Dear Emma Gonzalez,
Today I watched the video online of your silent plea, a plea to be allowed to live, in one of the most amazing show of solidarity and strength seen in your part of the world in recent times. As I saw your tears roll down, I couldn't contain mine either. In your intensity, in your silence, in your final words, I saw the despair of the future generations when they look at the current generation and its unwilling ways to change and make life comfortable or even livable for the future generations.
The 6 minutes of silence that you paused in your speech was so important in a world that is debating hotly just now, the listening and reading, the interpretation, analysis and commercial exploitation of the smallest of exchange of words between of loved ones. In your silence, you gave a slap to this entire industry that works with words and the analysis of words and the meaning that gets communicated based on the same.
That you stepped out at your age to seek justice and peace from a system that is run by people who profit from the design, manufacture, usage and control gained through weapons, itself is an act of defiance and courage.You may have done it provoked by the immediate anger and pain of losing friends, but, in your tender hands and shoulders lightly rests as you take on this system, the failure of people who didn't take this confrontation to its conclusion earlier. Several tried and were broken down, they were decimated as movements and run down or deprived of air as a body of protests and slowly, but, decided, they lost. In your is the revival.
That you could let your sadness show and your emotions in front of the world cameras was an act of utmost courage on your part. This is altering the script in a world that has commodified emotions on camera, it altered and placed a value of life and future on emotions on camera that is normally reserved only for the purpose of commercial benefit of a few. You have forever changed the script.
From the land of Gandhi, the man who stood for peace everywhere in this planet and who proclaimed more than 100 years back that the only way for the planet to survive is to adopt methods of non-violence and non-greed, this greeting is to cheer you and your friends and to assure you that you are not just a voice heard in your neighbourhood and country alone, that you and your friends have ushered in a global culture of a new script. A script that Gandhi would have been proud of and gladly associated with. I want to thank you for your courage and sincerity and yes, for standing up and being silent. In your silence and intensity is the hope for future generations. Your generation. God bless you and may you and your friends have the strength and the support that you seek and never give up until that system which you protest against submits to your demand and stops the perpetration of violence as a culture.
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