March For Our Lives II

Sadly, March For Our Lives is becoming a family affair. My wife and I attended the first in DC four years ago. Today, because we got split up in the huge DC crowd last time, my wife went to Washington. I on the other hand went to where I and my wheelchair are very familiar, Annapolis. The energy there was great.

I just saw on the news that X Gonzalez sort of headlined the speakers in DC today. Well Annapolis had its own little firecracker. I am so sorry that I am not including her name, or any of the other organizer's names. I missed them because I arrived a couple of minutes late. Everytime this one young woman took the podium she apologized if she wasn't being heard but she's only five feet tall and couldn't reach the microphone as well as her partner.

Her partner kept things going with an occasional quip about the number of candidates running for office they had speaking. There were numerous of those, including two for Attorney General of MD, Katie Curran O'Malley who I believe is still addressed as "The Honorable" Katie O'Malley thanks to her time on the bench. Plus Rep. Anthony Brown gave a fiery speech. Moms Demand Action also had a representative there to speak.

Unfortunately for the Annapolis organizers just as they had the crowd really getting loud, a man suffered a coronary. From the podium they asked people to move away from where he was so the paramedics could get to him. They said they were just taking a break and would resume when the man had been transported from the scene. 

Shortly thereafter, (while I snuck away from the crowd for a cigarette) I thought I heard them announce they were cutting the rally short because the rain was picking up and they only had two more speakers scheduled. After confirming this with people heading out, I decided to leave.

Before I left I found an organizer, gave him a couple of my cards and said if I can help in any way, you have my contact info. He thanked me, tucked the cards in his shirtpocket and went back to work.

The news coverage of the event was sparse. I didn't see any reporters with notebooks moving through the crowd. Local TV station WBAL had a static camera and microphone set up to catch the speakers but I didn't see anyone talking to the rally goers. 

I learned back in 2007, the image of me in a wheelchair being an activist usually attracts reporters like bees to honey. I have to admit I was hoping someone would ask me why I came out. I had a ready answer.

How could I not come out? I was ten years old when I came home from elementary school, to learn that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. How could I not? I was fourteen when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated within 63 days of each other. How could I not, when I almost killed someone in my own home.

I couldn't have been more than twenty years old. We lived in a little town where everyone knew us. It was late, I was going to bed. I was alone for the first time in a new home. As I lay down I heard someone climbing up to the widow's walk that ran across the front of the second floor. Then I heard them trying the door and as I looked into my mother's room, I saw a shadow moving out of sight. 

The "Princess" phone was right there so I called the police. They asked if I had a gun in the house. I said yes. They asked if it was loaded, I said it can be. They said, `What kind of gun? I said a 12 gauge shotgun. They said, load it, we're on our way.

I could still hear someone out on the widow's walk. I walked to my sister's room down the hall. When I looked in, there was a figure climbing through the window. My shotgun had been resting "cracked" over my arm. I snapped it shut, raised it to my shoulder and aimed. The figure went back out of the window and jumped from the balcony.

The rest of the story is somewhat humorous, the figure was my sister's boyfriend. He didn't know she was out of town, he just knew it was late and my mother's car wasn't there. He was "captured" a few minutes later limping down the road on a badly sprained ankle. 

The less than humorous part of the story is when I snapped that shotgun shut and raised it to my shoulder, I had made the decision to pull the trigger. If my sister's boyfriend wasn't keenly aware of what a 12 gauge sounds like when it snaps shut and had kept coming in … Well personally I try not to think about that. 

A couple of other observations about the young people organizing today's event. One, they are a lot closer to the "Clean for Gene" crowd of my day, than the campus radicals I hung out with in college. I mean they didn't say mother fucker even once. Second, that young five foot nothing speaker, she was 18. Eighteen years old and a fully thinking adult, making adult decisions about what she wants her life going forward to be. Third, the young man, I couldn't tell you his race or heritage. I'll say this, he wasn't Irish Catholic. None of that matters, this young man is ready for a career in a spotlight. He kept that rally moving along like he was Ed McMahon or Jerry Lewis. 

Well all and all I thought it was a well attended, enthusiastic rally. I hope to learn how successful the organizers thought it was. Now if we could only make them unnecessary.