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My Uvalde
Listening to this morning’s Justice Department review of Robb Elementary School mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas
Six hundred and four days after the massacre of my classmate’s young family members, I am more sad than outraged.
Sad is long-lasting. For the students in my high-school class, now grown old as I have, sad will be lifelong. Outrage, meanwhile, calls out for action. The only action I could have engaged in would have been here, on Medium. But I didn’t even write about Uvalde.
I will do that now.
Those children at Robb Elementary waited 77 minutes for help. Police waited 77 minutes before they did what their jobs and their humanity should have demanded of them. I knew about the 77 minutes, having listened to MSNBC on the day the shooting occurred.
But this morning, I heard Merrick Garland on MSNBC say something I had not heard: The lack of organization and leadership was such that, after it was over, wounded and bleeding children with bullet holes in them were put on a school bus with no medical intervention. Ambulances that had arrived were used for children who had died.
And I just broke down.
Uvalde is a word I’ve said to myself off and on for 63 years. For me, the word has meant “beautiful.”…
