All of us social media jockeys have been stating our cases, and declaring our outrage about either the disciplinary action or the walkout itself—all depending on which side of the aisle we sit on.
As I have been reading all of the commentary, a few things strike me. One—many people are piping up with the idea that instead of a walkout, we would be encouraging our kids to befriend someone new—make seventeen new friends. Two—those of us who think this was a bad call by the school board are seething that our kids’ First Amendment Rights are being trampled. Three—many who so frequently preach about the Second Amendment and what our founding fathers intended, appear to be a little uninformed about how our nation became independent in the first place.
Number one: When it comes to major issues, there’s hardly ever just one solution—one option for addressing a problem. There’s an old saying—‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’. That saying exists, because as awful as it might be to think about, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and most problems we face in life actually require more than one solution.
When my husband and I were expecting our daughter, we talked about the things we most wanted to teach her. One of those things was empathy. So, when I read the suggestion that instead of walking out of class to make a stand for better gun laws, and to honor victims of last month’s shooting, we should be encouraging our kids to make seventeen new friends, I totally get it. And I absolutely support that every one of us should be doing anything we can to help our kids become kind, loving and empathetic beings, who see someone alone at the lunch table, and sit down with them.
I do have a problem with part of this suggestion. It’s the “instead of” part. I’ve acknowledged before that I remember the loners, and the kids on the fringes at school. Those are the kids my parents would have told me to “steer clear of”, and thirty years ago, we were only on the cusp of the decades long
issue of mass shootings. I was on the fringes myself a good part of the time. Very few people went out of their way to leave their cliques and befriend me. And I can’t say that I was any better. The issues of social cliques and lack of empathy aren’t new. They have existed as long as humans have been living in groups. So, I don’t believe that trying to change this foible of human behavior is going to be effective against mass shootings in and of itself.
Mental health care without stigma is also necessary, but statistically speaking, those who suffer from verifiable mental illness are actually not the ones committing these shootings the majority of the time.
Gun restrictions will not prevent those who have criminal intent from committing crimes. That’s a fact. Someone with no history of mental illness or criminal activity will still be able to get through a background check, and purchase a gun. That’s a fact.
The problem of mass shootings, like so many problems we face in our country, and in the wider world is multi-faceted. Doing one thing instead of another will not solve most problems that have any level of complexity.
Number two: I went to my first march last year. I initially went for some selfish reasons. I am an imperfect person, and an even less perfect activist.
Before that march, the only kinds of activism I had performed were canvassing for John Kerry, standing on a street corner with a sign on Election Day, and voting. None of those things put me in harm’s way. And since the weather was warm that fall, those actions didn’t even cause me mild discomfort.
At the Woman’s March on Washington, I stood among throngs of people—all of us ready to march for a cause, or causes. When we got to the rallying site, there were at least a dozen speakers, all of them there to talk about their stories, and why they were marching. After an hour or so, people around me began to get restless. We were tired of standing in one place. It was crowded, and uncomfortable. It was cold. Our legs, knees, backs and feet hurt.
I am an imperfect person, and am even less perfect activist, but somehow, I had the epiphany. In the moment, I understood my own privilege so well. I was privileged to be standing there by choice. I was privileged to be be standing there safely. I was privileged to be able to get back on a cramped bus and go home to my family.
I wasn’t arrested. No one sprayed me with a fire hose. No one asked for my immigration status. No one called me a racist or homophobic slur. Yes, as a woman, I have faced challenges and harms that most men never have, but I hadn’t suffered for a cause, or for any other accident of birth. And I wasn’t even suffering as I stood there.
It is a privilege to stand up for others when you yourself have not suffered what they have suffered. It is an honor to serve those who have been marginalized and discriminated against. It is a duty to put yourself in the shoes of others if you want to make the world a better place.
And so, in my opinion, it will be an honor and privilege for our kids to serve detention for standing up against gun violence, because they will be doing so for the hundreds whose voices have been forever silenced by bullets.
Number three: If not for disrespect, and the intentional disregard of law, the United States wouldn’t exist.
Those who declared our independence from Britain were breaking “the law”. Those who dumped a cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor were disrespecting authority. They took risks with their livelihoods, and their safety. The very same people who helped to mold our still pliable Constitution, and added the Second Amendment, had disrespected their government and disregarded its laws.
Many of those disrespectful and law-breaking Founding “Fathers” weren’t a lot older than these “kids” who plan to walk out of school tomorrow. How many of us research our family history, and beam with pride to learn that one of our ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, or that we are distantly related to Washington or Jefferson?
Even our founders were imperfect at activism, decency, and creating a nation. They let slavery live in a document that preached equality. They allowed discrimination to poison some of our most important ideals. But they did get some things right. They understood that for a nation to grow and prosper, it would need flexibility, and that we would need to be able to make changes when our society changed.
One of the most common arguments cried out when discussing any change to gun laws is that without unrestricted gun rights, we are at risk of not being able to stand against tyranny in our own government. If you really believe and stand by that, then you should actually be supporting the idea of peaceful protest. The only reason you can’t see that is because it doesn’t fit the narrative you yourself believe about right and wrong, and America.
But that’s number four: The great thing about America is that we don’t all agree all the time. We don’t all believe exactly the same things. We don’t think exactly the same way about everything. And because our founders understood this, the foundations of our country supports all of this difference.
We don’t have to agree with each other to be Americans. We don’t have to see things the same way to be neighbors, or even friends sometimes. And we don’t have to sit down to be patriots.
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