I was a freshman in high school when the planes hit the Twin Towers. In the weeks following I sat in front of the TV for hours and hours of new coverage, stories of lives lost and family members left behind in despair. I made a collage of the devastation, cutting photos and headlines out of newspapers. My heart hurt, and my hands had to do something. The ink from the newsprint smudged my fingers black, and my fingertips grew sticky from the glue.
Something else stuck with me, too: the hurt of the country, the hurt of the world, and questions of what it means to love and fight for my country. I was worried about whether anyone would ask me to homecoming. I was worried about my weight and if my parents noticed I wasn’t eating. I was worried about my AP history exam. I was worried about my home life. And for maybe the first time, I was worried about my country.
I was sixteen years old when I stood by the Governor’s Mansion in 2003 protesting the Iraq War with my best friend. We had invited other students to join us by making an announcement in our school assembly earlier that week, but only two of us showed up that day, two teenage girls holding signs at rush hour.
Why was I there? Two years earlier we had read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and I remember thinking, “War must be the absolute last option. I can’t imagine anything more horrifying.” I felt a passion in my heart, a fire in my belly, a voice that said, “This is not right.” I didn’t know what I could do as a high school student in Mississippi, but this was one thing. This was one thing I could do.
I was seventeen and a student of AP U.S. Government as I stayed awake to watch Bush win re-election, understanding the weight of each electoral vote better than I do today. I couldn’t claim my voting power yet, but I had strong opinions backed by critical thinking and emerging values that often made me feel different from my family.
And recently, as a 30-year-old woman, I marched with the young people of March for Our Lives. I showed up for the young leaders to support them and tell them, “I am here. I am listening. I see your pain. I hear your urgency. I take you seriously.”
I showed up for them because I remember what it was to be fifteen years old and lectured out of my opinion at the dinner table. I remember what it was like to have a fiery voice doused with water. So much water that sometimes I forget the fire was ever there to begin with. Then I see myself standing on that street corner with one other young soul protesting the war, and I remember.
I showed up for the generation of kids afraid in schools. I showed up for the black community for whom fear of bodily safety and losing friends to gun violence and police violence are very real parts of life.
I showed up for my tender-eyed sixth-grade black male student in North Mississippi who wrote to me, “In your room, I feel like I have my own space”. Months later I learned he pulled a gun on his grandmother who took care of him, and he never came back to school.I could still hear his voice sitting in his empty desk. I feel like I have my own space. Oh, my sweet child, where are you now?
I showed up for my sixth grader who once flashed a thick wad of cash at me that he pulled from his pocket on the walk to lunch. Obtained how? From where? At what cost and at what danger?
I showed up to march for former students, now seniors in high school, who appear on my Facebook feed with faces of intimidation and hands holding pistols, mirroring back to the world what was already expected of them as black males. Returning pain that never should have belonged to them to begin with.
I showed up for a former honors student–one of the most creative and vibrant people I’ve ever met– who has ended up in prison twice before reaching voting age. Oh, sweet one, do you still have your fire?
As we marched that day, I passed the street corner where I had stood as that fifteen-year-old protesting the war. We stopped in front of the Capitol where only two months ago I gave a speech at The Mississippi Women’s March. As we marched and chanted, I could feel tears building right below the surface of our words. I hadn’t expected to feel emotional, but all of a sudden, I felt it all. I felt the personal history of all that had brought me to this moment.
The leader shouted, “Show me what democracy looks like!” We answered: “This is what democracy looks like!”
I felt a part of something bigger than myself. I could feel the presence of all those who had marched these streets before us fighting for rights, for change, for agency, for equality, for life itself. We continued down Capitol Street, where in 1963 a small group of students from Tougaloo College staged a sit-in at Woolworth’s and endured attacks from an angry mob. I could feel the weight of Jackson, Mississippi on me–Freedom Riders and boycotters and marchers and kids in Jackson classroomstoday who, as my teacher friend said that day, “are starting to be aware of this issue but have some other very present dangers in their life to worry about on a daily basis.”
I am here. I am listening. I see your pain. I hear your urgency. I take you seriously.
First we marched and chanted, then we listened. We stopped in front of the Supreme Court of Mississippi and heard the voices of young leaders.
Lorenzo Neal, a survivor of gun violence said, “Students today understand that their voices are power…To the students: They’re not afraid of your opinion. They’re not afraid of your passion. They are afraid of your power.”
Maggie Jeffries, a Murrah High School student leader asserted, “I grew up hearing ‘Children should be seen and not heard.’ I am here today not to be seen but to be heard…Never again will we sit down and shut up.”
