Activist Kids Rule!

I thought Wednesday morning, March 14^th would be a solitary moment of street art for me,in solidarity with the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER’s National School Walkout. I live a block from C.W. Henry Elementary school but I had no idea if they planned to walk out, so I printed out my own series of “No More Guns” posters and planned to staple them around the neighborhood’s phone poles. The Walkout was planned for 10 A.M. in every time zone, seventeen minutes to honor the people who were killed at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School a month before.  As a self-employed teacher, (The Sandy Hook shooting happened three days before I completed my student teaching.) I felt that it should be a moment of connection and solemnity for me.

I had just started putting up the posters when there they were, the Henry students with their teachers and principal. The children were silent and serious, well, as silent and serious as elementary students get. Kid art is my favorite thing in the world, and these children’s signs, most of them on orange poster board (orange is the gun control color), saying things like “Our Lives Matter,” and “Enough,” “Guns have no place in schools,” and “Protect kids not guns,” illustrated in painstaking detail. I’m happy to say that no art I make will ever be as beautiful or meaningful as those signs. Feeling like a mini-Shepherd Fairey, I gave the kids the rest of my own posters, then stood back with other neighborhood adults to marvel and support.

“How lucky we are to be alive right now,” goes one of my favorite quotes from Hamilton, and those seventeen minutes were as complicated and bittersweet as that line.

When the seventeen minutes were up, the neighborhood cheered and the kids proceeded silently back to their classes. It was beautiful to see them speaking up for themselves and the school being so supportive of their efforts. As I watched the school walkouts follow the time zones across the country on facebook, I felt a powerful sense of hope for America, my natural optimism galvanized by my seventeen minutes with the brave kids of Mt. Airy.

Art by Cece Mulcahy, bedazzled by me post-walk-out because I wanted to spoil the neighborhood. 

On Saturday, March 24, my best friend and I were among the 800,000 people who joined the Parkland students at the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. It was the same solemnity and power that I felt with the Henry walkout, multiplied by thousands and soundtracked by Andra Day’s anthem “Rise Up,” Lin Manuel Miranda’s new single “Found/Tonight” which reprised lyrics from Hamilton including, most importantly, “Tomorrow there’ll be more of us.”

It was at the March for Our Lives that I met Zahlia, a six-year-old young lady marching for the first time. When she saw the sparkly butterfly on my sign, her eyes lit up as though I were the queen of the universe. I asked if she would like the sign, since it was clearly meant for her. I’m so proud that I got to be a small part of her march experience, that I was able to give her just a fragment of the joy and celebration she deserves.

Sometimes, its hard to feel worthy of the children that I teach, the children that I share a movement with. They are so bright and generous, so beautiful and courageous, shining with a light we are lucky to stand near, lucky to be edified by.

It shouldn’t be their job to save us. The Parkland students should be working on their school plays and goofing around on Snapchat or whatever new weird things the kids are into these days. But instead, they are serving their country, helping us to be better and safer and wiser. I’m excited to see the country they’ll create, and I’m here to help in any way I can.