A blip between NPR stories. Schools will have lockdown drills. Even the Senate hid under their desks…and they did nothing to make us safer from another insurrection. Nothing to keep women safer or Black people safer. NOTHING to get guns out of our country to make it more habitable for the rest of us. It makes me want to scream.
Business as usual for many. I try to focus, but I fail. I fail over and over again, because I’m supposed to make the world safer. Parents, especially moms feel responsible. Because we failed, we all live in fear. We’re conditioned to apologize and self-flagellate; we lie to ourselves that it’s not their fault because we’ve heard it on repeat.
I imagine this is how Black people feel in this country 24/7, especially 2 years after George Floyd’s murder. He was scared; he was someone’s child. He had a child too. 2 years later, the community didn’t fail to show up. The whole world showed up. The Powers That Be did not. They promised to do more, but weren’t brave enough. The truth? The Powers That Be are all cowards. Somehow, we have to keep being brave AF.
We’ve had enough. Everytime we make plans, to recommit, to double down, the patriarchy sends a clear message: stop trying. Stop working so hard; stop pretending or pivoting. Stop dreaming…stop fighting. Give up building better.
I had planned today, and yesterday. I plans last week when Buffalo happened. I plan, dust off my deep fatigue and show up. I keep showing up; sometimes I’m the only one.
Maybe I should stop working so hard too? Even when I throw up a white flag or ask for help, everyone’s out of gas. I can’t blame them. Everyone deserves a break, right?
When I saw “TX school shooting” in Slack, all plans ceased to exist, again. With my cup and tank on empty, and my heart racing and overflowing, I showed up to my 2nd grader’s school just to see something real, to see they were ok. I hugged him and said I was popping in to see if he was too tired for Art Camp. We sat on a log while he ate chips, and then he stayed to create something magical under some trees.
Next, I drove to the middle school, farther from the one near our house because school boundaries changed to balance class sizes and create equity. They reopened this school only to shut it down again. Despite daily student protests, The Powers That Be will level this school next year to widen the freeway, a a climate crisis.
Sitting outside waiting for my eldest, I was writing and reeling. Had they already seen this news on their phone? Would they notice how shaken I was. 12 years old, they already have non-stop dread. How much more can these kids take? Wondering this made me feel like a failure all over again.
Giving ad nauseum
Human givers: I see you. You are not alone. We give all our labor to this place that only takes? We give till we bleed and the patriarchy draws out a few more vials. How many parents have to calm tears again tonight, to tell them “I don’t know”? How many tell their kids with a lie? “Don’t worry. You are safe.”
The amount they’ve taken from us can never be repaid. What’s been taken from indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans can never be repaid. They didn’t even reunite every family whose children were taken at the border. Some can’t be found.
There are no reparations big enough to give parents whose children are taken from them…and we’re all somebody’s kid or parent or partner. These were actually little kids and a teacher, murdered at their school.
Weak leaders of the “free world” give speeches instead of staging walkouts. My kids protest more than democrats in congress. The Powers That Be have spoken, again. Even Biden’s words were powerfully empty, condemnation with zero accountability. Nothing to see here folks. Kids killed in their effing schools. Teachers too, poor souls. They labored out of for everyone’s kids.
As a lover of languages, talking, communications, connections and creating, I believe in my core that words have power. If we are brave enough, we tell it “like it is.” No B.S. We are direct and honest. That bravery can come with age, privilege, or because your story is too important. You can no longer hold it in, especially the traumatic parts. It’s got to escape…or eat you alive.
My words don’t have the power they should. They will not be moved. Nothing moves them but their bank accounts. The fear of losing votes or market share are the only things that move them.
They were not moved when I wrote this in December, “1,770 K-12 School Shootings with nearly 600 people killed since the decade I was born. White boys raised on toxic masculinity and pride have taken countless lives, and they were not moved, not even by Sandy Hook.”
How many kids since then? When do we start the count?
Truth: I’m afraid to look at my phone and yet scared to look away. Everyday the news is too damn much. How many have been taken since the last time I wrote about something violent by guns, but also by police, opioids, poverty, GBV, DV, lack of masks and access to care?
They keep taking. But it will never be enough to move them.
