Amanda Gorman, the 24-year-old US poet who rose to fame for her performance at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, has written a poem as the nation mourns the killing of 19 children in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas.
An 18-year-old man opened fire at Robb elementary school in Uvalde on Tuesday, killing at least 19 students and two adults. The suspect, named by Texas governor Greg Abbott as Salvador Romas, shot his grandmother at her home, then fled the scene by car and wrecked it outside the elementary school, where he ran in and began shooting.
Gorman, whose poem The Hill We Climb became a bestseller after her reading at Biden’s inauguration in 2021, shared the short poem on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon:
Schools scared to death.
The truth is, one education under desks,
Stooped low from bullets;
That plunge when we ask
Where our children
Shall live
& how
& if
In a series of tweets, Gorman condemned the shooting and inaction around gun safety.
“It takes a monster to kill children. But to watch monsters kill children again and again and do nothing isn’t just insanity—it’s inhumanity,” she wrote.
“The truth is, one nation under guns.
“What might we be if only we tried. What might we become if only we’d listen.”
Schools scared to death.
— Amanda Gorman (@TheAmandaGorman) May 24, 2022
The truth is, one education under desks,
Stooped low from bullets;
That plunge when we ask
Where our children
Shall live
& how
& if
Gorman also called on her followers on Instagram to take action and donate to the gun safety nonprofit Everytown. “Americans — you know enough is enough. If you do anything today, let it not be just to grieve, but to act,” she wrote.
Details of the attack are continuing to emerge, with one adult victim confirmed as fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles.
The US senator Chris Murphy, who came to Congress representing the families of children killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook, begged his colleagues to pass legislation addressing gun violence.
“What are we doing?” Murphy said. “I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees to beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”
Biden addressed the nation on Tuesday night, calling for “common sense” gun laws. “It’s time to turn this pain into action,” he said.
The former president Barack Obama said that “it’s long past time for action” on gun violence in the US. He said he and his wife Michelle “grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear”.
Across the country, parents are putting their children to bed, reading stories, singing lullabies—and in the back of their minds, they’re worried about what might happen tomorrow after they drop their kids off at school, or take them to a grocery store or any other public space.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 25, 2022
“We’re also angry for them. Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook – and ten days after Buffalo – our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies,” he said.
