Mail bag

      The defeated former president, Losey L. McLoser, being indicted for one of his lesser crimes on Thursday completed wiped Monday's Nashville school slaughter off the American mind as a topic of consideration.  It vanished like a ball in a magic trick. Which makes me doubly glad for this letter, one of the more thoughtful I've received in a long time.

Dear Mr. Steinberg:

     Even more quickly than usual, our national attention has turned away from the most recent school shooting in Nashville. Trump’s indictment has provided convenient cover, and no doubt, the NRA welcomes the distraction. 

     But the heart-broken families of those three innocent 9 yr. olds are finding little solace in the headlines. Their babies are gone. They have already become part of the statistic that makes gun violence the number one killer of youth in the United States. 

     “Almost forgotten,” you wrote just days after the shooting. “Nobody really cares . . . we allow this situation to persist . . . We’re complicit . . . Better to wait for something even more horrible. We know that’s coming. Yet we do nothing.” 

     As a retired school administrator, I can no longer do nothing. Offering thoughts and prayers, participating in demonstrations against gun violence, calling elected representatives, sending donations to the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation all feel like useless gestures at this point. 

     Like you, I have been following the rising arc of gun violence in our schools since Laurie Dann penetrated the cocoon of safety we thought our schools provided. Then Columbine and Sandy Hook and Parkland and Uvalde. The names roll off our tongues so easily. More evidence that we have made death-while-being-a-student a national norm. 

     I write to you today, Mr. Steinberg, to suggest a way to shatter that norm, to share an idea for action whose time has come. Actually, it’s long overdue: A nation-wide school strike until Congress passes a law to ban assault weapons. I propose that students and teachers refuse to return to school this fall unless a law is passed. This gives our slow-walking legislators time to pass a law and kids and staff time to mobilize with real leverage. Is this too drastic? Let’s ask the loved ones of the hundreds of victims of school murders. Let’s ask the parents of those lost 9 yr. olds in Nashville. As a lifelong educator, the last thing I want to encourage is the loss of precious learning time, but we can no longer conduct business as usual while wondering where the next school shooting will be, wondering what town we will add to our insidious vocabulary list of shooting sites. We cannot settle for thoughts and prayers. We must interrupt the cycle of violence killing our kids and doing irreparable harm to our system of education that is already buckling under the residual damage of the pandemic. 

     Mr. Steinberg, you and I met years ago when you generously took the time to attend a gathering of COR, the Catholic Schools Opposing Racism organization I began in response to the brutal beating of Lenart Clark by Catholic high school students. For ten years, we brought thousands of kids and teachers together to dismantle the racism embedded in our school system, and I’d like to think that we chipped away at some of the hatred and transformed school practices. We surely did not end racism in Catholic schools, but we did not content ourselves with doing nothing, with accepting racial violence as a norm because it was just too big a problem to tackle. 

     These days, I have continued to teach as a literacy volunteer for mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants, mostly undocumented. (Immigration reform is another big problem crying out for drastic action, but that’s the topic for another time.) I mention this only to draw a connection to the book we’re reading together, Elie Wiesel’s Night.
     What a privilege it has been to engage a group of adults in a meaningful discussion of the Holocaust, some of whom had never heard of it. A privilege, yes, but an overwhelming responsibility to expose the evils of antisemitism in history and as it thrives today. Last year, I had the honor of reading The 1619 Project with a couple of the students who wanted to learn the history of this country. These are challenging topics for speakers of all languages, but I don’t believe we should shy away from them because they are too big, too difficult, or as some Florida school boards suggest, too depressing. In my humble opinion, educators must not avoid the big issues; we must dive headlong into them. Avoidance would be the essence of having low expectations for students and would handicap them from developing as critical thinkers. 

     How else will schools in the United States ever develop critical thinkers among students who currently spend more time practicing hiding in school closets during active shooter drills? 

     Racism. Anti-Semitism. Violence. Our gun-sick culture. We must not avoid these issues. We must not settle for doing nothing because these problems are too overwhelming, too entwined in the greed and grievance that polarize our national discourse. 

     It is my hope that some angry teenager, or some exhausted teacher, or some exasperated school administrator will consider with seriousness the possibility of launching an effort to energize a collaborative school strike because we can’t settle for school violence as usual come September. Congress must act to ban assault weapons, or we refuse to go back to school. 

     We no longer wish to be complicit, Mr. Steinberg. A desperate measure for this desperate time. 

     Thank you for listening, and thank you again for taking the time to show up all those years ago, Mr. Steinberg. You, Sir, are the real deal — a journalist unafraid to probe the big issues. I am grateful that you use your voice for good, unafraid to be bold, unwilling to do nothing. Please help once again by printing this idea however you see fit. I remain hopeful that someone will run with it, maybe garnering the support of Senator Chris Murphy or Cory Booker, maybe Gabby Giffords or Michael Pfleger or David Hogg or X Gonzalez or Ashbey Beasley. 

     WE CAN’T GIVE UP. 

     Sincerely, Patty Nolan-Fitzgerald