You know what would be great? If we could have a country where people could just be people. Color of skin?? Really? Really? Sorry if this sounds cliche but I want you to think about it: the color of your heart is fucking the same—a purplish reddish color. Our brains are grey. And if you think your soul has any sort of color you are fucked up. Period. 

I am 100% behind these kids who are speaking out because their friends were killed, because they could have been killed. These high school students are brave and articulate. They are Gandhi and Malcom X and Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. 

I am in my mid-fifties. It is hard enough to deal with my friends who have cancer, my friends who have already had a chance to live a life that, a century ago, would have been considered incredibly long. 

But these kids saw their classmates killed. In high school. And they have their identities called into question. They get called crisis actors. The most intense day of their lives. 

Most of us will not have something as crazy and intense happen to us as these kids have had happen to them. Yet, because of the media, the NRA, the GOP, the political system that makes the country bipolar, these kids who have been through a hell that in times past has been reserved for soldiers in war. They get attacked by the press, the pretty petty press who are subsidized by the incredibly rich. Look, a capitalistic society needs to be wary of ways in which money will undermine their government. 

So you’re in this high school and you see your friends get mowed down in front of you. Kids that had their whole life in front of them. Maybe you liked them, maybe not. It doesn’t fucking matter. You may have been irritated by them. They were jocks. They were nerds. They were popular. You know what? I have more friends from high school now than I had in high school. We have a lot of shit to work out. Our worst enemy may turn out to be our best friend twenty years from now. 

These kids are brave. They are taking their situation, and universalizing it. They are faithfully telling their story so that we, if we are empathic enough to understand it, are able to be in their shoes, in the terrifying place that they were in. 

Can you imagine yourself in their shoes, in their school, your friends being shot and killed before your eyes? Can you imagine what that must be like? Because if you can, I don’t think you’d make fun of them for getting rejected from colleges. Or be so threatened by them that you’d photoshop them ripping up the constitution. 

Really? Her friends were shot dead and you’d spend time creating an image of her to discredit her as a citizen of the United States? 

We are being divided and conquered. We are being separated. We are a country. We are supposed to be a family, a tribe, a country. We are supposed to work together, stand by each other. 

And furthermore, as humans, it is in our best interests to band together, to seek out common ground, to be friends. I have friends from all over the world. Our governments may not be kind to each other but we are. 

Maybe I am feeling up against the wall because the government of my country looks to be totally off its rocker. Maybe it’s not just the current administration, maybe it’s been building up to this for a long long while. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not okay. Your skin color doesn’t mean shit. The amount of money you make, doesn’t mean shit. Things are totally out of balance. And if we don’t figure out a way to set the balance right, all these dystopian sci-fi novels are going to seem quaint by comparison. 

We are continually being put on our heels. This does not help us to be our best selves. And our best selves are necessary to pull our country up by the bootstraps.