Why didn’t the toddler, washed up on shore, drowned escaping Syria in a raft move them? What about kids caught in crossfire between Palestine and Israeli men? What about Afghan girls dealing with fall out from Taliban, Afghan, and American wars?
Every day, I am afraid to look, because I know The Powers That Be will take even more.
Actually, “take” is too benign; they steal. “Take” implies they can or will give it back, that they are borrowing from us. Our lives are not for rent or loan. This is not just the cost of living. This is theft.
They steal from us: Our rights. Our votes. Our time. Our kid’s time. They rob us of our labor, a senses of success or accomplishment, they steal our money and profit off misery. Our children are future human capital, not humans.
As my friend Madison Butler said “I am tired, and no amount of work ever feels like enough work. Every tragedy, every life lost feels like you’re racing against the clockwork of humanity.” They rob us of our rest and sanity; then they steal our dignity.
We try to build a better society by marching for the future but parents and children get robbed of being in the moment. Ignoring the true history of our nation, Black and Brown people are robbed of their past and present. Our time is worth more than they could ever afford, yet They treat us worthless. They rob children of having a future at all.
We are not trading our time for money or a better future. There’s no ROI when the currency is life itself.
They’re robbing us of our one lifetime.
There is so much more I want to do with my time than write about tragedy and failure, night after night. I am not a fatalist; I am a realist. Yet, I am afraid to ignore this. I want to do something else…other than write about inequality and tragedy. I want to shout about good things and teach and create.
I want to nap without guilt or fear. I want to just work; not collapse and grieve 24/7 when another thing derails my mission. The news is horrendous often, because the truth is it is not going to stop. It will be horrendous and we cannot stop time. How we live our life and spend our time is ALL we can do to make it worth living. We owe it to ourselves to not go sideways every time but to honor those lost and keep fighting while also not neglecting our purpose.
If I stop talking about this, it’s like I am complicit. Silence is Violence. Until everyone is free, especially those who face violence in their communities daily, we have to keep calling it out.
I cannot resign myself to climate change or fascism or child murder. Whether in Uvalde, or in Ukraine, or Uganda, or Uyghur camps. These are all our kids, even the grown up or aging ones. If we would just stop to see this, rather than see people as “others” maybe we’d have a chance.
In most places, people care more about holding power over others than they do about giving power to the people. The ones who want “power over” vs. “power to” maintain their position through violent means: guns, rape, drugs, outlawing safe procedures, assault, forced labor, forced pregnancy, reducing access to healthcare and mental health services, demonizing masks, conspiracy theories about vaccines, and banning books in the name of religion.)
We have things like the rainbow curriculum, but they fight it tooth and nail. Instead they choose to teach hate, misogyny, denialism, and vilify those who try to speak the truth. They condemn those who talk about openly our shared history and honestly about our perilous shared future. They don’t really care about truth, unless it’s “versions of the truth” that are self-serving.
The truth is, The Powers That Be are liars. They sold us the idea of democracy but never bought into it themselves. The truth is, either THEY care or THEY don’t. Melania’s jacket literally said it. They dgaf about children other than their own.
This latest atrocity will not move them. Nor the one before it which happened days before. The next one won’t move them. Nothing will. They are not moved by anything but money and power; they want to control more than they care…which is why we continue to see bloodshed, chaos, and inhumanity and injustice in our country, and will not see the end. They don’t even care if we’re healthy. In fact they prefer that we’re not.
We’re left to ask, do we, as a society actually care? Do we want a care economy or an economy profiting off of people’s need for care because we’re all sick and spent?
Doesn’t everyone deserve kavod כָּבוֹד (dignity, honor, and respect)? If we believe life is precious, we must value every single one as if it was ours, as if it was our kid or parent or partner. We must value it as if it we our community. The harsh truth is, we are liars too.
I have thoughts (obviously) but my prayers are useless. Praying doesn’t make this go away anymore than they can “pray away the gay.”
I do have a wish, though. I wish we could take the power back…because this isn’t freedom.
Freedom is a world where we are safe. ALL OF US. Every human. We are not safe, and are children are not safe, so we are not free. When communities and people have kavod כָּבוֹד — respect for all identities and all people — then we will be free.
For all who continue to say no more, stand up to make this our truth. Enough. Without kavod we have no truth, and without truth we will never be free.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
