It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

The Great American Experiment is done.

Finished. Over. It failed. More specifically, we failed.

You can judge a community or a culture based on how it treats and protects its most vulnerable. Nineteen children and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, Texas.

And we allowed it to happen. Not just in Uvalde, and not just 10 days earlier in Buffalo, New York. But every single time a mass shooting occurs in the United States, we’re all complicit, each and every one of us adults.

America’s adults have failed America’s youth, and because of our insatiable and misguided desire for “freedom,” we sacrifice our children at the altar of the almighty 2nd Amendment and the even-more-powerful AR15.

Politicians have failed their constituents for decades, refusing to pass common sense gun laws that would make obtaining a weapon of mass death at least as difficult as, say, getting a driver’s license, obtaining a medical cannabis card, or filling out a job application.

Police, yet again, betrayed public trust and failed to uphold their sworn duties to protect by refusing to engage the shooter in Uvalde, Texas, just as the security officer in Parkland, Florida, refused to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as 17 students were mercilessly slaughtered on Feb. 14, 2018.

The cowardice of Uvalde local law enforcement — and their deliberate disinformation in initial reports — cost the lives of schoolchildren and the unarmed teachers who displayed more bravery than the militarized police who only seem to be capable of barking “back up!” at horrified parents standing outside Robb Elementary School while their children are massacred inside.

But make no mistake, we also failed. You and I both, and every American adult you know. We’ve let this perpetuate now not just for months or years, but for decades, even across generations. We’ve internalized the pain, damaging our own and collective psyches perhaps more than we even realize, and we’ve moved on time and time again. We moved on after Sandy Hook, after El Paso, after Aurora, after Parkland, and so many more that I might list if it didn’t hurt the soul so much to type them.

The students who came of age during Columbine in 1999 are now adults, many with school-aged children of their own. And the roles have now reversed, as once-terrorized students pass the baton of death and fear to a new generation of their own children, almost as if some sick American rite of passage.

This insane reality can not stand. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to punch and kick, and at the same time I want to lock all my doors and hide away from the world.

But there’s a difference between ‘wants’ and ‘needs.’ I ‘want’ a lot of things, but I NEED action. I’m DEMANDING action.

Tomorrow, Congress could pass a list of common sense gun policies, including universal background checks, safe storage laws, red flag laws, and more. And it still would be too little, too late.

We, as Americans, have accepted and perpetuated a culture of death, and it extends across all reaches of American life. You could be gunned down at your grocery store, at school, at a movie theatre, at a concert, at your place of prayer, while delivering a live news broadcast, or quite literally anywhere. I don’t mean to fearmonger, but you and I both know it’s true. It is our shared, uniquely dystopian, modern American reality.

But I plead with you, do not — DO NOT — accept this hellish reality that has been constructed around, and in part by, you. Do not accept that “progress takes time” or that your voice doesn’t matter. Do not accept NRA-manufactured talking points from blood money-hoarding Republicans. Do not accept the continued, feigned helplessness of a Democratic Party that holds all three branches of government.

Do not accept this reality. Rage for positive change.

Call your local senators and don’t ask for, but DEMAND common sense gun laws. You are the constituent, this is your community, your country, and you must use YOUR voice.

Find a way to plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize, as Killer Mike says, or find a way to make “Good Trouble,” as the late Rep. John Lewis always advocated. Or, maybe, as John Lewis inspired in 1963, it’s time to March on Washington.

I don’t know. What I do know is no matter how we respond from here, it will always fall short of being enough. No positive action from here can ever right the wrongs of our past. While United States history is permanently stained with unforgivable transgressions, we can still write a new future.

I’m fed up, and if you’ve read this far, I know you are, too. But before change can happen, we must first, as a people, immediately, clearly, and relentlessly TAKE and DEMAND action. Demand change. Demand a new reality. And do not stop.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.

“Wake up, America! Wake up! For we cannot stop, and we will not, and cannot, be patient.”