The children are going to hold us accountable
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was the gruesome scene of another tragic disaster with guns in one of our nation’s high schools. The outcome — a teenager with an assault rifle killed 17 people and injured 16 others on Valentine’s Day — was the same as before except for one difference. Though we’ve become numb to the news and appeased by thoughts and prayers, this time students who survived demonstrated that they lived to be heard, not silenced.
Faith isn’t lacking; we’ve accepted the role played by “thoughts and prayer” to console the mourners. However, faith also used to be a reason to champion causes in memory of loved ones whose lives were taken by drunk drivers, drug overdoses and domestic violence. In Parkland, we can do the same about gun violence. We can transform thoughts and prayers into advocacy and action for the lives that were taken and still mean so much to their families and to us.
David Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, looked into a news camera and made it patently clear, “We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done.” He couldn’t have said it better, and he couldn’t have been more correct.
Grass roots is an old term
“We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done.” David Hogg, student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla.
describing the people’s agenda that becomes a collective voice reaching government officials where real change can happen. In the past, grass roots were mostly adults with children in tow. Today, grass roots are made up of conscientious teenagers with adults in tow.
Teenagers have something serious to say, and they need adults, who are of voting age, to make a difference for them. It’s not a selfish ask; it doesn’t come from some self-centered teen angst. It emerges from a place where the difference between life and death met them at the entrance to their high school, where teenage thoughts of immortality and invincibility should have consumed them until they outgrew them.
Recently, a grandfather asked me if I approved of the teenagers’ protests. I said that I did approve. When I asked if he protested in his youth, he smiled and said that he challenged authority, too. These teenagers are not different from us, but they’re not protesting for voting rights or the end of an unpopular war in Southeast Asia. They’re protesting to save their very lives in their neighborhood schools. They desperately want to believe that adults are listening to them and caring for their well-being. But, if their words continue to be ignored and their pleas for help are rebuked, we’ll all bear the responsibility for a generation that grows indifferent to our thoughts and prayers, and radical in their own ways to be heard and respected.
In a Jewish prayer for the newborn, the translation includes this hope, “May her parents be privileged to rear her with wisdom and learning, Torah, chuppah (wedding canopy) and good deeds.” Children are our future, and we are the surety they need to reach it. The duty of parents to rear their children to maturity is implicit in our prayer for them. Everybody wants to rear their children to maturity, and everybody wants to ensure their safety. Therefore, we are commanded to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30) and avoid unreasonable dangers so that we don’t have to rely on miracles to save us.
In our current climate, no one will succeed in repealing the 2nd Amendment, but neither should anyone tolerate disregard for human life as our highest priority. Rather, we might agree to reframe the conversation to sanctify life first, and subordinate everything else on our list of priorities, especially, and unequivocally, if it directly threatens the lives of our children.
Who wouldn’t protect their own children and who wouldn’t ensure their safety? The Florida Legislature, which failed to hear the teenagers, and conspiracy theorists who blamed the teenagers for the assault raise the specter that we might fail to answer these questions, too. It’s a test we can’t afford to fail. David Hogg spoke for thousands of students when he pointed at adults for failing to get the answers right. This time, the adults are going to be held accountable by their children.
On March 24, there will be a rally at Houston City Hall to support teenagers who want real change on gun laws. They’re advocating for sensible changes that will highlight human life as our highest priority and transform adults and parents into honest brokers of their children’s futures. Congregation Beth Israel clergy will join them to demonstrate that we stand with teenagers who want to imagine their future, which begins in school, without unreasonable fears. We’ll bless them with our faith in God’s purpose for them, and renew in all of us our shared faith that hope is truly connected to the future.
The prophet Isaiah (11:6) said, “A child shall lead them.” Let’s follow. Where our teenagers are going is where we need to be. It’s in a future with them, not without them.