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| Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'. CLICK HERE to see her dramatic speech via CNN. |
having sex before graduation,
or trying pot before sloe gin.
They volunteer, ride horseback
to halt pipelines, engage
with hip hop, rockers and rappers
to say words that need saying,
march in Washington and our city,
enlist, vote, call for police accountability,
and want citizenship for DACA immigrants.
Teenagers and twenty-somethings
see a world every day on their phones
where shooters slaughter friends
in school because there is no will
to ban assault weapons and control guns.
They know shots crack living room windows
on residential streets, that gangs fight useless
wars. When young people knew rightness
of the opportunity for gay marriage,
the nation swayed and so did judges.
They are screaming for gun control
and the right to sit in school
and learn without fear
with no more brush-off praying
for teachers and families
until something is done.
Yell with them.
We need them
to know we’re with them.
Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has signed petitions for gun control for more than forty years. "We are children" say the survivors in Parkland. Do we need to hear more? She doesn't. She is tired of the empty rhetoric of pray for the families and do nothing to stop gun lobby money in Washington. Her book How I Learned to Be White is coming out from Antrim House in 2018.