It is a powerful thing the day you wake up and realize that you deserve to be heard. It is a powerful thing the day you dare to believe you can make a difference. It is a powerful thing the day that you commit yourself to courage. Even as a 30-year-old woman, it brings me to my knees to feel each choice of courage building self-trust in the person I am and the person I am becoming.
In 1965, James Farmer, civil rights activist and an organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, wrote in Freedom-When: “In a demonstration more things are happening…than meets the eye. Demonstration in the last few years have provided literally millions of Negroes with their first taste of self-determination and political self-expression. We might think of the demonstration as a rite of initiation through which the black man is mustered into the sacred order of freedom.”
The marches like March for Our Lives may be the “first taste of self-determination and political self-expression” that some of our young people have. They are taking ownership over change in our state and our country. Before they can ever cast a vote, they are building the foundation for a life of civic engagement.
One march is one touch that civic engagement presses into our lives. One question in class about constitutional rights is another touch. One curious political conversation at the dinner table is another touch. One call to a legislator is another touch. Each of these touches leaves an imprint on us.
Each touch of civic engagement that we leave behind us lays down a history of our own involvement in a world bigger than ourselves, our friends, and our family.
Each touch of civic engagement shapes our identity as people who choose courage in fighting for the things that matter to us.
Each one helps us determine our values and builds trust within us that we are people who not only speak our values but who take steps toward living them.
You better believe that young people will remember each of these touches when voting day comes. They will remember them when they choose their college courses, their essay topics, and how they spend their free time. They will remember when they see someone oppressed or treated unjustly. They will remember when they graduate and decide which jobs to take, which neighborhoods to live in, where to spend their money, and how they want to have an impact in the world.
I know because I was one of them. I remembered, and they will remember, too. That fifteen-year-old war protester may have changed in many ways, but the person who thinks it’s worth the time and courage to speak up and fight for what I believe in is still here. Right here.
“Complacency. They would have it be your weakness,” said Karam Rahat, a senior at Millsaps College, said at the foot of the Supreme Court steps. “…Over time, they would have you slip into that complacency and they would have us be complicit in what is happening in that complacency. They want THIS–this standing up–to be a little deviation in our normal lives, where we have a test or a meeting or a paper to prepare for, and after we leave here today, we go back to those lives.”
Don’t you dare call them mouthpieces or puppets or say that they are too young to know what they are talking about. Do you wake up one day with a right to your feelings, a right to your ideas, a right to your experiences, a right to your thinking, a right to your voice?
We cultivate strong voices and creative thinkers by listening to the voices of children. Not humoring them. Not immediately disagreeing with them. Not shutting them down. We cultivate strong voices by first listening to young voices and daring to believe that they have something valuable to offer. This is how they grow the confidence to find the creative solutions that we need for today’s problems.
I know what it feels like to have my voice silenced by someone telling me “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, “when you’re older, you’ll feel different”, “you don’t understand how the world really works”. I was told this at 13 years old, at 16 years old, at 30-effing-years old when I had a Master’s degree and a career and my own child. Family members were still telling me that I was brainwashed to feel how I did. That I was being suckered into this liberal movement of crybabies. Like it would be impossible for me to come to these conclusions on my own or like my ideas could not come from rational thought. Like my eyes couldn’t see what was happening in front of me, like my heart wasn’t qualified to my own hurt, like my head wasn’t capable of its own analysis.
I showed up at the march to be the person I needed when I was a kid.
I am here. I am listening. I see your pain. I hear your urgency. I take you seriously. This is real.
Don’t invalidate these young leaders. Don’t patronize them. Don’t gaslight them out of their experience. This is one way we break the spirit and agency of a generation: to take the ground out from under them. To turn their solid ground into a slippery ground of thin-ice thinking and melting-snowflake thoughts.
It’s bigger than guns. It’s bigger than political parties. It is bigger than red and blue, bigger than Us and Them. It is the power of a generation finding its voice and rising for change. It is the power of young people finding their self-determination, their courage, and their own piece of freedom.
The leader said, Show me what democracy looks like! And the people said, This is what democracy looks like!
The march is the steady pulse of life, and when we are not marching, we are drawing our breath in to push our voice out. We findour very selves in these moments of collective outrage, and we find each other. We find the heart of a citizen inside us, beating strong, and saying “Here. Now. It starts with me. This is ours to change.”
I am here. I am listening. I see your pain. I hear your urgency. I take you seriously. This is real.
Photo by Morgan Basham on Unsplash
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