Writing Assignment
I was seventeen when I received my first and in many ways my most significant writing assignment.
It was 1995. My high school choir was set to perform that night. We were on campus, rehearsing during our lunch break, when we received word that Timothy McVeigh, along with two co-conspirators had carried out the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the US. I watched from my place within the soprano section as our choir director reacted to the news. He stood very still for a long moment, and many of us could guess at his thought process: This national tragedy could not be ignored. We needed to acknowledge it that evening.
He knew I was a writer, although not a particularly distinguished one – I had dropped out of all of my honors and AP classes by then. But for whatever reason, his next move was the scan his choir until his gaze found me. He called my name, and asked me to write a dedication that we could recite to open our performance that evening. Suddenly, with one request, I felt my place as a bit player in this tragedy come into sharp relief: I was to be one of the storytellers. The scale of the bombing was so massive, all we had access to at that time, on that day, was the televised footage of rubble, fires, and the wreckage. It took me about an hour to figure out a plan for what I was going to write, who would recite it, and how it would be staged in the theater that night.
The scale of the casualties could not be known, and we certainly didn’t know the names of the victims.
Today, we know it took the FBI 28,000 interviews, three-and-a-half tons of evidence, and that they reviewed nearly a billion pieces of information in order to close the case. On that day, in about thirty minutes, I drafted a six-voiced narrative of the events, channeling what my imagination could make sense of from the perspectives of those who perished, those who survived, their families, the reporters on the scene, the aerial perspective of the cameras, and the nation who were glued to their TVs. I don’t remember the words, but I do remember the patchwork nature of the piece. I divided our choir into groups of varying sizes, and once we were on site at the performing arts center, directed them where to stand when we delivered it.
The cavernous room was tense. The audience was still. Our choir director created the space for us to take the stage. We slipped out of our customary places for the recital. We spoke our fragments, passing the narration from one small group to another around the room. And in a few minutes, it was over. The hush that had fallen over the crowd held all the way through the long pause for us to walk quickly and silently back to our places, for our choir director to hold up his baton, and for us to begin. We performed, as well as I can remember, the whole of John Rutter's Requiem - the most apt piece that could have been chosen for the evening.
We were one of probably thousands of choirs across the country performing that night, and I imagine there were others like me, who wrote a small piece of remembrance and mourning that reached the ears of about a thousand people. I carried no further honors from that night except a stray compliment from another student. I didn’t receive extra attention at school the next day. That felt right to me. Honoring people who had lost their lives meant a different type of responsibility.
It wasn’t a public moment about finding my voice as a writer. It was an act of public service. Thirty-plus years later, I don’t remember the words I wrote. But every time there is a fresh new catastrophe, I remember both the pressure of that responsibility, and the pride I felt in meeting the challenge. But over the years, I felt less and less pride and more and more sadness.
In 2024, domestic terrorism has gone from being the work of adults to being the work of babies.
This week, we witnessed the start of a new school year that launched with the now familiar dreaded news, that a child took a gun to school and murdered several classmates. Every day, we are witness to a chaotic landscape of guns and glory swirling about, creating fear and weaponry and younger and younger perpetrators until one day, it really will simply be infants in arms. Each of those acts of terrorism, no matter the perpetrator, creates an emotional deficit in us. Each act is a vortex, sucking in lives, and winking out possibilities for the victims, their families, and their communities.
I see the throughline of how that early writing assignment guided me towards working on gun violence prevention campaigns, civic engagement campaigns, fundraising for a wide array of humanitarian aid organizations and other nonprofits. From that early experience, I was led to join a field that invented jargon like the term “crisitunity:” a portmanteau made up of crisis and opportunity that acknowledges that crisis-response organizations must not only respond to crises, but on the operating side, they must view and use crises as opportunities to drive their fundraising efforts.
As a communications and fundraising professional, I found the term wearily accurate. As a member of the privileged upper-middle class, I saw it as breathtakingly cynical. Making my livelihood off of crisitunities, I would think, is this what it feels like to be a lawyer in constant fear of being described as an ambulance chaser? I understood the righteous anger of donors when they railed against the misuse of funds by organizations.
Many crisis-response organizations I have worked with have had their issues – what organization doesn’t? Most common has been a perpetuation of rigid hierarchies combined with the breaching of personal boundaries. Trust is in short supply everywhere, it seems.
Wishful Thinking
I suppose, in the end, there is only one way I feel comfortable ending this piece: I reported on how people were swayed by targeted ads to turn against Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. I helped make recommendations in nearly 10 percent of down ballot races across California amidst 2020’s pandemic-induced extremist violence – neo-Nazi rallies and January 6th.
This election, I will share my most desirable outcome with you: The Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket will win. They will win both the electoral college and the popular vote. They will win by a margin that the media will still try to portray as razor thin – but will ultimately be forced to concede that the margin meant the race was never actually competitive. Even though voter turnout will not be larger than it was in 2020, it will be younger, smarter, and louder. More progressive candidates will keep their seats than will be voted out, despite being, on the whole, out-financed in a tired and familiar narrative.
But this is the last election that will look like the same old same old. In four years, expect dramatic upheaval that will be impossible to ignore. Because we are finally going to be forced to address climate change in the next four years in ways we never have had to before. This country is going to have to reinvent itself from the ground up, and the progressives are the only ones who will be equipped to lead the charge within government.
Looking for progressive candidates and positions to support in this election? Check to see if there’s a Progressive Voter Guide in your area.
