Kids prove the times they are a changin’
I don’t know if you noticed but no adults spoke at last Saturday’s “March for Our Lives.”
Not even singer Jennifer Hudson, whose mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew were shot to death by a deranged family member in 2008. All the speakers were children and teenagers.
Nine-yearold Yolanda King, the granddaughter of Martin Luther King, was magnificent.
Nine! How many of us, at any age, could stand up in front of a crowd now estimated to be as many as 800,000, and speak with as much poise as that little girl?
Samantha Fuentes, a student at Parkland’s Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, threw up on stage.
She had a right. She had been shot in both legs in the Valentine’s Day massacre and her face is still scarred by shrapnel wounds.
She was not speaking hyperbole when she said she had been crying tears and blood that day.
When people say these students are being used, that they don’t know what they are talking about, let’s remember they know this much: They were the ones who were shot at, who saw their friends and classmates killed.
They were the ones who trembled in fear behind filing cabinets and in closets, who saw the destruction of their school and who lost their own sense of security forever.
Their cause is as as it gets.
Are they a bunch of entitled white, middle-class, pampered teens addicted to their phones and Twitter?
Maybe before Feb. 14. But after, they had the compassion to think not only of their own ordeal but to include black, innercity victims of day-in and day-out gun violence who have never had a voice in this fight.
Naomi Wadler, 11, of Va., brought down the house when she spoke on behalf of all the faceless, nameless black girls and women who have been killed by gun violence.
“For far too long, these names, these black girls and women have been just numbers. I am here to say never again for those girls too,” she said as the crowd roared.
Zion Kelly, 16, brought me to tears when he spoke of his twin brother, Zaire, who was shot and killed by a robber last September in Washington, D.C., as he walked home from school.
If you listened, you may have noticed that not one of the students called for repeal of the Second Amendment.
And not one mentioned the name of the Parkland shooter.
But nearly all spoke of the importance of registering and voting this year for candidates pledged to righteous Alexandria, improve gun safety measures and against incumbents who continue stubbornly to do nothing.
David Hogg, Ryan Deitsch, Samantha Fuentes, Delany Tarr, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, Alex Wind and the incredible Emma Gonzalez are high school students, not actors.
They deserve to move on with their lives, but I think we will hear their names again and again in coming years.
When Jennifer Hudson sang Bob Dylan’s anthem of the anti-Vietnam War movement, “The Times they are a Changin,’” at the end of the program, she brought it all back home.
“Come senators, congressmen/ please heed the call/ Don’t stand in the doorway/ Don’t block up the hall … for the times they are a changing.’”
The students Saturday were out there marching because something horrific happened to them.
It’s rare in this geographically huge, racially and culturally diverse, hopelessly divided country of 320 million people for us to even notice a tragedy affecting a small group of our fellow Americans.
We weren’t much moved when 26 were killed in Sandy Hook, little children cut in half or their faces blown off; when 49 were killed at a nightclub in Orlando; 59 at a concert in Las Vegas; and 26 at a church in Texas.
Ever since Columbine, we’ve shrugged and bowed to the NRA’s mantra: “That’s the price of freedom.”
Last Saturday felt like the beginning of a movement, but only if we can keep it going.
Yes, the kids had financial help from celebrities like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey, and from many adults much more experienced in organizing marches.
Being helped does equal being “used.”
Together the students and the adults organized one of the biggest marches in Washington, D.C., history in five weeks.
And for that they needed money and knowhow, to rent the stages, a sound system, fencing, large screen TVs and porta-potties, to file the proper permits, work with Capitol Police and arrange the thousands of buses.
Delco United for Sensible Gun Policy and other local groups sent seven busloads of students and some adults to Washington. Delaware Countians donated not more than $15,000 to pay for the buses.
The adults here worked with student organizers from Chester STEM Academy, Haverford, Penncrest, Strath Haven, and Upper Darby High Schools and from Swarthmore College to name a few.
Many more marchers went on their own with their families and friends.
But one march does not make a movement.
The kids have to be in it for the long haul and use every tool at their disposal, including the social media they are so good at.
And they must know their enemy. The National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America will fight back tooth and nail, raising money and funding candidates long into the future.
They can take heart that public opinion is changing, as it must.
At a Democratic candidates’ forum Wednesday night in Marple, every hand went up without hesitation when the candidates were asked if they would ban semi-automatic weapons and highcapacity cartridges. That wouldn’t have happened even two years ago.
Whatever comes from this, it’s wonderful to know the kids are more than alright.