The big rally

As before (on March 14th, during the school walkouts) I have been glued to the TV channels this afternoon watching the live broadcasts from the USA of the March for our Lives in Washington DC; the young people's determination and sincerity shines through the world. A remarkable number of world-famous people support them, including Malala Yousafzai.

This morning Chris and I took part in a smaller scale, sympathy demonstration in Ottawa, marching from Parliament Hill under a bright blue sky to the park behind the U.S. Embassy, shepherded by some of our local police force. Every generation, including the Raging Grannies, was represented in the demonstration; even a few pet dogs carried placards round their necks.

The Canadians students taking part are probably just as impassioned as their U.S. counterparts, but don't seem as loudly uninhibited. Something to do with the national character, probably. I have not yet heard how many Ottawa people participated, but shall update this post as soon as I find out.

I have felt very involved in all this, because I can imagine so well how the initiators feel. I have been a young person myself. I have been a teacher and parent of teenagers and cannot imagine anything worse than having the children you love perish from senseless violence. We once sent our children to a school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for a whole school year: in those days we didn't consider that they might be shot. They had tornado drills where they were taught to crouch in the windowless corridors while the danger went by, but didn't undergo shootout drills as happens nowadays. When I was a teacher in England and Wales I met a few kids who were mentally disturbed, either from some physical infirmity or trauma, and could not be reached and helped, so deeply were they wrapped up in their misery. The young man who shot the others at the school in Florida reminds me of them. To think that he had easy access to the most lethal of guns is upsetting in the extreme.