National Walk Out or Up Day

"WALK WALK We like to walk. 

WALK TALK We like to talk."

Hop On Pop by Dr. Suess

We like to walk...we like to talk.  My social media news feed is overcome with hashtags with what seem to be similar; #walkout and #walkupnotout very similar yet very, very different. The hashtags are in reference to the movement by highschool students across America following the school shooting in Florida to emphasize the need for gun control, particularly in reference to the ease in which guns are obtained by those that lack the mental stability to be a gun owner. #walkout

#walkupnotout is a viral movement. The movement appears to be inspired in part by a Facebook post, mid February, in Texas. The movement encourages students to "put down their stupid phones" and walk up to lonely students and make friends, a great idea. We all need to check out less and reach out more. 

Both hashtags involve movement, walking. Here is the biggest difference, however. In walking out, the students are making a statement, saying they are tired of watching their friends die right before their eyes. Or in the case of the students that have yet to be involved in a shooting, are saying they are tired of worrying about when someone will come in and kill their friends right before their eyes, or worse yet, kill them. They are tired of being sitting ducks waiting for "the adults" to legislate their way in to safety. They are tired of waiting on us. They don't want to sit - so they are walking.

The principal that began the walk up, not walk out movement is looking at the shooter. Like many of us he is probably wondering how did we get here. What makes someone so angry they need to kill to feel release. Like so many school personnel he sees a glimmer of hope that the students could be more kind, more friendly, leaving no one out and that child will not grow up into a rage filed killing machine. 

The danger of hashtags is that they take a larger conversation and reduce it down to two to 4 words, stripping it important considerations.

Considerations like:

• Many students will walk out without actually knowing the full "why."
• Walk outs feel good. They give the walker a power when they feel powerless. 
• Walk outs give a voice to the voiceless.
• Walk outs rarely make change because they are not taken seriously by the change makers.
• Walking up to students places the responsibility for change on the the victims (or potential victims.)
• The walk up movement is akin to saying, "You are being shot because you have been mean to people. If you had been nice they wouldn't have shot people."
• It victim shames.
• We are also, once again, asking the students and teachers to be responsible for fixing a problem that belongs to the entire community.
• And while we ALL need to be much more kind and relational to EVERYONE, many of the brokenness the shooters have received has been in their homes.

Hashtags are handy. They let us find topics quickly through search engines. But the take away they minimize, politicize and advertise rather than bring about solutions.

Hashtags bind us together. they help us find our people.  I am a #metoo. But those five letters behind the tic tac toe board doesn't tell you my story. You have to know me, listen to me and befriend me before I would trust you with my story. And that is what life is all about. 

Instead of heckling the kids walking out, listen to them, come to know their fears, their anxieties and their helplessness. Comfort the afflicted, shore up the weary. Don't accuse the of just wanting to get out of class, of being driven by politicians to be anti gun. I mean have you stood by and watched your friend die at the age of 14 in what should be one of the safest places you go?

Instead of shaming kids for creating shooters by being mean kids in the third grade to the weird kid, show them how to love (it doesn't happen by you shaming them, or deriding them, calling their cultural ways stupid.) Show them how to lift others up with words and deeds by starting with those that are afraid.

People this shooter problem can't be legislated. It is a human condition problem. Truthfully, I am not a fan of guns. And I am a fan of constitutional rights. But more importantly I know you can kill with out a gun. I come from a state where 168 people where killed and thousands of lives shattered by a an angry, confused man with a truckload of fertilizer. Brokenness can only be mended with holy healing, and that is what we where placed on earth to do, heal with the love of God that lives within us.

Get walking.