March 26, 2018--"Give Melania A Gun"

My second favorite sign at Saturday's New York City's March For Our Lives march was--

"The only thing easier to buy than a gun is a Republican politician."

My favorite--"Give Melania a Gun." This even before Stormy Daniels appeared on 60 Minutes.

Along the route, at Columbus Circle, we came upon the Trump International Hotel & Tower, a gilded blot on the landscape just across from one of the grandest entrances to Central Park. A tower of brass and glass as tasteless as its eponymous owner. Shame on anyone visiting New York who checked in. Certainly to call it anything International" is a boastful reach. It's more Atlantic City than Manhattan.

The kids who brilliantly organized the march paused there to chant abuse in its soulless direction--"Lock him up. Lock him up." And did the same a few blocks later when the marchers swung east onto Central Park South and, slowing, turn to face another eyesore, Trump Parc Condominium. A residential tower on which, for a hefty fee, the actual owners were able to affix Trump's tarnishing name.

Hooking south down sun-filled Avenue of the Americas, which every real New Yorker still refers to as 6th Avenue, one of the organizer kids noticed at 48th Street there was the headquarters of Fox News and, at street level, the studio where Fox & Friends is broadcast.

In a prepubescent voice not yet changed, he began to chant--

Hey, hey
Ho, ho
Fake News
Fox & Friends 
has got to go.

Hey, hey . . .

Soon, all of his classmates and the rest of us stopped in the street to join the now soaring, angry chant. "Hey, hey . . ."

"Isn't it something," Rona said with welling eyes, "that these kids know all about Fox & Friends. Six weeks ago, back in Florida, they were thinking about the upcoming prom."

February 20, 2018--Children Must Lead Us

The biblical citation, Isaiah 11:6, says, 

"The wolf . . . shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

The classmates of the very little children murdered five years ago, twenty 1st and 2nd graders in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, could not lead us. They were too young to find the words.

But the much older high school children who are the survivors of yet another school massacre, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL can--they have found their voice and are attempting to lead us. 

We will do well to follow. 

They have already begun to plan a school boycott and a massive march on Washington for March 24th, "March for Our Lives." And they have been speaking out eloquently on all our media outlets with the savvy of people much older than they. 

Their suffering is prematurely making them wise.

Here in the words of one organizer, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez, is the heart of the matter-

All these [students and their families] should be home grieving. But instead we are up here, standing together, because if all our government and president can do is send "thoughts and prayers," then it is time for victims to be the change that we need to see.

She demanded to know where the "common sense" is in our gun laws and identified members of Congress who have accepted money and donations from the NRA.

She also directly criticized Donald Trump who tweeted a call for action on mental health, not gun controls, while criticism him for overturning an Obama-era law that made it harder for people with mental illness to buy guns.

She ended by saying that "If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was 'a terrible tragedy,' I'm going to ask him how much money he received from the NRA."

The answer is--in 2016 more than $30 million. And, while I'm at it, $3.3 million to pay-to-play Florida senator Marco Rubio, who said it's "too soon" after the shooting to talk about gun control.

And so as not to be duped by our commander-in-chief who doesn't care at all but who may be trying to find a way to horn in on the students' passion as yet another way to distract us from his failings and felonies, Parkland students are tweeting--

Morgan Williams wrote--

Oh my god. 17 Of MY CLASSMATES AND FRIENDS ARE GONE AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO MAKE THIS ABOUT RUSSIA???!! HAVE A DAMN HEART. You can keep all your fake and meaningless "thoughts and prayers."

Aly Sheehy tweeted--

17 of my classmates are gone. That's 17 futures, 17 children, and 17 friends stolen. But it always has to be about you. How silly of me to forget.

March 24th--mark it on your calendar--Washington, DC.