Yesterday, March 14, tens of thousands of school children walked out of class and marched and rallied for stricter gun laws in solidarity with students effected by the recent Parkland, Florida high school shooting which left 17 dead. This was a student led event, at least in Seattle. Adults could participate, but it had to be student led. I stood in solidarity with the students, staff and parents of Hazel Wolf K-8 and listened as kids from third through eighth grade held signs that said, books, not bullets (a protest against the recent tens of millions allocated to arm teachers and train them in gun use) and Protect the Child. Not the Gun. They marched around the outside of the school chanting things like, “We have a voice!”
There were probably two to three-hundred marching around and around the school. While the protests received wide-spread publicity, some of the comments I saw from readers were ignorant and outrageous. Some said students were just looking for an excuse to get out of class. Someone said that such protests would do no good, that our lawmakers aren’t listening. So they should just go back to class and live in fear that their school will be the next victim of a mass shooting? If MLK or Rosa Parks had copped that attitude where would we be now?
I have to say though that what really outrages me is the response of many of our lawmakers. Republicans are calling to arm teachers. Not one of them has mentioned the accidental shooting by a teacher demonstrating shooting his gun and injuring several students. None of them has mentioned a teacher accidentally leaving her gun in a restroom where it was found by students. This response is so ludicrous it makes me wonder what lies between their ears. Further, in some jurisdictions, republican lawmakers are allocating money to buy guns for teachers and to pay to train them in using them. When teachers come to them asking for pay raises or to buy classroom supplies, they always leave empty-handed with claims that the funds are just not there. But these same lawmakers saying there’s no funding for the aforementioned, were quick to fund arming teachers. If you really want the real reason for this, just look no further than their corporate sponsors and you’ll find the NRA up there at the top. They don’t want to upset their corporate sponsors. We have lawmakers putting their profits ahead of humanity and these are the same lawmakers who self-identify as pro-life.
Being a former teacher myself, this could easily have been my school. This could be anybody’s school. And there will be a next time and a next time unless we get some sensible gun laws in place. Right now we have children acting more adult than the people we elect to serve us and that’s shameful.
On March 24, which is next Saturday, there will be marches and rallies for an event called March for Our Lives. There will be a big march on the nation’s capital and several around the country. Here is a link for anyone wanting to find an event in their area. I hope there is a huge turnout because right now I see far more people willing to take to the streets to celebrate a Super Bowl victory than I see take to the streets to protect what little democracy we have left.
