An Open Letter to Governor Lee on the Slaughter of Our Children
NASHVILLE — Dear Gov. Bill Lee,
For more than 24 hours, I waited for you to speak to the people of Tennessee about the massacre of Nashville schoolchildren and the adults who gave their lives trying to keep them safe. These were your citizens. These children were your children. This shattered faith community is exactly the kind of community that gives you solace in your own moments of fear and despair. What would you say to them? To us?
What promises of reform would you offer? What vows before God that nothing like this would ever happen to another family on your watch? To another innocent child?
I waited to hear.
I have never had any reason to believe that you would represent my own views and my own values in the governance of this state, but I still had hope that the murder of children would have the power, however temporarily, to carry us to common ground. God help me, I still had enough faith in your humanity to hope that you might be moved by the obliterated bodies of these tiny Tennesseans to do something. To lead us somewhere better. At the very least to promise that you would try.
For more than 24 hours, you did not speak.
I live in a quiet neighborhood. In that quiet, it is possible to hear sirens from miles away. When the sirens started Monday, I was standing in my front yard talking to a friend. At first I didn’t even register the keening, but almost immediately it became an uncountable number of sirens. Police sirens and fire engine sirens and the heart-chilling sound of ambulance sirens.
Here is a link to the letter without the NYT paywall.
https://dnyuz.com/2023/03/29/an-open-letter-to-governor-lee-on-the-slaughter-of-our-children/
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