MOMS

A wee heartening thing to cap off this week.

Every post on the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, seems to have been worse than the last. Particularly:  Maybe Cops Let Uvalde Shooter Keep Killing, But At Least They Handcuffed Some Parents . In it we learned that in fact, while the dads were ready to LET'S ROLL, the police were tasing them (and children were getting murdered inside). We also learned this utterly horrific timeline, during which the incident commander on scene claims (apparently) to have been somehow unaware that a little girl in the classroom stacked with the corpses of her schoolmates had been calling police just about every two minutes, for an hour. Another little girl called 911 too. It is unclear as of now which little girl survived.

Trigger warning, and I mean it:

A caller identified — I will not say her name, but she was in room 112 — called 911 at 12: 03. The duration of the call, was 1 minute and 23 seconds. She identified herself and whispered she’s in room 112.

At 12: 10, she called back, in room 112, advised there are multiple dead.

At 12: 13, again, she called on the phone.

Again at 12: 16, she’s called back and said there was eight to nine students alive.

At 12: 19, a 911 call was made, and another person in room 111 called. I will not say her name. She hung up when another student told her to hang up.

At 12: 21, you could hear over the 911 call that three shots were fired.

At 12: 36, a 911 call, it lasted for 21 seconds. The initial caller called back. The student — child called back, and was told to stay on the line and be very quiet. She told 911 that he shot the door.

At approximately 12: 43 and 12:47, she asked 911 to please send the police now.

At 12: 46, she said she not could not—— that she could hear the police next door.

At 12: 50, shots are fired, they can be heard over the 911 call.

At 12: 51, it’s very loud, and sounds like officers are moving children out of the room. At that time, the first child that called was outside before the call cuts off.

This is — how you say? — it is fuck you to hell. But as promised in the headline, there was the smallest amelioration, and it is not enough, it will never be enough, but it is women, MOMS, ejecting an asshole from their demonstration at today's NRA convention, held conveniently nearish Uvalde in Houston, Texas, and they are ejecting him with their bodies and their shouts. It is a short video. I hope you will watch it.

“Here at the anti-NRA protest in Houston, I just witnessed North Texas based right wing provocateur who goes by the name Chet Goldstein get ejected by the crowd for trying to disrupt the event”

— steven monacelli (@steven monacelli) 1653668085 

It reminds me of one of my most shockingly memorable scenes in film, from Children of Men. No children have born for some decades, until one is, to a refugee, and the bad guys are coming to find it. The hopeless people in the dystopian apartment building trudge down a stairwell, until the secreted baby makes a sound. A haggard woman hears the faint cry of the baby, spies it, sees men chasing it and the mother, and goes ABSOLUTELY APESHIT hurling herself at its attackers as the baby and its mother get away.

No time for questions, and none needed.

In real life, in my hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, some years ago, there was a man hacking at a child with a meat cleaver in an apartment courtyard. Some young people went down and shouted at him to stop. But it was an unrelated 53-year-old woman who launched her body at the man, cleaver and all.

I am sorry. That little boy died.

I am sorry.

This is not to take away from the dads. They were ready to suicide for their children inside — except for the cops with the guns, of course. But it was a mom who got cuffed, got uncuffed, hopped the school fence, and spirited her kids to safety.

Last time this happened, after Parkland, we thought the children would save us. They would show the nation the error of its ways with their vigor and their deep pain. The nation ignored them.

Now it is time for us. It is time to go WILD, and LOUD, and CHASE THESE FUCKERS FROM OUR TOWNS with our VOICES AND OUR BODIES AND OUR VOTES. Call everyone you know. Make them join you. Annoy them. Harangue them. Persuade them. Be an asshole. Be a one issue voter to stop SACRIFICING OUR CHILDREN IN THEIR LITTLE CLASSROOMS THAT SHOULD BE FILLED WITH ART AND FUCKING SMILES.

This has been ... well it has been something. It has been shouting and bodies, and we can do the same.