The Nation - April 30, 2018

April 30/May 7, 2018 The Nation.^11

use attack dogs and fire hoses to disperse the crowds. (The

water pressure was so great that it not only tore clothing

and flesh, but dislodged bricks from nearby buildings.)

The brutality captured in news footage from that day

endures as the symbol of repressive racial separatism in a

city whose nickname—“Bombingham”—stemmed from

the frequency with which black homes and churches were

bombed by white vigilantes.

Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who spent her

own youth on the front lines of the civil-rights movement,

has written poignantly of the four young girls who died in

the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in

Birmingham and of the “wounds that are less visible and

harder to reconcile.” She writes that bombing survivor

Sarah Collins Rudolph, whose sister Addie Mae was killed,

and who lost one of her eyes in the blast, “is seeking finan-

cial compensation for the extensive medical expenses she

incurred after the attack. After suffering the consequences

for the past five decades, she said, even after all these years,

nobody remembers her.”

González, Hogg, Naomi Wadler, and the other speak-

ers at the March for Our Lives are the most memorable of

the young people affected by our scourge of gun death. But

more than 187,000 students have been exposed to school

shootings since Columbine in April 1999. Many remain in

various degrees of physical or mental pain; they are a popu-

lation whose remaining years will be etched with the stress-

es of catastrophe. And while many of the young leaders of

this new movement are smart, strong, and media-savvy,

we should never forget the toll taken on their lives—not

only with regard to the unspeakable trauma they’ve already

endured, but in the reiteratively staged depravity that sics

hungry dogs upon those who kneel to pray, codes cruelty

as freedom, and takes decency for weakness. Q

While many of

these young

leaders are

smart, strong,

and media-

savvy, we should

never forget the

terrible toll taken

on their lives.

Calvin Trillin

Deadline Poet

REUTERS

Suicide Figures

SNAPSHOT / HANNAH MCKAY

As part of an installation by Mark Jenkins, 84

sculpted figures loom at the edge of rooftops in

London. The project is meant to raise awareness of

male suicide rates in the United Kingdom, where, on

average, 84 men kill themselves every week.

Laura Ingraham Picks On

Parkland High-School Student

Perhaps she’s now embraced the cause

Of feminism fully—

Confirming you don’t have to be

A male to be a bully.