Leadership
As I write this the nra has been silent on Twitter for nearly a week since
the Parkland shooting, the longest that account has been silent since early
2015. Pardon me if I am suspicious that they are just waiting until things
cool down before business as usual, namely, opposing every single at-
tempt at even the most basic reform. This has happened after every mass
shooting.)
But we have the power to choose, and maybe, just maybe, this time it
will be different.
But we forget so quickly. Does anyone remember the name Bailey Holt?
Preston Cope? They were the two 15-year-old students killed by a shooter
at a high school in Benton, Kentucky on January 24th. Eighteen others
were injured. It became the 11th school-related shooting in the first 25 days
of 2018. It had a “shelf life” of about five or six news cycles and then was
gone. We moved on to some other outrage.
Dr. Sterling Haring, who treated many of the wounded in the Kentucky
shooting said in a Newsweek interview at the time, “You don’t suffer some
of the wounds these patients suffered and just move on with life. They
will have this for the rest of their lives. I can’t go into details, but there are
wounds that have changed their lives. Their life as they knew it is now
completely over.”
Haring commented on how the shooting affected him personally be-
cause he has seen what politicians do after these deadly incidents—namely,
nothing. At the end of his shift, Haring said he walked outside to his car,
got in and began to sob. Shortly afterward, while still in his car, he posted
on Twitter, “Today, I cared for victims of Kentucky School Shooting as
they arrived via helicopter. They looked like my kids and yours. All I could
think about was the Thoughts and Prayers that would be tweeted from
politicians who will do nothing to stop the next one. I’ve never felt so sick.”
And then, exactly three weeks later, Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday
happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
In what has become for many an iconic image of this mass shooting, a
woman with a cross of ashes on her forehead and a heart shaped pendant
around her neck embraces and seeks to console a friend at the scene of the
shooting.
At some point earlier in the day, someone had traced that cross on this
woman’s forehead, and she might have heard the words “Remember that
you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Little did she know how soon
she would be reminded of our solidarity in such a horrifying way.
continued on page 4
March 2018 • The New Wine Press • 3