This letter was first published in La Voz Newspaper, Austin, TX.
“Because of someone else’s cruel actions, we cannot move on campus without an escort. We can no longer access the front office. All the doors are locked at all times, no exceptions. We are no longer to open the doors to anyone, that’s a privilege meant for the staff alone. Best of all, we wear IDs now … Our IDs are not for us. They are meant for a reality where someone may have to identify our bodies one day without having to obtain a DNA test”
Our nieces posted on Instagram and it breaks my heart all over again. She is a senior at Knippa High school and this is the new sad reality. Alesandra Gonzales is a senior @ Knippa high school. We lost family in the massacre.
Tuesday, September 6, 2022, 8:22 am — The Day We Received OurDog Tags 1st period – AP Calc. A knock on the door, Mr. V gets up, looks through the peephole, and decides it’s safe to open the door. A hand reaches through, two IDs pass through.
Knippa is a small school, 1A. Most people have been coming here long enough so that everyone is known by name. The staff knows pretty much each of us individually. Over the weekend we received our first threat of the school year. To me, it’s an odd concept to grasp; how someone could be so insensitive to innocent life, and the tragedy that occurred in the neighboring town in which many of us live.
Being a senior, it’s almost impossible not to know each student. The high school shares the same buildings with 5th grade and up. We see our littles (ones) every day in the halls. I’ve learned that in any case, I’m not scared for myself, it’s them. I have 4 cousins on campus. This summer I watched them grieve friends while raising money for the ones that survived. They were robbed of a summer of memories they should’ve made with them. instead, they visited graves talking to friends that would never talk back.
I’ve lived long enough to experience some of life. They’ve not yet been to prom, played a high school sport, had memorable bus rides to away games, bonded with teammates, and claimed a spot in the student parking lot. Yet, each day they come to a school fenced like a prison and plaster on a smile, ready to learn. Though it’s meant to keep people out, from the inside looking out, it feels like we’re meant to be kept in. It feels like we’re the ones who have done wrong, we’re the ones being punished.
Because of someone else’s cruel actions, we cannot move on campus without an escort. We can no longer access the front office. All the doors are locked at all times, no exceptions. We are no longer to open the doors to anyone, that’s a privilege meant for the staff alone. Best of all, we wear IDs now. As I said, everyone knows everyone here. Our IDs are not for us. They are meant for a reality where someone may have to identify our bodies one day without having to obtain a DNA test.
They are dog tags for a war we never enlisted in. Yet, one day we just might find ourselves barricading doors, hiding behind desks, crouched tightly together on a cold floor of a dark room using whatever we can find around the room as weapons. Like soldiers fighting in the dark of the night, we’ll stay low and vigilant, eyes scanning each corner of the room making sure nothing is out of place, ears alert hoping and praying that we may never hear a noise meant for the fields during hunting season.
If that day comes, we’ll have our dog tags for the worst-case scenarios. Our families will not know the pain of waiting hours for identification, just the pain of losing a child. So, from now on, we wear dog tags and hope that no one outside these walls will ever need to see them.” Why did any of this have to happen? Why!
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This young woman has grasped a reality that most adults still refuse to accept. We are all living in “a war we never enlisted in,” the war of wealth and power against nature and humanity. It’s been going on for thousands of years; some call it “civilization.”
Perhaps the greatest tragedy – and irony! – of it all is that we all accept it, and play a part in it. We all pride ourselves in living in the richest and most powerful country in the world. When it calls on us to lay down our lives for it, we send our children around the world to kill and be killed by others, to preserve that wealth and power. And here at home, when we wear our “dog tags,” we also accept it, and in doing so, validate it.
The young woman asks “Why did any of this have to happen?” She speaks in the past tense, as if this is over now. It’s not. It’s still going on right now, even as I write these words, and as you read them. The real question should be “Why IS this happening?” My own answer is “Because we allow it to happen.” We blindly hand over our political power to “representatives” who sell it to those in search of wealth and power. We continue to vote for Democrats and Republicans, who each year spend more and more of our tax dollars on militarism and war. The “defense” budget is over $100 million an hour right now, and is creeping up toward a billion dollars a year.
Did we “enlist” in this war on the world, which is not only poisoning the planet, but also creating the culture of violence that leads to the massacres of innocent school children in our own “richest and most powerful country in the world.” No, we didn’t enlist, but we continue to serve in it. Until we learn to say “No!” to this monstrous and inhumane political and economic system, it will continue to take the lives of our children, as well as the countless millions of others around the world who also suffer its effects.
“Why does it go on?” Because we allow it to.