Carol had signed up both of us for last Saturday’s March For Our Lives, Manchester VT edition. I told her I’d go — unless the skiing was too good to pass up. I was joking. I’d always intended to take part. The gun violence issue was out of control. You couldn’t stay on the sidelines for this one.
What do we want? Gun control! When do we want it? Now!
The kid conducting the chant couldn’t have been more than 14, and he stood on a bench so he could be seen and heard. I could tell it was a heady experience for him, being the ringleader. We were arrayed around the traffic rotary in Manchester Center — a spot better known for its proximity to three ski areas and for outlet shopping than for political demonstrations. But still, there we were, maybe 300 marchers. And this teenager’s voice was leading us.
My demonstration skills were a bit rusty. It had been a long time . . . though I still remember the slogans we yelled:
Hell no, we won’t go!
Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?
One, two, three, four, we don’t want your $%#*& war!
College. Philly. Vietnam War protests. Marching from campus down to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell in Center City. (Carol was with me for those demonstrations, too.)
That was then. More recently? Kids. Sports. Coaching. Writing. Teaching. Music. Dogs. Travel. These were all in my wheelhouse. Politics? Not so much.
But after the Parkland school shootings . . . it was just too much already. Nobody could seem to absorb this latest one, or shrug it off. We’d have to pitch in — all of us. So if my winter “home town” was marching, we’d march. Carol and I also went to Staples HS in WePo to support the kids on National Walkout Day back on the 14th. And my Westport News column this month, rather than my typical fare (eclipse watching in North Carolina; Coach P leaving Staples football; my favorite benches in Fairfield County; a poem about our local dog haven — “Ode to Winslow Park”), was a call for civil disobedience: “Can’t Keep the Guns Out? Then Let’s Keep the Kids Out!”
The March For Our Lives in Manchester — as in Washington, D.C., and apparently everywhere else — had a pure feel to it. The kids were making an honest plea: Is being able to go to school without
fearing for your life too much to ask? Pretty open and shut, you’d think. Though we did have someone drive down Depot Road, where we were marching, and yell out, “You’re all a bunch of fools!” He got a host of one-finger salutes. No placing flowers in rifle barrels this time around.
Enough is enough! Enough is enough!
Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go!
Pretty simple stuff. As I wrote in a caption of an Instagram post that day, under a picture of Kemba at the demonstration (see photo, above): Even hunting dogs are for sensible gun laws.
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