday, hope is the only truly necessary ingredient for change. Without it, you have “no hope”–it’s embedded in our language to describe things which are possible and those which are not. Hope is the thing tyrants beat out of you because it is so dangerous. It’s easy to lose because awful things have an eternal quality, as if things will always be awful–and without hope, there’s a real possibility of that being true.
Hope is the thing that calls change into being.
(You still have to do the work. Hope makes the work endurable.)