No One Left to Speak For Us

I stood over my laundry on December 14, 2012, dumbstruck as CNN kept saying that there had been a school shooting in my hometown of Newtown, Connecticut – surely they meant someplace else? someplace bigger? When it finally sank in that, yes, it was Newtown, I crumbled over the ironing board and wept. I cried for days, weeks, on and off. I still cry when I think about it. The news was then, and remains, too devastating to contemplate. And yet? I was hopeful. Finally, I thought, finally something will change. Congress will act. The American people will rise up and say they’ve had enough. Certainly, this can’t be swept under the rug.

And yet?

Here we are, 18 months later, (at least) 74 school shootings later, and the latest one is on my doorstep on this side of the country. An as-yet-unnamed student walked into Reynolds High School in Troutdale first thing this morning and killed a freshman boy before police said the incident was “contained.” It’s a polite euphemism hiding the fact that not one but two kids lost their lives today.

For all my weeping after Newtown, I find that today I am resigned. I am sickened, heartbroken, and angry – and after those feelings come and go I open a new brower window and go back to my work. Which makes me more sick, heartbroken, and angry.

After the school shooting earlier last week at the Seattle Pacific campus, I was reminded of that famous speech by Martin Niemöller, the German pastor who, after World War II, criticized the German elite for not doing more to stop the spread of Nazism before it was too late. His words were turned into a poem:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Many of us are asking now, as we asked after Newtown and so many school shootings before that, what will it take? What is it actually going to take for something to change? I confess that my own answers to that question are getting more and more outlandish and disgusting. But I no longer have any faith that we’ll do what it takes – oust members of Congress who are firmly in the pockets of the NRA so they can finally enact meaningful gun control legislation – without something disgusting and outlandish happening.

What will it take for you to act? Don’t offer your thoughts and prayers. We don’t need those. We need your action.

If you can’t be bothered to do something, to say something, then you deserve exactly the society riddled with unpredictable gun violence that we’ve got. If you can’t stand up against terrorists like the NRA, even when you haven’t lost a loved one to gun violence, then eventually there won’t be anyone left to speak for you, either.

Send a #NotOneMore postcard to your elected officials right now. It takes 10 seconds. Then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day until they listen. And please, please, please – remember this on election day.