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After Florida, I had lost hope. Then I saw Emma González

After Florida, I had lost hope. Then I saw Emma González

Florida school shooting

Opinion

After Florida, I had lost hope. Then I saw Emma González

AfterFlorida,Ihadlosthope.ThenIsawEmmaGonzález

Suzanne Moore

In a speech on Saturday, the high school student wiped back tears and demanded that US gun laws must change. These kids are fighting for their lives

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@suzanne_moore

Mon 19 Feb 2018 16.11 GMT

Last modified on Mon 19 Feb 2018 22.00 GMT

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It’s Presidents』 Day today. Why not celebrate with a discount on bump stocks? Their manufacturer, Slide Fire, has a special offer on. You don』t know what a bump stock is? What kind of loser are you? It’s the device by which you can make a semi-automatic rifle function as a fully automatic one. Your own machine gun! You just keep your finger on the trigger and can fire between 400 and 800 rounds a minute. The discount code, by the way, is Maga: Make America Great Again.

Bump stocks were found on the Las Vegas shooter’s guns. Of course they were. If you want to kill as many people possible in a short time, they are your friend. Useful for a school shooting.

I barely registered the latest act of terror in the US. Yes, it is terror. Alienated young men; 「lone wolves」; individual terrorist cells motivated by racism, misogyny, self-loathing, complete alienation, radicalised by footage of every other mass shooting. Dress it up how you like, but this terrorism has infected US society at every level. When small children are taught what to do when the inevitable 「mentally disturbed」 man arrives – throw things, hide in cupboards, play dead while their murdered friends』 blood pours on to them – then terror has achieved its aims. Fear. Fear becomes woven into everyday routine in an effort to domesticate it.

The narrative plays out. The aerial footage, the desperate parents, the running children, heroic teachers who throws themselves in front of the pupils. This time Scott Beigel who, when watching coverage of a different school shooting on TV, told his fiancee, Gwen: 「Promise me if this ever happens to me, you will tell them the truth – tell them what a jerk I am. Don』t talk about the hero stuff.」 He died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school trying to protect the kids from the gunman.

The gunman. No names here. Let us not give these men the notoriety they lust for. Another boy, who tortured animals, was violent to women and expressed his desire to kill on online forums; pretty much the CV of every terrorist. Beating up women is, as we know, another way of terrorising people, one that is shrugged off as domestic as opposed to societal violence.

On and on it goes and Donald Trump – who used murdered children to try to take the heat off the investigation into his campaign’s Russian links – spaffs on about thoughts and prayers. The same phrase used after Sandy Hook – when we who love the US feared for its mortal soul.

But then I started watching. I saw a girl with a buzzcut, Emma González, wiping back the tears, publicly mourning her dead classmates and demanding change. I watched the footage from inside the classrooms that students had captured on their phones. I heard the screams of those about to die. I glimpsed a floral cotton dress, a flimsy desk and realised that these children are taking control of the narrative now.

And refusing it. González is in trauma, but she is organising. She and many of her classmates are directly challenging the donations of the National Rifle Association to Trump and his cronies, and his decision to scrap a regulation that kept guns out of the hands of people with severe mental illnesses.

There will be school strikes. There is resistance. These young people will not sit in classrooms any more waiting for their turn to come. They are not going to be another statistic. 「We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks,」 said a weeping González. Plans have been announced for a March for Our Lives on 24 March.

As she wiped away tears, for the first time in a long time, I saw true leadership on this issue. These kids are fighting for their lives. I thought everything was broken. This girl gives me hope.

Should my daughter go to college? I don』t know what to tell her

I recently returned to studying, and one of the oddities of being a student again is the new calculations that one makes. I said to a fellow student recently that I might miss a day, and he pointed out that, by doing so, I』d be throwing away at least £283. He knows the price of every lecture. And, yes, he knows the value, too. I was humbled by this, to be honest. My previous degree was 「free」.

But no woman is an island, and two of my children have been through university, one without much debt, as the fees at that point were just £1,200 a year. The other left with the standard £50,000 debt that we don』t discuss, or think about, because quite frankly we can』t.

So when my 17-year-old asks: 「What should I do at college?」, I am flummoxed. Do I tell her that earning is more important than learning? I am afraid it’s too late to turn her into an engineer. Or do I say that most of what she is interested in is soft old social sciences; girly low-income bunkum. Do I say: forget arts, who needs them? We already have too many artists! Do I tell her that education remains the most important ideological state apparatus and you, my darling, must follow your dreams. Dreaming, though, is no longer free. Do I talk all that Damian Hinds nonsense about benefiting the country?

No, I tell her to read Patrick Kavanagh’s poem To Hell With Common Sense for its last lines: 「And I have a feeling / That through a hole in reason’s ceiling / We can fly to knowledge / Without ever going to college.」

I don』t know if anyone in charge of education policy reads poetry these days, though. It’s hardly economically viable.

How can so many great actors be so boring?

And the award for the most stilted reading of an Autocue goes to … well, there was a wide field at the Baftas this year. There were Good Things: Sisters Uncut, Frances McDormand and Daniel Kaluuya. There were Bad Things: Joanna Lumley’s god-awful script – she is a funny woman – let her be so. Bryan Cranston’s 「jokes」 about Englishness. Endless white men telling us this was the year for women. Really? But when even Jennifer Lawrence’s character is bleached into blandness alongside her beautiful freckles, something has gone very wrong. Here we have a gaggle of the best actors in the world. Then why can they not improvise giving gongs to each other? This was worse than a night at the theatre and we all know how I feel about that hackneyed, fresh hell.

Topics

Florida school shooting

Opinion

US gun control

Baftas

Awards and prizes

Higher education

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