Movement of a Generation: MARCH FOR OUR LIVES

This past weekend, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, led a march on Washington, D.C.   The March for Our Lives united hundreds of thousands of students and non-students, young and old alike, in a powerful call for the ending of gun violence and the banning of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 

Organizers were estimating up to a half-million participants for the D.C. march ... they got 800,000.
                     

Washington, D.C., was not the only place where a march was taking place.  Across America, there were hundreds of marches, but beyond that, marches took place around the world.  People marched against gun violence, in countries that do not have gun violence as we do, on every continent except Antarctica.  (Well, it is a little chilly down there.)

While there were those, including the NRA, who were condemning the students, the students received lots of support from a myriad of individuals and groups.  Politicians and celebrities marched in several locations across the country.  A group known as Veterans for Gun Reform put together the following video in support of the cause...

I have absolutely no words... Thank you not only for your service but for standing with us as we #MarchForOurLives tomorrow all over the world #VeteransForGunReform #GunControlNow #NeverAgain https://t.co/RIqLXq55MC pic.twitter.com/TYDiV7czCa

— Emma González (@Emma4Change) March 23, 2018

The survivors/organizers even made the cover of TIME magazine ...

© 2018 TIME magazine

There was no shortage of signs at the march ...

There were several powerful speeches throughout the day.  I'd like to highlight four of them.  The first is from David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland massacre...

Next, we have Naomi Wadler, from Virginia, who is eleven years old. Yes, eleven!


The biggest surprise for me, and certainly for the crowd as well, was this nine-year-old girl...


Perhaps the most powerful speech of all contained the largest amount of silence. Here is Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez...


The key here -- and this is certainly not lost to these student activists -- is getting out the vote in November for the 2018 midterm elections.  As David Hogg noted in the first video above, voter turnout of actual registered young people is historically low.  As he said, "No more!"  That has to change for change to happen.

During the school walkout day back on March 14th, I saw reports of schools having the opportunity to register to vote at some point during the school day.  At the march in D.C., and I would suspect at many or all of the other marches across the country as well, there were opportunities for the youth to register to vote.  Can they sustain this movement for the next twenty-eight weeks until Election Day?  Time will tell, but they seem very determined to do so.

The next step is the Town Hall for Our Lives initiative (in conjunction with a group called Town Hall Project).  Scheduled for April 7, town halls with political leaders and their constituents will be organized, and if a current politician does not show up, his/her opponent will be invited instead.  Additionally, another school walkout day is planned for April 20, which is the nineteenth anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.

The graphic below is a link to the page on the National Conference of State Legislators' website that details voter pre-registration -- registering to vote before the age of eighteen as long as the voter will be eighteen at the time of actual voting -- in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.  States have several locations where you can register to vote [i.e. departments of motor vehicles, public assistance offices, armed services recruitment centers] ... or you can register at the March for Our Lives website.

As I mentioned when I wrote about the March 14th school walkout day, I am so very impressed with these students.  I watched the majority of the March for Our Lives and teared up, and sometimes flat-out cried, by how moved I was.  The opposition they face is strong and plentiful, but their resolves seems strong and plentiful ... and they are not afraid to call someone out on being on the wrong side of this issue!

While not the first school shooting, the shock of the nation following the Columbine massacre was like a earthquake beneath our collective feet.  School shootings continued and were joined in a sustained chorus of funeral dirges by shootings at locations other than schools, such as movie theaters, open-air concerts, churches, etc.  Many people thought something would certainly get done in Congress after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School over five years ago that resulted in the death of children six and seven years old.

A number of newscasters and commentators have used the phrase This, somehow, feels different this time (or variations of it) in discussing the #NeverAgain movement that arose out of the chaos in Parkland, Florida.  It certainly does.  Perhaps it was a case of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School simply having the resolve to turn around and fight back, like a boxer that takes a hell of a punch from an opponent, but turns back and gets right back in there.  Maybe these students are ready, finally, to go the distance.

Maybe they are the answer to all of these years of thoughts and prayers.

Here is one final thing I would like to offer, a shout out, if you will.  This anthem, released in 1970, seems appropriate for the youth in this movement in 2018.  The song is The Jackson 5's cover of Diana Ross and The Supremes' 'The Young Folks' from the brothers' second album, 'ABC'.  March on, youth of America!  Those in power better listen up and get right or else get out of the way.  (The lyrics to the song are below the video box.)

