Featured Genre: Constructive Journalism tackles gun violence
with story by Laura Mahal
ATTENDING TO VERBS
by Laura Mahal
April 2, 2018
Twenty-five hundred students, parents, and community members had assembled for a peaceful demonstration in Old Town, Fort Collins on February 27, 2018. The students had “walked out” of their classes to draw attention to the need for greater school safety.
As the rally came to a close, the demonstrators began dispersing, invigorated by the positive energy that surged through the crowd.
Energy that was perilously close to tilting in another direction . . . for the permit granted to the Walkout organizers had expired at 2 p.m., and it was now 2:01.
The moment the sixteen student leaders had cleared the stage, counter-protesters had filled the vacuum. A phalanx of thirty adults pressed behind me, chanting in unison: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
Instinctively, I put my body between the counter-protesters now on the stage and the young adults and children who had been drawn back to Old Town Square by the shouting. My three-decades-gone-by military training elevated me from the role of parent volunteer to community protector. It wasn’t until later that evening that I learned my seventeen-year-old daughter, one of the event organizers, had taken up a post a few feet to my left.
She too stood as a bulwark between oppositional forces. She has learned, it seems, that occasionally one must place herself in the direct path of confrontation in order to advocate for peace.
As a writer, I pay attention to the words people use — especially the verbs. The adults who attended the Walkout, many of us now in our forties, fifties, sixties, or more, feel as if we have been mired in battles for increased dialogue about sensible gun safety measures. It has been a slough, trudging through fields laden with landmines around the discussion of gun control.
When some people hear the word “control,” what they really hear is “restriction” or even “takeaway” / “removal.” Those who are most firmly entrenched shut down to conversations that just might result in compromise.
Now listen to the words of today’s young adults, who are organizing Walkouts and a worldwide March for our Lives.
They aren’t planning to drag their feet or sit quietly for a lengthy wait and see period.
They will walk and they will march, because they are all done with running and hiding from school shootings resulting in mass carnage. They will mobilize, and they will utilize social media as a peaceful weapon.
They will energize an entire generation, hopefully reversing a long swell of apathy at the polls. Their key verb may be VOTE. Many are already registered and will turn eighteen before the 2020 elections, if not midterm elections. They will exercise this foundational principle of democracy to impart lasting change.
In fact, some will choose to run for office — to one day lead the charge to bring about the change they wish to see.
This generation will create flyers and post them in coffee shops, encouraging dialogue with their peers, the Interfaith Council, and adult-led advocacy groups. They will meet with lawmakers and present their point of view. They will keep talking until we listen. They will insist on action until we stand alongside them, not as soldiers, but as citizens.
When the counter-protesters shouted more loudly than the organizers of the Walkout, angry adult voices carried, bouncing off of the buildings that line Old Town Square.
Things could have gotten out of hand, and perhaps even tilted in a dangerous direction. There were police snipers on top of a few of the buildings, armed and ready, and there was a police presence ringing the outside of the crowds, standing by in case they were needed.
In the end, our solution was simple. Those of us who had volunteered to help keep the peace during the rally worked our way through the crowds and spoke with the young people who remained behind. We told them to hang on to their sense of accomplishment — that this day had been a fruitful one. Children as young as preschoolers had bonded with people who first took a stand in the 1950s and 60s. We were united in our desire for key conversations to occur.
We explained that the counter-protesters would go away as soon as their target audience disengaged. This was indeed the case. We dispersed from the Square with our dignity intact. Our refusal to fight with physicality meant that future rallies would again draw crowds who wished to dialogue with common sense and a civic-minded maturity.
Our young people will keep the peace, as long as we lend them the stage from time to time. They have much to teach us, because this is their time, and they are paying attention to data and to trends, to what is working elsewhere and what is not working here in the U.S.
Let’s pay attention to verbs, and move in the direction of marching, rallying, engaging, dialoguing, and uniting. Let’s move away from skirmishes and by all means, from shooting the messenger, or anyone else, for that matter.
