What Will it Take?

 

Remember back in 2016, not long before the presidential election, when that bit of footage was found and re-played with Donald Trump saying you (“you” meaning celebrities and/or powerful men) could grab a woman by the pussy? Remember how outraged we all were? And fed up? Remember how women finally started talking to each other about all the times they’d been violated in some way by men, whether verbally or physically? And women across the nation made pink pussy hats? And thousands upon thousands of women came out and marched to show support for one another? To say, ‘We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore’?

It changed things. Women changed things, changed the conversation or began it, or whatever, but all across the country, it was no longer okay for men to behave badly, and if they did, they might meet swift and dire consequences for their actions. Bravo, ladies.

If you’re a bit older (old enough to remember the 1980’s), the name Candy Lightner might not ring a bell, but you probably do remember MADD, the organization she founded after her thirteen-year-old daughter, Cari, was hit by a drunk driver and killed. MADD—Mother’s Against Drunk Driving—started out as many women’s movements did back then—with an uphill battle and a great deal of derision on the part of the (male-dominated) press. And yet, that small group of angry mothers who had lost loved ones to vehicular violence grew and grew into a nation-wide organization that is still active today.

Those women, in raising their united voices, raised our awareness of the horrific lack of legal consequences for drunk driving, and more importantly, they lobbied the courts and legislators doggedly for years until stiffer penalties were finally introduced, thus saving thousands upon thousands of lives. Bravo, ladies.

Women, when we are angry enough, when we are fed up enough, can be a formidable force.

Case in point: Rosa Parks. (Ms. Parks, by the way, did not sit in the “white” section of the bus. She sat in the “colored” section. Why didn’t she stand when the bus driver demanded she give up her seat to a white man? Because, she said, “I was tired.” One can only imagine how exhausting life was for a Black woman in Alabama in 1955.)

Which brings me to another case in point: Mamie Till-Mobley. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy who was abducted from his uncle’s home by three white men because his behavior had been perceived as inappropriate toward a white woman. He was tortured for hours, then murdered, his body dumped in a river. During that night of torment, Till’s body was mutilated and his face beaten so severely he was rendered unrecognizable. And yet, Mamie Till-Mobley insisted that her son be given an open-casket funeral. Why? In her words: “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.” People flocked to the funeral. The press came. Women fainted when they saw Emmett Till’s mangled face. Photographs were taken, and the images eventually shared across the country.

Mamie Till-Mobley’s courage forced people around the country—around the globe—to confront the atrocities of racism. Bravo, Ms. Mobley. Your son, and your love for him, will never be forgotten.

In one of my many conversations this week with other women—other mothers—about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a friend said, “All these funerals now, all these small caskets…. I heard a reporter suggest that we need another Mamie Till-Mobley. Maybe we need to have open casket funerals for these children, for all the children who die as a result of gun violence. Maybe that would turn the tide. Maybe if people saw that, it would make it real enough for them to vote for politicians who support gun control reform. I don’t know. It’s awful to think about. But maybe that’s what it will take.”

I’m asking the mothers, the grandmothers, the sisters, the aunts, the teachers: What will it take? What do we have to do to turn the tide? We already know that we can be a force to be reckoned with if we unite with a common purpose, if we are so angry, we refuse to accept the status quo. Are we there yet? Have we reached that “mad as hell” point yet? Or will it take just one more slaughter of innocent children to have us all out marching?

 

The lie all mothers tell

 

I’ve been working on a post about something that happened when I was hiking in Oak Glen last weekend. But then the shooting happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and I haven’t wanted to finish that. Because I’ve been thinking about this:

Bear with me. It’s a story.

When my kids were little, I loved that I could stay home. I did my writing when they were at school or sleeping, and I was there when they came home, hot or tired or rain-soaked or weepy or jubilant.

After my divorce, I had to go back to school full time in order to get my degree and start teaching. I tried to plan all my classes so that I could get the kids to school, get to campus for classes, then get back home before they did. But the university was far from home, and putting that much distance between myself and my children cranked my anxiety level way up. I will confess that there were some days I sat in my car in the parking lot after I arrived on campus, reluctant to give my attention fully to the day’s classes when my children were nearly an hour’s drive away. Keep in mind, this was in the days before cell phones. If something had happened to one of my kids while I was in class, someone would have a difficult if not impossible time reaching me. I had no family members, no support network living nearby. There were times when I had to fight the urge to turn around and go home just to be there. Just in case.

In those times, I calmed myself with self-talk that went something like this: The kids are okay. They’re all in school. They are protected, and they will be safe there until you pick them up.

Think of that in light of the danger kids face all over the nation in schools today.

My children are grown now, and for the most part, their children are, too; I have only one grandchild in elementary school. He lives in Arizona, another state that, like Texas, has very few restrictions regarding the sale and ownership of firearms. He’ll be ten in October, the same age as most of the children in the Robb Elementary School massacre. I have another decade or so to worry about his safety.

My daughter and her husband both teach high school here in Southern California. While our state has much more restrictive gun laws than Arizona (another reason to love Cali), that didn’t stop a student in 2019 from pulling a semi-automatic handgun out of his backpack and shooting five people at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, a quiet community much like the area where my daughter and her husband teach. Of course there have been other school shootings in California as well.

While I watched news coverage in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting, I just kept thinking of all the moms. All the mothers in Uvalde who sent their children to school that morning and told themselves the lie all mothers have to tell themselves now, regardless of where they live in this country: My children will be safe at school. Bad things don’t happen here. Not in our town. Not to our kids.