LYRICS:
You better make a way for the young folks
Here we come, and we're so alive.
We're here for business, buddy, and don't won't no jive.
Brighter tomorrows are in our eyes
You better make a way for the young folks

We say Yes and you say No
We ask you why and you close the door
My old friend, I thought you knew by now
You can't do that to the young folks

You might not like it, but I've got to tell you
You better make a way for the young folks

We're marching with signs
We're standing in lines
Protesting your rights
To turn out the lights in our lives

Here's the deal
Accept it if you will
We're coming on strong
It's our turn to build
My old friend, I thought you knew by now
You gotta make a way for the young folks

You may not like it, but I've got to tell you
You better make a way, you better make a way,
You gotta make a way for the young folks
© 1970, George Gordy and Allen Story / Motown Records

Terry

Hashtag of the Day: #ENOUGH

Yesterday, in cities across the United States, students walked out of school in solidarity against gun violence and the lack of effort by politicians to combat it.



There were several signs of solidarity outside of the protests, too.  Commentators and activists were, for the most part, singing the praises of the students.  Even the U.S. children's cable channel Nickleodeon showed its support for the protests...

As you heard in the last of the four videos above, not every school was in sync with the protests.  Some threatened punishment -- the most frequent one I heard was detention, but I also heard of threats of suspension -- for any students who went outside to protest.  It is, we need to be mindful, against school rules to just walk out of the school for anything other than a school activity, a fire drill, going home sick, or the end of the day, and many students were willing to accept the punishment for their actions.

Allow me to highlight one school who felt the right to publicly assemble, standing up for your rights, and wanting to be safe in school are not that important.

This is the entrance to Council Rock High School North.

It is located in eastern Pennsylvania, in the town of Newtown, roughly thirty miles north of Philadelphia.

The school administrators there felt that joining the protests was a no-no, so they decided to block the front door entrance.  (A student at the high school took these pictures.)

(Can you say fire hazard?)  In addition, they put the school on lockdown from 9:30 am. to 10:30 a.m.   The time of the protest, in each of the time zones, was 10:00 a.m. 

Conflicting reports stated that the students could exercise their right to protest, but then they were told that morning that any who did exit the building would receive "disciplinary consequences".  The high school's Community Relations Specialist said that the desks were put where they were to facilitate "a system for student accounting after the event".  In other words, a means by which they could take down the names of those who participated, so they would know who would receive those "disciplinary consequences".

Still, a number of students went outside to join in solidarity, anyway.

© 2018 Newtown, PA Patch

The principal of the high school said that there were reports of non-students possibly entering the building, so they needed to exercise caution.  Fair enough, although creating a potential fire hazard seems an odd response.  The principal did decide that, since the students who did protest were so well-behaved, he'd waive any consequences for them after all.

If a school wanted to give detentions for students who protest, fine and dandy.  It is their prerogative and the students are, after all, breaking a school rule to do so.  That is a small price to pay for standing up for something that includes, but is larger than, yourself.  That is an act of bravery.

I did not watch the video, but I did see a thumbnail for a video on YouTube, in the right-hand preview column, of a Fox News commentator saying that these walkouts were not an act of bravery.  (I will not say who because I feel confident that that commentator's voice is not alone on that network.)  Look back in this country's history for a moment.  Look at the protests -- whether marches, school walkouts, or school sit-ins -- against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The students' voices, joined in with by many others over time, put enough pressure to eventually get us out of that war.  The East Los Angeles high school walkouts fifty years ago, which protested unfair treatment in schools for Mexican and Mexican-American students, was a continuing echo of just because you are in the same building, it does not mean you get treated the same.  Look back to the R.R. Moton High School walkout in Farmville, Virginia, in 1951, when black students protested that not even the buildings were the same.  (The high school had erected tar-paper shacks built on a campus to try and accommodate a student body 2 1/2 times of what it could handle.) 

What about the Birmingham Children's Crusade in 1963, which protested segregation?  It included scenes of schoolchildren being forcibly blown around by high-pressure fire hoses, being attacked by police dogs, and being beaten by police.  Images of these were spread across the country, angering much of the nation and creating a backlash.  That was a huge part of the desegregation movement in the country.

Just about all of these, and others, to be sure, took place before this commentator was even born.  Does that excuse his ignorance?  No.  And yet, it is ignorant to say that the long tradition of protesting, which includes student walkouts, does nothing ... that they never accomplish anything.  Very, very few changes, whether stemming from a walkout or otherwise, come quickly, of course.  Tenacity is key ... and these kids have tenacity.  I sat, watching the images of those students yesterday, sometimes with tears in my eyes, feeling very proud of them.  What they have accomplished so far (i.e. major retailers stopping sales of semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles, a Republican governor [Rick Scott from Florida] signing a gun control bill [albeit a weak one] thus bucking the NRA) from just their protesting is nothing short of amazing.  They have accomplished more than the grown-ups (i.e. politicians) in a short period of time.

And yet, more, much more, still needs to be done.  These students will fight for it.  Yes, they will fight for it!  They are on the right side of history and they will fight for it!

To that Fox News commentator, I say that sitting behind a desk on a TV set and delivering divisive, revisionary, and ignorant commentaries is not an act of bravery.  These students shouting ENOUGH! and doing something about massacres, however, is!

Terry