just enough light

Now that we have heard from the children, will we be the adults?

I was impressed, humbled, and inspired by the teenagers who participated in the March for Our Lives. The speakers stood in front of hundreds of thousands of marchers, knowing also that millions more were watching them on television, and still they spoke with poise, passion, and focus. Far more than I had at that age.

I believe they deserve our admiration and our attention, and they deserve to be taken seriously. But what would it mean to take them seriously? A few weeks ago an editorial by Jonah Goldberg objected to the “fetishization of youth in politics” and warned against “celebrating young people as inherently wiser and more moral that adults.”

His objections are based on a false premise. Most people know that youth are not inherently wiser or more moral than adults. Their views will evolve and change with experience, just as ours have. Some of their opinions and views will mellow with time, others will deepen and intensify. But we must not ignore their wisdom or their moral focus now. They have been traumatized by a great evil and they mustered the courage to speak and act rather than retreat.

The primary reason we should listen to them is that they are the primary stakeholders in the issue of gun violence in schools and on the streets. They are the ones getting shot. These students in particular have had an assault rifle aimed in their direction. They are the ones who hid in closets and heard the rounds being fired, not knowing when the shooter would find them. They deserve our attention and our respect, even if we don’t agree with them or if we think they are immature.

They and their teachers are the primary stakeholders in this issue of common-sense gun legislation. As stakeholders, they are the ones who will live or die by the outcome. They have literal skin in the game and they deserve to be listened to.

The primary stakeholders should always have a voice. Not just in gun legislation, but it all issues. Any time the decisions of the powerful affect the lives of the more vulnerable, the voices of those affected need to be heard.

For example, I was dismayed at the photo a year ago of a conference room in the White House in which 30 white men were sitting around a conference table discussing women’s health care. In a room where people are making proposals and decisions about women’s health care, the only men present should be those serving coffee.

In Texas, retired teachers are discovering the financially devastating impact of our state legislators’ decisions about health care. Those legislators eased the burden of their own health care costs while passing a crippling burden on to others who have spent a career educating children. The teachers are the stakeholders. The legislators should not be the beneficiaries.

Our leaders, sitting in positions of power and privilege, make decisions about health care, the social safety net, education, and other enormous issues that affect people who have little access to that power. In every social or political decision, how would things be different if those most affected by the decision were given not just a voice, but were included in the decision-making?

This is consistent with the Biblical admonition to attend to the needs of the least of these, those most vulnerable and most disadvantaged by the power system. The Bible singles out the widows and orphans, those who are hungry and sick, those in prison. Those were the needs of that day. Today, the vulnerable include people of color, women, the hungry and homeless, the sick without health care coverage, and a host of other people. In our diverse society, the list is long.

The question for our culture is, are we willing to chip away some of our rights and privileges in order to address a greater need of someone more vulnerable?

Should we do exactly what those teenagers want done? Of course not. I rolled my eyes when they demanded their needs be addressed “Right now.” That’s the passion of youth. However, Goldberg correctly stated that young people have a gift for cutting through the false pieties and polite fictions of modern life.

Getting shot at will do that, I guess. The stakeholders, regardless of the issue, deserve to be taken seriously.

Printed in Abilene Reporter News, April 8, 2018