We ask our kids to listen and pay attention to us, the adults in their lives.
But how do they interpret the world around them in these times? Are we asking them? Are we hearing them?
“Hear Our Voice,” was the call by millions to reenergize the fight for fair actions at the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017. A year later, a second Women’s March brought millions together nationally and globally to persist in that fight for change.
Earlier this month, many in our country celebrated Father’s Day. And today, more than a year and five months into Donald Trump’s presidency, the world is witnessing 2,000 children being cruelly separated from their families at the border, while being caged.
“How do I make sense of this?” First, millions of us come together and turn up the volume on our voices. Then, we buy cards and celebrate our children’s fathers. And today we watch as 2,000 children are separated from their families and held in cages along the U.S./Mexico border.
We listen to the children’s calls for protection and safety and their parents are rendered helpless. Many of us do not hear. Some citizens are noting what real, societal power-driven oppression looks like and are familiar with its impacts. Others who are privileged and so protected may be witnessing this visible pain for a first time.
One policy enforced and enacted is desperately hurting children, in their present moments and in their futures. And, the impact on 2,000 kids is not where this atrocity ends. What about our kids whose understandings of caring and interpretation of rules in this world are emerging? Will they trust that the adults in their lives will listen to their voices as they witness the nation’s intolerable and totally insufficient actions?
How do we step forward and act together for the sake of the children and their families?
Susan Kennedy Marx
Amherst