Moral Monday: Enough is Enough
“Enough is enough. She’s innocent. She didn’t bother nobody” as yet another innocent girl’s life hangs in the balance after being shot in the crossfire of gunmen while on the playground at Clarke Street Elementary School in Milwaukee on May 21st.
The father, Onjaun Guyton, says, “Enough is enough” and holds the sobbing mother of 10 year old, Sierra Guyton.
“Think about that: A 10-year old shot on her school playground. What kind of world allows that to happen?”
Another father, Richard Martinezs, pleads on national television to please do something while holding a large photo of his dead son, Christopher. He says he is tired and stumbles to find words to describe the pain he feels. He is at a loss to even venture a solution to the insanity that is taking place all across this nation. He blames himself for not doing anything after the 20 children were slaughtered in Sandy Hook. He now shares the grief of the families. Meanwhile, the world around him, unaffected by his pain, goes on as the cars pass by as he struggles with the enormity of his loss and the loss of so many innocents.
Richard Martinezs lashed out at elected officials who refuse to do anything to address the carnage that is happening all across the United States. “Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the N.R.A.” “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to life? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop the madness; we don’t have to live like this?” “Too many have died. We should say to ourselves: not one more.”
“Not one more” are the profound words we will write on postcards to elected officials.
Joe the Plumber, Samuel Wurzelbacher, in an open letter to the families of the latest carnage at the University of California–Santa Barbara in Isla Vista says this: “As harsh as this sounds–your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights” to carry a gun.
Columnist, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald, says it best in the following excerpts.
“I am running out of words.” “Or maybe just faith in words.” “Which ones should I use? ‘Sickening’ ‘Obscene’ ‘Grotesque’ ‘Tragic’” “Do they still have power to punch your gut.” “This is why I am running out of words or faith in words. Too much blood, pain, and death and the dictionary is finite.”
“But when carnage becomes routine, we lose more than lives. We lose some element of our very humanity. So I guess I cannot afford to run out of words–or faith. None of us can. Running out of words is an act of surrender, or obeisance to the obscene. Running out of words is running out of outrage. Both those who died and those left behind deserve better than that. Here then is the final word flung against that high and indifferent wall:
Enough: You hear me?
Enough.
Enough.”
When will it be “Enough?” When it’s me or you filled with grief standing on a sidewalk along a busy street with the picture of our loved one pleading for someone to do something to stop the insanity?