One Year After Parkland

("Would Congress Care More If Parkland Had Been a Plane Crash")

Welcome to the brutal reality of this our universe, where money and power corrupt our morality. For these children who witnessed the sights and screams of death, who were irreparably altered and who believed the depth of their pain and the urgency of their pleas would pierce even the coldest heart, this year must have been terribly hard and, in our responses from Washington, tremendously disappointing.

For those of us who have long watched in dismay as one mind numbing tragedy after another was met with immediate horror and soon thereafter with indifference, even contempt, by those at the Federal level who had the capacity but not the will to find a remedy, we have long since abandoned our expectations.

There may come a day when we meet this danger head on when, like the opioid crisis, it touches too close to home for too many of those in power to continue to ignore, or a time when the long reach of the NRA no longer extends deep into the pockets of so many politicians, or a moment when those who would turn a blind eye to the blood and tears are no longer the ones in control of our destiny.

And I hope when that happens that these children will not have lost their faith, but will have persevered in their quest. That they will be the ones leading the charge. That they will be able to rest a little easier knowing that their children and their nation is safer because of them.

But that day, at least in the nation's capital, seems very distant one year after the Parkland shootings.