Hug Your Children

I was mentally referring to myself as childless the other day and then I realized that is wrong.  I have hundreds of children.

Today twenty children who were very precious to their mothers, fathers, grandmothers,
teachers. . . were shot and killed in a school shooting along with seven of their teachers.

When something terribly tragic like this happens (and it happens so often now) the instinct of any parent is to want to hug their children.

I found out about this tragedy today while I was at school, via whispers from another teacher.  I had no intention of telling the kids - better they hear about it from their own parents if they are old enough for it to be appropriate.  Not a minute later I had two happy four-year-olds on my lap, so it was a cinch to give hugs all around. I am not childless - my life is overflowing with children.

The four-year-olds and I were spectators at a glow-in-the-dark fashion show, wearing highlighter bracelets that shone under the black light and cheering as twenty girls pranced down the "runway" made of tables in their hand-sewn outfits. And everyone was so very vibrantly alive.

Earlier today I accompanied a group of students to visit an archeological dig at an Underground Railroad site, an old Albany house that is being restored into a museum.  We pawed through mud and looked at old pottery shards, a tobacco pipe, and a gunflint.  The kids climbed piled of dirt and peered down into holes.  And everyone was so vibrantly alive.

That house hosted formerly enslaved fugitives who were on their way to Canada in the 1840's and 1850's.  Corey, the head archeologist, who is also the husband of a teacher at my school, told us about the African-American people who owned and lived in that house, and their neighbors.  He told us about all the work they did providing food, shelter, and clothing.  We saw a bulletin from the meetings of their Fugitive Aid Society.  Corey encouraged us to think of them not as stiff formal people from a stuffy era, but as social activists.  He encouraged us to think of the enslaved people escaping as activists, too - people who worked to author their own destiny.

Gun violence kills children every day in this country.  In Chicago alone 24 children were fatally shot during the 2011-2012 school year, 28 in 2010-2011.  319 children were wounded by gunfire in Chicago last year.

As a teacher who has worked in neighborhoods plagued by gun violence, I want people to acknowledge that gun violence does not only happen to children during high-profile mass shootings.  In some communities it happens every day, although a lot less attention is paid. And every single child who is a victim of gun violence was precious to their mother, father, grandmother, teacher. . .

When I worked in Woodlawn, in Chicago, I arrived at school one day during my first year of teaching to find the window broken.  A shoot-out between rival gang factions had taken place in front of the school the night before - thankfully no one was at school.  Police found over a hundred shell casings on the ground.  My students found the bullet later that day, where it had ricocheted off the ceiling and landed in the corner.  I kept it for a long time as a reminder that things can always get worse, and that no matter how rough the day was, at least we were all still alive to try again tomorrow.

A few years later when I worked at Amandla, we had to keep the kids inside at the end of the day because of a shooting reported down the block.  One boy complained about having to stay in, and our vice principal told him, "I am trying to protect you from bullets.  I am not about to let you go out there and get shot."  And the boy replied, "this is Englewood.  This shit happens every day." I still think about him a lot, about where that resignation came from and whether it could ever be undone.

When a gun goes off no one in its vicinity is the author of their own destiny any more.  But in the wake of such events, and among them, we must still try to build the communities that will heal us, and the citizens - adults and children - that can heal our communities.