The Children’s Crusade
It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?”
I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.
I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
I would like to leave this quote here without saying anything about it. I would like for it to speak for itself. For it to just be there and true and heartbreaking enough that the words will just settle in to the space in your chest and live there and continue to be true and heartbreaking.
I wish words like this made a difference. Resonated more. Spent more time tumbling around in the space between the heart and lungs, that space that aches with longing for love and words like this.
That space now is filled with thoughts about shootings and massacres. Again. Those who have been lost in them, and those who perpetuate them. I feel like I have so much I want to say, but I’m fighting against what feels like the futility of saying it.
“You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?”
“No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?”
“I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?'”
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
And it feels so futile, because it feels like I’ve been saying these words over and over again for years. Because I have.
I have participated in lockdown drills and real lockdowns since I started teaching in 2008. Yes, they are just as terrifying as you might imagine.
A school shooting for a teacher is just different. If I’m in a public place and someone starts shooting, you better believe I’m running away from it. If I’m in school with my students, you better believe I’m running towards it. Why? That’s. My. Job.
No, I do not want teachers to have guns. No, I would not take a gun if one were offered to me. More than that; I would quit my job if guns were allowed on my campus.
Students and teachers are not soldiers. Schools should not be war zones.
***
I’m re-reading Slaughterhouse-Five with my seniors. I assigned it on a whim; it’s short and will fit in this awkward space we have before spring break. I didn’t think much about its relevancy or poignancy. I just thought it was a good book with literary merit and weird enough to keep their attention before a break and then graduation.
I had forgotten how its words pierce your chest. And I hadn’t thought they would relate so well to the current state of affairs in American schools.
It’s an anti-war book, after all. Not an anti-guns-in-schools book.
But isn’t this a war? In a way?
***
“You were just babies in the war – like the ones upstairs!”
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you… You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And they’ll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
It doesn’t matter that these kids in Parkland weren’t technically babies like the ones in Sandy Hook. They are still kids. Except it does matter this time, because these kids are older. Wiser. Louder. Just as sad, but more pissed off.
And thank God for that.
Because this is their crusade now. It shouldn’t have had to be, but it is. And their activism and passion are going to keep the fight in the spotlight.
Vonnegut argues in Slaughterhouse-Five that there is no free will. That each moment exists simultaneously with each other moment for all of past, present, and future. That a person who is dead in one moment is having an unfortunate time in that moment, but is perfectly fine in plenty of other moments. So it goes.
I would argue otherwise. That politicians have an option whether or not to take money from the NRA. That these kids experienced this incredible tragedy and had the option to pass the bodies of their dead friends on the ground and say, “So it goes” or to rise up, speak up, and demand change.
Lucky for us, these kids chose the latter.
Now’s the time to join them. This is the Children’s Crusade of this century. And I am here for it. I am here with it.