Disobedience

Yesterday would have been my mother's 89th birthday.  She did not like, she did not approve of, in fact, she loathed boycotts, protests, walkouts.  Once, students at my middle school were going to protest something that involved the cafeteria.  (I do not remember this at all, but she told this story on a number of occasions.)  Her message to me was, "If I find out that you ever did anything like that. . ."  Yes, she ended with that ominous mother trail-off.

Still, I could not not spend yesterday with the March For Our Lives.  Several hundred people --- lots of whom were high school, middle school, and elementary school students --- gathered at the UGA Arch to say that we cannot go on like this any longer.

As a mother, I have taken my children to school in the days after school shootings elsewhere and watched them walk away with a lump in my throat, and a knot in my stomach.

As a teacher, I have walked into a classroom on the first day and taken mental notes on how to lock the doors and where to tell my students to hide.

This is not right.

Somebody help.