From Sandy Hook to Syria

Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the massacre of children at Sandy Hook. And yesterday marked the end of the battle for Aleppo in Syria.

In Newtown, Connecticut, 20 first graders were slaughtered. Six educators died trying to protect them from a gunman who, it is believed, wanted to rack up a high score like on all the warlike video games he loved. We lived in Danbury, 13 miles away, and early news reports said the school was in Danbury. Local schools were locked down. Friends were teaching at Newtown High School. A colleague’s daughter was killed. Early reports also told of three people injured, transported to Danbury Hospital which itself went on lockdown awaiting further trauma cases. There were no more to come. All the rest were living or dead. The shooter was dead – adding his own name to his list of kills. I remember watching the news that day and waiting, feeling so helpless. And then the magnitude of the tragedy was revealed and I could no longer breathe. Four years later, their names are all so familiar to me, and my heart aches for each one.

But my heart also aches for Aleppo. For five years, Syrian president Bashar Assad has fought against rebel forces in Syria, with much of that fighting targeting the rebel stronghold in Aleppo. The city now lies in ruins, much like those same war-like video games. At one point on the brink of collapse, Assad’s regime has been propped up by the Russian government, which also prevents the United Nations from taking action against this genocide. And so my heart breaks … for the children whose city has been destroyed around them. For the little ones who have known only war. For the civilians executed in the streets. For the victims of bombings, and gunfire and chemical weapons. For the hundreds of thousands who have been killed in the Syrian civil war, for the millions of refugees who have fled, and for those who have died in the in-between. I don’t know their names. They don’t live in the next town. But I mourn for them just the same. And I feel just as helpless.

I want someone to do something about Syria, to save the children of Aleppo. But then I remember that it’s been four years since Sandy Hook and our country has done nothing to protect our own children. And I remember that the NRA and the Russian government just handed us four years of Donald Trump. There are those who have claimed that Sandy Hook was a hoax, who have attacked and threatened the parents of the children who died that day. One of those people, Alex Jones, has been praised by the president-elect. Now one of Trump’s loyalists is similarly claiming that Russian interference in our election is similarly a hoax, just as Bashar Assad claims that the chemical attacks came from the rebels, not from his government forces. But these claims of a hoax, or a “false flag”, are just excuses to do nothing, at home or abroad. These people want to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist so they can feel justified in ignoring it.

And with these people in charge, I fear for our world – for the children all over the world – because the people charged with protecting them aren’t like the teachers at Sandy Hook. They won’t hide their students like Victoria Soto, or shield them with their own bodies like Anne Marie Murphy, or try to disarm a gunman like Dawn Hochsprung.

No, to Trump and many of his followers, the lives of these children are as insignificant as those in video games. And what scares me most is that nearly 63 million Americans supported his incoming regime.