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In the wake of the Valentine’s Day shooting at a Parkland, FL high school where 17 students were killed by a teenager with an AR-15 victims and their families are dealing with a barrage of “thoughts and prayers” and not much else.
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Heather Booth survived a 1995 tragedy in which her school bus collided with a train and seven of her classmates were killed in Fox River Grove, IL. She tweeted her perspective on the situation from the survivor’s point of view.
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Her words went viral because they rang so true.
I have a thing to say about growing up after tragedy. When I was a senior in high school, 7 of my classmates were killed & 24 injured. It was an awful day full of fear, confusion, & pain. Press swarmed. News helicopters hovered overhead all day filming footage of the carnage. 1/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
Nothing made sense. Over the days and weeks that followed, we went to vigils, wakes, and funerals. We openly wept in the hallways. People who had never spoken before embraced, clinging to each other. We felt broken. 2/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
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People said the things that are being said now. “I put him on the bus and sent him to school. He was supposed to be safe.” Classrooms were rearranged so the empty desks weren’t a constant reminder. 3/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
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Time passed. We started living with loss, but we still startled at the noises that reminded us of that day. We were now people that THIS had happened to. 4/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
More time passed. I did the memorial layout in the yearbook. By then, our shock and raw pain had changed to anger and questioning. Why did this happen? What went wrong? Whose fault is it? Investigations, we learned, were ongoing. 5/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
A federal official said, "The thing that upsets me most–we teach our kids to learn the importance of accountability. In this, there was a failure of accountability by a number of organizations.” https://t.co/FjQ8yauuh4 6/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
And then, things changed. 7/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
29 recommendations were made by the NTSB and implemented from the local to federal level. Because this wasn’t a shooting. It was a train hitting a school bus. One train. One bus. Seven deaths. 24 injured. One year. 29 changes for 16 organizations. 8/ https://t.co/OxIjsyryQ0
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
And as kids, here’s what this meant: we saw something awful happen, then we saw adults support us, then we saw them make change happen to keep that awful thing from ever happening again. Now, I’m an adult who grew up having seen adults fix things. 9/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
Think about the worldview we create for youth when their awful experiences result in nothing but hand wringing and despair. Thoughts and prayers. When a tragedy hits that’s far more deadly & far less accidental than what CGHS experienced in 1995 & *nothing* changes? 10/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
What kind of lifelong scars do we inflict on youth when the adults who are there to protect them don’t force change in the wake of preventable tragedy? What kind of foundation do we lay when their world breaks and no one fixes it? 11/
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
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I don’t care which avenue you pursue to change the scourge of gun violence against youth. There are plenty. Pick one. Do something. Call your reps. Donate. March. Volunteer. Vote. Force the issue. Empower teens. Don’t let them down. Make change happen. 12/12
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
Adults – there are so many of us whose school days were rocked by tragedy. Remember how it felt? We can do better.
— Heather Booth (@boothheather) February 16, 2018
Nikolas Cruz shot 17 of his classmates with an AR-15 rifle on Valentine’s Day. He could face the death penalty for the crime.
This is the latest in a string of mass shootings – a gun went off in an Los Angeles classroom just last week, a gunman opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas, killing over 50 people and injuring nearly 500 last year, a terrorist opened fire on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando almost two years ago.
The public has tired of the ritual Republican call for thoughts and prayers in the wake of these outbreaks of violence and the Democrats’ typically impotent calls for stricter gun control. This time, the survivors of the shooting, high school students, are speaking out and calling explicitly for something tangible to be done about the ease of access to guns in America.
