Heartening and heartbreaking — those words sum up the March for Our Lives held March 24 in Washington DC, across the country, throughout the world. Further action took place on April 20, high school students nationwide walked out of school to mark the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre. Nineteen years is before any of today’s student leaders were born, yet during the intervening time the only action taken by public authorities has been inaction. Now, however, a change is in the wind.

Once the students at Parkland resolved that they would not let the shooting of their classmates turn them inward, that they would not live in fear, they initiated a protest that hit a chord of recognition throughout society. The reason: too many have suffered from our culture of violence – suffered from the industries that profit when that culture of violence is promoted — as witnessed in mass shootings in Orlando, Las Vegas, Newtown, and on and on including now at a Waffle House in Nashville in a list that has grown obscenely long. Or suffered as the victims of the random violence that afflicts impoverished black and Latino communities trapped by hopelessness through systemic discrimination in jobs and housing, education and health, marking communities from Washington DC to Oakland, from Baltimore to Chicago, coast to coast in another list that goes on too long. And behind all that is police violence and legalized vigilante actions in which the name Stephon Clark now joins Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin in a line of victims of sanctioned murder that can be traced back to our country’s origin.

But these are not just names — each was an individual with family and friends who carry the sense of loss that never goes away when a loved one is taken too early, when closure proves impossible because the reasons for the violence are left to fester. And like any wound left untreated, it only gets worse over time. The speeches at the rally were so heartbreaking because those doing the speaking opened themselves up so we could all hear the hurt in their voices. Usually at demonstrations speakers repeat themselves, they say what we expect them to say, and so most of us listen only sporadically (at least that is true of myself). But this was different for the speeches were without cliché, without histrionics, without false bravado. In this the youthfulness of the speakers (ranging in age from 11 to 18) shined through because the talks were without artifice, demonstrating a maturity many of their elders sorely lack. Which is precisely where the pain crept in. Absent the rhetoric of press releases and applause points alternating between bombast and buzz words, the usual distance between speaker and those spoken to dissolved. Listening one couldn’t (I couldn’t) keep thoughts away from the reality of injury and death contained within each word.

Yet when the speeches were over and the crowd began to disperse, we did not walk away feeling defeated and depressed. For the words were sharp and had a message beyond pious sentiment. They spoke of specific legislation that can be enacted now to at least begin to address our society’s pervasive gun violence rather than surrender to it. And they took that one step further — demanding to know whether office holders accept NRA money, calling on people to register and vote and asking that the vote be used to kick those politicians who do, out of office. That is a powerful message because it is clear in its demand that elected officials be responsible to the public they allegedly serve, rather than corporate lobbies with deep pockets that serve as a paymaster. As is true of the NRA which long ago turned from being a gun owners organization into becoming an industry front for those who make a financial killing out of the destruction of human lives. And in this, the gun lobby is no different than lobbies for private prisons or defense contractors.

And it does not take much of a leap from the students’ logic to conclude that Citizens United in its equation between money and speech has become a cancer in our society for it legalizes the kind of corruption and vote buying the NRA exemplifies. Corruption that, in turn, exemplifies the structural inequality in our society between corporate wealth and public power. By naming those feeding at the trough, students were striking at the core issue facing us: are we a country by of and for the powerful or by of and for the people? The fact that this issue came to the forefront as an outgrowth of civic engagement by newly engaged youth is why the rally was so heartening.

Emma Gonzalez concluded the rally by asking for a 6 minute 27 second moment of silence — the length of time of the Parkland shooting rampage. It was a silence that spoke volumes and posed the challenge for all who heard it to act. Act so that the heartbreaks so visibly on display upon the speakers platform and within the crowd cease being an everyday occurrence, act so that we reclaim freedom and democracy from the rich and powerful, from all who use words to coverup their own bloodied hands.

Note: This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in the Washington Socialist

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