My generation dropped the ball, big time, sure we levitated the Pentagon for a few seconds, then let it fall back to Earth while in Vietnam the war went on and on until Congress ran out of checks in the middle of the stupid seventies, not during the swinging sixties.
I watched the March for Our Lives on TV and wept wet tears, but felt an immense infusion of Hope to see the Muse leap generations -> Emma Lazarus passes the torch of Liberty to Emma Gonzales.
Sports metaphor is apt because they’re kids who belong in playgrounds on Springtime Saturdays and I’m glad they neither referenced scripture nor said a prayer.
Of course they didn’t, so clearly do they see that the scripture-clipping evangelicals are pleased as punch with the status quo, but Hell no, these kids are fed up and bold as brass and call BS what a nation of Moms and Dads have allowed to happen.
There was no soaring rhetoric, no reference to either biblical or historical slavery, no invocation across the millennia to Abraham, or Moses, or Jesus Christ these kids are fed up and bold as brass and call BS what a nation of Dads and Moms have allowed to happen.
Enough is enough, the torch is passed from Emma Lazarus to Emma Gonzales, do the math America – SIX MINUTES TWENTY SECONDS with an AR-15 adds up to silence to the NRA, made deaf by the noise of coins dropping into their coffin-shaped coffers, silent tongues choke their spokespeople, a tsunami of silence floods the lobbies and hearing rooms of Congress, of K street, of Wall Street, floods the Silicon Valley, swamps the fake White House, the meeting rooms and hideaways, the mirrored halls, elevators, and escalators all morph into escape routes for sycophants and lapdogs who rat out the hopeless, feckless, friendless foe (in the Oval playpen) en route to the Big House.
Dave Read
(2/7/22): The above poem has been added to the American Jewish Historical Society archive and will remain next to the papers of Emma Lazarus.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus