LEGACY OF PARKLAND SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Orlando Weekly Photo by Monivette Cordeiro

In a world where one news story, no matter how wrenching, risks being eclipsed quickly  by  another tragic event, the story of Parkland, Florida has stayed with me. Like, every day.   It grabs my heart  even more than Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, or dozens of other school killings.  It’s hard emotionally to get beyond the slaughter of innocents, or the mental illness of their killers, but the survivors  of  Parkland found a collective voice to challenge a dark pattern of history, proclaiming “#Never Again.”  They have an ambitious agenda now of lobbying legislatures, pursuing social media, and broadening their coalition.  I’m rooting for them with every step.
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Down deep is another remarkable thing about Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In the weeks following the tragedy, I listened to Cameron Kasky, Emma Gonzales, Alex Wind, David Hogg and other student leaders speak for sensible gun legislation and the responsibility of adults to protect minors. My take-away was  maybe it’s high school students who need to protect and keep honest the adults.  Their outspokenness was perhaps unprecedented coming from an American high school.  Watching how poised, articulate and impactful a sixteen, seventeen or eighteen-year old could be, I was struck by their cohesiveness in rallying behind one of  our century’s major issues:  how to make us safer in an age of  deepening  insecurity, uncertainty and anxiety.
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I have come to view students, in public and private high schools, as inescapably important members of society. For all the painful stories of kids marginalized by bullying and shaming, or who turn to drugs or guns or suicide to escape because they see no tunnel with a light, look again at Marjory Stoneman High School.  Students are proving there is a light to follow—speaking their convictions with dispassionate eloquence—and to move toward that light means self-esteem and self-empowerment.  High schools across the country now have a precedent for being heard on crucial issues because a tired Congress, overworked media, churches, and political non-profits can’t get the job done alone.  I hope more students give themselves permission to be taken seriously.  They should insist on it, and ignore critics who view high school as a mere launch to college or adulthood.
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I was in college in the golden age of President Kennedy’s dictum “don’t ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  Responding, my generation threw itself into  the civil rights movement, the Peace Corp, local and national politics, and a search for a deeper identity for ourselves and our country.  In the category of social activism. high schools might be the new colleges. As our political culture grows jarringly complicated, and I feel repression in the air, I long for the strength of new voices.