I was in San Antonio at the time of the Students March, a little more than a month ago. There were workshops I was presenting and other speaking engagements I was fulfilling…the time since just rushed by. I wanted to share these thoughts from that time.
I work with young people a lot and everyone was talking about the march so I decided to attend. It was a wonderful San Antonio morning and the air was abuzz with the sound of children and adolescents greeting each other as the crowd swelled. There were speeches on the courthouse steps and signs, banners, flags and clapping. But I was most taken with the grandparents…there were parents, of course, accompanying and supervising their kids. As I looked around the crowd, there were so many grandparents holding signs….their eyes haunted. And I remembered it was this age group who marched in the sixties and seventies….bringing an end to a war, initiating movements for equality, supporting civil rights, taking stands for ERA. This group sang, and danced, marched demonstrated….and now…now they see the grandchildren being mowed down. It was this group who also stood with the kids…just as I came to support the kids, we all stood together.
And I remembered a grandmother in an open air market in Chicago this past summer. I had stopped to speak with her as she and her husband pulled a wagon among the stalls with their grandchildren riding and waving. On the wagon side, boldly displayed was a sign: “There is no room for HATE here!” What I wanted to know about was the sign. And she told me there was a movement where people were putting the signs in their front windows and in their yards, posting them in car windows and as bumper stickers and wearing them on printed tee-shirts. I asked her if she had marched when she was younger (remember the democratic convention riots were in Chicago). She said she had and then she said, “Who would have thought at our age we would be having to do it again, to keep the children and our communities safe?” She shook her head, “Who would have thought?”
So I stood this morning with a sign in my hand demanding gun control and no more school shootings, protect our kids, and stand with them…so many of us across the nation standing with the kids. And I wondered, “Who would have thought?”
