Dailykos’ own Sher Watts Spooner wrote a diary yesterday about writing a letter to the students of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Borrowing a quotation from Georgia Logotheis’ Abbreviated Pundit Roundup this morning, I wrote the following letter and posted it this afternoon.
Tuesday, 20 February 2018
Ms. Diane Wolk-Rogers
Stoneman Douglas High School
5901 Pine Island Road
Parkland, Florida 33076
Dear Ms. Wolk-Rogers,
Thank you for inviting us to write a letter of support to your students. Please be assured that these brave, wonderful young people have our full support. Years of campaigning against the prevailing, reckless gun culture in the United States have largely been ignored by politicians. To the students of Stoneman Douglas High School I would like to say the following:
It’s time to pass the torch to YOU. You will lead a modern-day “Children’s Crusade” against the dark forces arrayed against us all. To quote from an op-ed article by Catherine Rampell in this morning’s Washington Post:
The problem isn’t “Washington.” It isn’t “Congress,” either. The problem is elected officials from a single political party: the GOP.
Republicans in the White House and Congress are the ones standing in the way of helping “dreamers.” They are not merely obstructing gun reform but also rolling back existing gun-control measures.
You’d never know it from the usual “blame Washington” rhetoric, but there are lots of common-sense policy changes, on supposedly unsolvable issues, that large majorities of voters from both parties support.
You’re all too young to remember the agony of the late 1960s and early 1970s concerning the Viet Nam war, but your grandparents were alive then. They can tell you how thousands of young people marched in front of the White House to protest the war. They can tell you about the nasty things said by the pundits and the TV reporters of those days. They can tell you how the brave young women and men chanted in the hope that President Lyndon Baines Johnson would hear it:
“Hey, hey, LBJ!
How many kids did you kill today?”
In 1968 President Johnson announced on national TV that he would not run for another term as president in November. It took time, but both the draft and the war in Viet Nam ended.
YOU can do this. When you come to Washington to march next month, we old people at home watching you on TV will chant, along with you:
Hey, hey, NRA!
How many kids did you kill today?
God bless and keep you all, and thank you.
With love and respect,