FROM MARCH TO MOVEMENT: LET US NOT GET IN THE WAY  

The youth-led “March for Our Lives” in Washington, DC, and in more than 800 sister marches around the world, attracted huge crowds that have yet to be tallied. Marchers jammed Pennsylvania Avenue to hear the impassioned voices of youth, to witness their moral passion grounded in outrage over the obscene availability of guns, and to be awed by their contagious hope for the future.

Would this be yet another march, a heart-rending manifestation of grief and anger, soon to become ephemeral, as after Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Charleston?  Was this indeed qualitatively different? Did this cross the line from march to movement?

I think so.

First, there were the signs, hundreds of them, signs underscoring passion, pain, commitment and hope.

–“Who ever heard of a drive by knifing?”

–“I have a dream that one day I won’t be scared going to school.”

–“I shouldn’t have to worry about making it to Friday”

–“Guns make the weak feel powerful and the cowards feel brave.” 

Add to the signs the voices of youth:

–Emma from Parkland with tears streaming down her face, acknowledging each victim by a story “Won’t throw a baseball again,” followed by the refrain, “never.” “Where does it end?” asks Emma? “Six feet under,” she concludes. And then the breathtaking view of Emma standing there alone for six minutes of electric silence, the amount of time it took the shooter to take the lives of Parkland’s students.

–“They call us disruptive for walking out of class. Do you know how disruptive it is to look down the barrel of a gun?”

–A young man from Chicago quoting MLK, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can drive out darkness. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can drive out hate.”

–“We’re done living in fear. We are fighting for our lives.”

But there have always been signs, and always stirring speeches. So why is this one different? There are indications that this is not a one off, not a terrifying and poignant public wound followed by public grieving, followed by the inexorable victories chalked up by the NRA, leaving behind only echoes of the wrenching pain that catalyzed the march.

Movements have catchwords, slogans. The students have a word that captures their mission: REV:  Register, Educate, Vote. If they can’t change the law, they pledge to change the lawmakers.

Movements breed community. Youth leaders acknowledged their need for community, for each other, in order to share pain, share hope, keep their feet under them, to plan, to stay in touch. Yes, the aims are policy and electoral changes, but it’s each other — singing, hugging, crying, marching that keeps them going. Note that marches in other cities were described in intimate terms — “sibling protests.” They are impelled by policy and each other.

This march evoked the Civil Rights movement which was characterized by personal witness. I believe that if Martin Luther King, Jr., had begun with policy, he would have failed. The policy changes that stream from his work dazzle – the seismic Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts. But he didn’t begin there. He began with a passionate moral commitment.  His framing was Exodus — escape from slavery, wandering in the desert, a view of the Promised Land, a dream of equality. But the story, because he put himself on the line, found itself in every living room and every heart. Everyone who has lived has experienced some injustice, some pain, some desert. He didn’t march under the banner of policy X. He said, “I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man.” He was killed the following day.

A movement must make heart and personal pain visible. The evening following the student-led march, I shunted between TV stations, listening to panels of “experts” — all adults. No youth. It struck me that the gurus began with policy, not pain. None referenced losing a friend to gun violence or having to check exits or places to hide while taking a calculus exam. Generally, the policy suggestions, such as banning the AK-47s, more rigorous background checks and closing gun show loopholes, were right on. But they were pallid. They lacked personal immediacy, urgency. Yes, I thought, we need the best in policy backed by unimpeachable arguments, hard statistics, and comparisons to other countries.  But we need the policies and clear pictures of how policies or the absence of policies personally affect the lives of people, especially the young, our future.

Communication, part of the lifeblood of a movement, is a must, and the students have it — instant communication via Twitter, Snapchat and even Facebook. Thus the incident in Parkland, Florida, spurred sister marches in 387 congressional districts (90% of all districts according to Everytown for Gun Safety). For us in the 60’s and 70’s it was radio, TV, and strategy meetings held in churches. Today, the opportunity to galvanize is both instant and widespread, for youth can be reached, no matter where they are at ballet, on a sports team, a math club, or with friends at a favorite chilling spot. 

A movement brings in others – not simply a quantitative outreach, but a moral one. Note how the Parkland youth kept citing their privilege, whiteness and full support from parents, teachers and the larger community. With moral fervor, they reminded us that the nation is NOT outraged by individual deaths occurring daily, one here, one there, largely in minority neighborhoods across America. Parkland students in their pain and hope, reached out to and shared the stage with their black and brown brothers and sisters from Chicago, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.

A march becomes a movement when surprising partners join, such as former ATF agents now working with the Gifford’s gun control group; or universities in the DC area publicly applauding the youth via an advertisement in the Washington Post (3/23, p. A19) “for making your voices heard” and urging “our elected leaders to act now.”  Public support for sensible gun control measures drew in corporations — Delta Airlines, Hertz, MetLife, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Citigroup among them. After Fox’s talk show host Laura Ingraham bullied one of the Parkland survivors, corporations including Hulu, Nestle and Expedia jumped ship, pulling their sponsorship from her show.

A movement may be led by youth, but the March for Our Lives, morphing to a movement, includes all ages. The demographic range could not have been wider — from a three-year-old waving her sign that read “Protect Me”, to grandmothers in their 80s and 90s. It reminded me of King’s march in Selma where 80-year-old Abraham Heschel proclaimed proudly, “I felt my feet were praying.” (from his book Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

The March for Our Lives brought me back to the Civil Rights and Vietnam protest movements, participation that laid the base for my career: song, togetherness, feet on the ground, endurance, a clear mission, moral and theological grounding, the joining together of people from many backgrounds and persuasions and on occasion, some personal risk.

On the day of the March I believe the world saw the real America, one filled with brightness, inclusiveness and hope transcending the glowering shroud of a fear-mongering president who pits us one against the other, who seeks to demean, not dignify, to hurt, not heal. The students showed just the opposite, opening their arms for all to join, a march for our lives, a march for hope – hope, which is, according to Dr. King, “…the final refusal to give up.”

 Now our work:  how we adults can and must help. And not get in the way.