As I spent my Saturday morning and afternoon watching the
coverage of the March For Our Lives march, many thoughts swirl in my mind.
I am obviously moved by the courage of the Parkland high
school students. It seems disrespectful to call them kids as they have seen and
experienced horrors that no “kid” should ever have to experience. But it is their response to this experience
that defines them in my mind’s eye. They have so far handled themselves with
aplomb and maturity that far belies their age and experience, as they have been
left twirling in the piranha feeding frenzy of the media cycle and the cynical
political machinations of the politicians. They showed their gut wrenching emotions over the loss of their lost friends
and school mates, as they should. In fact they have responded with greater
maturity and emotional strength that I could have ever mustered in response to
the right wing conspiracy theorist trolls who tried to tear them down publicly,
the reactionary bobbing heads from Fox, the bottom feeding NRA, and the bought
and paid for public officials looking
for photo opportunities. Yet, in spite of it all, these Marjory Stoneman
Douglas students persisted.
The officialdom did their usual song and dance of thoughts
and prayers, they paraded out their crocodile tears, built the same arguments
against sane gun policies, and expected the Majory Stoneman Douglas students to
go away. But this time it is different. By all indications, the inertia of the antipathy
towards the heightening gun violence in our society has reached the saturation
point. And this time, the critical
mistake that all talking heads and politicians are making is that they underestimated these
young people.
The march that is the culmination of a couple of months of
work and planning came off miraculously without a hitch, it brought a great
number of people together throughout the country, in numbers that twice that of
the sparsely attended Trump inauguration, in 800 marches around the country.
They did this without sleep, in complete PTSD from the still fresh memories of
the assault on their school. They are also dealing with the realization that
the tepid and ineffective responses are all that they were going to receive
from the public officials, and the adults in our society had lost their courage
when faced with the awesome bank account of the NRA. In their response, they
have already surpassed most adults in the fair and savvy way they addressed
their own privilege and became far more inclusive of those voices that have
been silenced in the media because of their race and poverty. They avoided the
awkward accusations made against the Women’s march by including those young people
involved in Black Lives Matter and those high schoolers in the City of Chicago.
This is a movement that is well thought out and intelligently conceived.
Which brings to me to my own response.
My response was shame, a shame rooted in the fact that my own
generation was unable and unwilling to make our society safe for all of us. My generation
also lacked the strength and determination to face down a formidable foe that
is well practiced in fund raising and media manipulation. My generation did not
step up when the gun lobby bought the politicians, my generation took a step
backwards when they presented their nonsensical rationale for their arguments,
and my generation let fear rule our thinking. My generation let it all happen. My
generation let them grow large and fearsome because my generation feared the
unknown more than the gun lobby, and now my generation fear both and are stuck
with both. My generation let them dictate the ground rules of engagement and we
let them spin the debate to their best advantage. My generation is ruled by
fear.
But this generation doesn’t have the preconceived notions
that my generation did, they don’t know enough to be fearful, in fact, they are
more pissed off than afraid because it is their lives hanging on the line
because they are the one being mowed down by assault weapons. They are in the
line of fire, with no certainty of safety in sight.
I am both ashamed and inspired by their actions. I see hope that
is a response to this quagmire, fully knowing that this is a long campaign and
not just a single engagement. I am inspired to do more even though It is both
energizing and terrifying to be led by ones so young and inexperienced in the
worldly ways of media and the politics, but then again, that is their
advantage: they don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t care. This is what makes them so successful in the
immediacy of now.
Being an avid student of history, I do think about what is
coming next, how will the struggle evolve and develop? Will the short attention
span of our collective consciousness be outlasted by the cynical entrenched
establishment, who intrinsically know that history is on their side and that
the fickleness of society’s attention span is their best weapon against us.
I remember the lessons from the parts of history where the unstoppable
force of the young moved the immovable object that is the status quo, at least
for a moment. I am thinking about the Pro-Democracy movement of the Chinese
students in Tiananmen Square, the Prague Spring, anti-Vietnam war movement, the
civil rights movement, and on and on.
If the past is going to be an indicator, there does not seem
to be much hope. The democracy activists from Tiananmen have either left China and
become entrepreneurs in the west or are incarcerated in China. The call for
Democracy has only made for the present dictatorship of Xi Jinping. Prague
Spring was crushed under the steel treads of Russian tanks. The anti-War
movement activists became the baby-boomers, part of the reason why we are where
we are today: chasing the almighty dollar and uninterested in the future. The
promise of the civil rights movement has made significant progress, but it the
civil rights movement had succeeded there would not be the need for Black Lives
Matter, nor necessitate the protesting of the March For Our Lives. Indeed, as
an old man who had seen history unfolds in all of its disappointment, there is
very little that says that this movement will succeed.
Yet, this movement feels different. I may be fooling myself,
but this does have a certain firmness of resolve and clear eyed focus which, I
can only, withstand the erosion of purpose from the unending waves of cynicism
and entrenched inertia of doing nothing. I have hope, perhaps in the brilliance
of the Majory Stoneman Douglas students, perhaps in the fresh faced resolve of
Naomi Wadler, perhaps in the emotional defiance of Emma Gonzalez, perhaps in
the willingness of the privileged to share the stage with the underprivileged,
perhaps this is the tipping point in our lives, one of those rare moments in
history where the voice of the disenfranchised majority can be shouted over the
clichéd response of the establishment. Perhaps this is the Black Swan moment of
change in business as usual.
I certainly hope that this is all true.
